Reason and Science in Danger.
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Of course, for postmodernoids, evolution wasn’t real before the 18th century. Creationism was because that was the reality that the social consensus created until then.
Like saying that the socialist party is an elitist when we don’t have leaders and we are not a vanguard party and all members are wage slaves or retiree
Denying that Marx and Engels were not influenced by the philosophers of the enlightenment would be like the anarchists denying that Marx was not influenced by the French anarchists or Lenin rejecting all the English philosophers on empirio criticism
‘Of course, for postmodernoids, evolution wasn’t real before the 18th century. Creationism was because that was the reality that the social consensus created until then.’
Beware of contemporary conceit ALB. The future may look back on our own view of ‘reality’ as anachronistic just as we see the metaphysics of the past as outdated.
Ok but I only used the word “real” (which is not entirely appropriate) because that‘s the one postmodernists and oids use in their dogma that “beliefs create reality.”
They would have a bit of a point if they argued that beliefs shape our description and interpretation of realty but not reality itself which is the ever-changing world of phenomena (the whole universe) parts of which humans experience.
Otherwise you end up with the absurdity, expressed many times here, that in the past the reality was that the Sun went round the Earth. That was only how at one time that particular part of the world of phenomena was described and interpreted.
ALB wrote: “…postmodernists and oids use in their dogma that “beliefs create reality.””
But who here is arguing that postmodernist dogma, ALB?
As far as I can tell, the postmodernists/idealists/religious have no presence on this site, never mind on this thread.
The conversation here is between those, like you, the ‘materialists’, who argue that ‘reality itself’ pre-exists the social production of it. And so, ‘reality itself’ is sitting there, waiting to be ‘discovered’. Fine, it’s a common enough belief, and focusses on ‘The World’.
But the other side, like me, the ‘Marxists/democratic socialists’, argue that ‘reality’ is a social product. This is not anyone saying ‘beliefs create reality’. It’s following Marx’s views, that human conscious activity creates what it knows (Marx refers to Vico in Capital, so he was familiar with Vico’s arguments). That is, social theory and practice produces ‘Our World’.
The problem with the concept of ‘The World’ is that we can’t change it, if ‘reality itself’ precedes our making of it. We can only simply contemplate it. Once known, this ‘reality’ is known forever.
This is the problem and the debate.
We know that the ‘scientists’ of the 19th century were wrong about this belief in ‘reality itself’, as Einstein showed (and many, many others).
And for us, who aspire to build towards socialism, surely we’re better adopting a scientific ideology that stresses ‘society and nature’ as an intertwined couplet, as did Marx, and that democracy must play a part in this social production of our reality.
Wez wrote: “Beware of contemporary conceit ALB. The future may look back on our own view of ‘reality’ as anachronistic just as we see the metaphysics of the past as outdated.”
Yes, Wez, ‘reality’ is historical – and thus social and human. The metaphysics of 18th century ‘materialism’ have been outdated for a long while. Ironically, Marx participated in that. But his views have been obscured.
Marx today would probably be called a ‘constructionist’. He argued that we ‘externalise’ our own ‘nature’. His term ‘Entausserung’ means ‘externalisation’, or ‘production’. We are active in the process of building our world.
ALB – “Otherwise you end up with the absurdity, expressed many times here, that in the past the reality was that the Earth went round the Sun.”
Hi Adam, have you heard of a guy called Galileo, youmight find his work interesting
Thanks. I see I’ve still got time to change it ! Done. While I have the floor I can add that “reality” is not out there waiting to be “discovered”. It is out there waiting to be “described” but it’s there independently of how it’s described,
L Bird, I will go with you as for as the difference between “The World” and “Our World”. Our world is a growing development of interaction with each other and with the world we live in.
Not that very far from Piaget’s concept of schema, mental representations of the world as we understand it which transform as we encounter new experiences and challenges to our pre exisiting schema. The process being an ongoing process which is never complete.
I could also see to some extent that due to the fact that many of the key experiences that form schema are social experiences and as we share a degree of social experiences they are likely to be commonalities at any point in time, in any society.
However, and it is a big however, “our World” derives from somewhere, we discover as children that things that are hot burn us. We develop a schema around hot things that protects us. Our schema is not “The World” it is “our world”, but it is based on our encounters with external forces, forces of nature and social forces. Whilst we can change our internal representation of these forces to gain a more accurate schema (never getting to a point of complete accuracy), we cannot simply ignore these external forces. We cannot change “hot things burn my skin” to “hot things do not burn my skin” by our own creation, any more than the schizoid man can become Napolean, just because he wants to.
As a materialist I don’t doubt the existence of an objective reality independent of our concept of it but science still asks many more questions than it has answers. Perhaps this is because the present scientific paradigms are mistaken or inadequate? We cannot know what further research will reveal but we do know, by looking at history, that perspectives and knowledge will undergo profound change.
And for us, who aspire to build towards socialism, surely we’re better adopting a scientific ideology that stresses ‘society and nature’ as an intertwined couplet, as did Marx
As did Engels, LBird, though I note you omitted to comment on the quote I provided which sort of dents you anti-Engels bias in quite a big way, dont you think?
Someone on another thread mentions someone who says that Marx was an “existentialist” while here someone is saying that he was a “constructivist”. Both are anachronisms.
Actually, after he and Engels wrote in 1845 the notes intended to clarify their own views and which were not published until long after the death of both of them under the title of The German Ideology, Marx never wrote anything about philosophy (he left that to Engels) and does not seem to have been interested in it any more. He seems content to regard himself as a “materialist” as he had done in the 1844 Theses on Feuerbach though a new kind different from the “contemplative materialism” he was criticising. I don’t think he thought that in the past the Sun went round the Earth, as is being alleged.
I think L. Bird is saying that humanity is God, and nothing exists without us. The “if a tree falls in the forest…” argument.
One might then extend this to say that other humans apart from me don’t exist when I am unborn nor after I die, because I create them in my mind. The same applies to all that I imagine I see, hear, taste, smell and touch. There is only the Idea.Being Machiavellian:
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