Roy Bhaskar founder of Critical Realism has died

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

You are playing Humpty Dumpty again and making words mean what you say they mean.

Spoken like a true irreconcilable materialist, ALB!Unless you reveal your ideology (if not to us, then secretly to yourself), then you won't be able to make sense of 'idealism-materialism', because it goes against the ontological assumptions of 'materialism'. For a materialist, everything must be at base 'material'. If you follow that ideology, fine, then why not say so, and you can stop pretending to be in an 'objective position' which allows you to pronounce on the 'Humpty Dumpties' of the world, and you can come to realise that there are others, from other relative standpoints, who just won't accept your ideological assertions.

ALB wrote:

The trite observation that people are influenced to act by ideas is not what Bhaskar and his philosophy mean by "non-physical causal powers" and, as a "critical realist" yourself, you must know it.

Yeah, other ideologies are always 'trite' to the pseudo-non-ideological.

ALB wrote:

No doubt too, you must take up some position in this debate about amongst your fellow "critical realists" about the nature of these mysterious "causal powers…

I know I've said this a million times before, and you've ignored it, but my 'fellows' are Communists, not 'critical realists' as a group. FFS, Bhaskar's gone and got religion, and Margaret Archer is a bloody Catholic, apparently.On ontology, I follow Dietzgen: ideas and things have the same ontological status. So, if by 'free-floating powers', the more materialistic/physicalistic of the CR-ers mean simply 'powerful ideas', then I don't agree with them. Ideas are never 'free-floating', but are socially-produced and change historically. By 'free-floating', though, they mean 'non-material'. For Dietzgen, Marx and me, 'real' means ideal and material. So, nothing can be 'free-floating' from both ideas and material.It seems to me that 'value', in that sense, is a 'free-floating power', because, as Marx says (and as you keep hiding your eyes from), there isn't an atom of matter in 'value'. For a 'materialist', this is a very inconvenient statement by Marx, and he apparently wrote this in the little-known chapter of Capital entitled 'Humpty-Dumpty explains value'.Ontology is a human decision, and if we want 'free-floating powers', we start from 'free-floating powers'. This, of course, is roundly condemned by the ideological materialists, as 'Evil Idealism'! Engels told them so (but he later recanted, or at least tried to, when he saw where 'materialism' was heading).We'll have to have a vote on that, too, ALB.It's going to be a bugger of an argument, this Communism, isn't it?

[LBird]

From ALB's link:

Ruth Groff wrote:

… in my view… critical realism bears the mark not just of Aristotle, but of Marx.

Spot on.If one has problems with the ideology of Aristotle and Marx, one will have problems with CR.

[ALB]

Fair enough. I see you are a critical Critical Realist (and why you want to distance yourself from the guru himself) but what is the difference (for you) between a "realist" and a "materialist"?

LBird wrote:

For a materialist, everything must be at base 'material'.

For a realist, must everything be at base "real"?

[LBird]

Given the turn the other thread has taken (where you, just like DJP and Vin, just can't resist dishing out insults when I'm being entirely comradely and answering questions in depth), I think that I'm wasting my time discussing with you, ALB.For those not following the other thread, ALB insinuated that I'm a liar.Why not just announce that you are an Engelsian Materialist, given your posting of his texts on the other thread, and bugger Marx off?'Matter'? It's effin laughable that anyone in the 21st century should keep bangin' on about it. No wonder we're going nowhere – and by that, I mean both this thread and the workers' movement.

[ALB]

That's a bit sad. So we're never going to know what is the difference between "materialism" and "realism".  Nor what  "ontological monovalence" ("the primordial failing of western philosophy") is. Ah well, but I guess it doesn't matter.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

That's a bit sad.

It's more than 'sad'.It's a tragedy for workers that they're still being lead astray by Engels' half-witted 'materialism'.The solution for you though, ALB, is to recognise your ideology of 'Engelsian Materialism' (in private, if you wish), and thus come to understand why you disagree with Marx and the 'matterlessness' of 'value'.There is not an objective position in the universe to un-ideologically observe 'matter'.'Matter' is an idea made up by Engels, as far as Communists are concerned.

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