Science for Communists?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Am I an "instrumentalist"? Sounds as if I might be. My position is set out in this article.Was Marx an "instrumentalist"? I don't know but you are the one who is always quoting  the part of his Theses on Feuerbach where he emphasises that the "truth" of thinking has to be shown by practice:

Quote:

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.

So, if he wasn't a "pragmatist" or an "instrumentalist" he was at least a "practicist". I can't see what he has in common with Bashkar's "critical realism".I notice that you are less keen on quoting other parts where he describes himself as a "materialist":

Quote:

IX. The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.X. The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society or social humanity.XI. Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Marx describes himself as a "new materialiost" to distionguish his view from that of the sort of materialists you are criticising. But he still called himself a "materialist". Another reason why Sayers's definition is not helpful.

But 'instrumentalism' is individualist and inductive (ie. individual practice leading to theory). Marx is 'social' and stresses 'theory and practice' (ie. social theory leading to practice). So, Marx is not an instrumentalist.The other parts that you seem to think that I'm "less keen on quoting" will do just nicely, because they actually reject 'instrumentalism'. Thanks, ALB, for making my point.On the 'Marx calling himself a materialist' point, I've covered this now what seems like dozens of times, so I won't repeat myself, yet again.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

I don't think current usage agrees with the above.

Why won't you reveal the ideological basis to 'current usage'?'Current usage' seems like a synonym for the dominant 'ruling class ideas'

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

On the 'Marx calling himself a materialist' point, I've covered this now what seems like dozens of times, so I won't repeat myself, yet again.

Yes, but it's still a point to us

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

Why won't you reveal the ideological basis to 'current usage'?'Current usage' seems like a synonym for the dominant 'ruling class ideas'

That's a silly point. As if you yourself haven't relied on "current usage" too in some of your definitions.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

So, then, according to this statement, the 'non-physical' can 'supervene' on the 'physical' (DJP's position) but also (because they have 'the same status') it must mean that the 'physical' can 'supervene' on the 'non-physical'.

I'm getting confused as to what is the common usage of the term "supervene" but, once again, you are confusing two things: the "ontological" status of the physical and the non-physical (which are the same) and descriptions/explanations offered of physical and non-physical phenomena. Of course some physical phenomena can be usefully described as being the product of the non-physical. What do things that human civilisation and culture are if not the outcome of purposeful, i.e idea-driven, human activity?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Of course some physical phenomena can be usefully described as being the product of the non-physical. What do things that human civilisation and culture are if not the outcome of purposeful, i.e idea-driven, human activity?

[my bold]But this is not what DJP argues.That's why I'm asking if you differ in your ideological views.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

But this is not what DJP argues.That's why I'm asking if you differ in your ideological views.

But I don't think what you think I think.Attempt 4 (or 5?)

wikipedia wrote:

supervenience is an ontological relation that is used to describe cases where (roughly speaking) the lower-level properties of a system determine its higher level properties.[…][…]social properties supervene on psychological properties, psychological properties supervene on biological properties, biological properties supervene on chemical properties.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

But 'instrumentalism' is individualist and inductive (ie. individual practice leading to theory). Marx is 'social' and stresses 'theory and practice' (ie. social theory leading to practice). So, Marx is not an instrumentalist.

But why is instrumentalism necessarily "individualist"? (Apart, that is, from you calling any view that differs from yours "individualist"). Why does the usefulness of a theory have to be judged by its usefulness to an individual rather than to society (all individuals) or even to a class? Maybe Marx could be described as a "social" instrumentalist?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

LBird wrote:

But 'instrumentalism' is individualist and inductive (ie. individual practice leading to theory). Marx is 'social' and stresses 'theory and practice' (ie. social theory leading to practice). So, Marx is not an instrumentalist.

But why is instrumentalism necessarily "individualist"? (Apart, that is, from you calling any view that differs from yours "individualist"). Why does the usefulness of a theory have to be judged by its usefulness to an individual rather than to society (all individuals) or even to a class? Maybe Marx could be described as a "social" instrumentalist?

I thought that you knew the ideological background to instrumentalism, ALB.It's the liberal Dewey and US individualism. It's the polar opposite of Marx's method, of 'theory and practice'. Your suggested method of 'social instrumentalism' is meaningless, because 'instrumentalism' is based on 'individual practice which pretends society does not exist'.You still seem to think that some form of 'scientific method' is non-ideological, and are desperately searching for it.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

What about the 'physical' that 'supervenes' upon 'ideas'?

There is no physical that supervenes on ideas, that is not what supervenience means.Third time lucky…. The upper levels supervene on the lower..

LBird wrote:

Humans 'create' their world of knowledge, understanding and explanation, of production, distribution and consumption, much of which is not 'physical' in any meaningful sense, and much of which is the product of 'ideas', rather than the 'physical', so why the emphasis upon the 'physical'?

There is no particular "emphasis on the physical". It depends on what level of explanation is relevant to what you want to explain..

Having now reached the point where ALB seems to agree with me, Marx and Dietzgen that ideas and physical have the same ontological status, we can see that DJP's schema, which insists that ideas 'supervene' on the physical, is an ideological choice.DJP's schema can be reduced to one where the arrow between two boxes points 'one-way' (boxes named 'ideas' and 'physical'), with the arrow pointing to the 'physical' box.The schema employed, on the contrary, by us three, and perhaps now ALB, has 'two-way' arrows between those boxes.DJP's constant posting of 'third' time, 'fourth' time, 'fifth' time of posting, shows that whereas we're reading his posts and criticising his model from another perspective, he isn't actually reading the posts written by both me and ALB.DJP think his 'model' is The Truth, and the only Truth, and won't tell us which ideology stresses this model. He thinks that anyone who disagrees with, and thus ignores, his model, is 'not reading' his posts.If any other readers agree with DJP's model, that's fine, but admit to yourselves that you are making an ideological choice of models, and it's a choice at odds with mine and Marx's.Nature is not telling anyone DJP's model. It's a human construct, and to choose to follow it is a human choice.Plus, it's a conservative choice, of a model that stresses fixity, hierarchy and is ahistorical and asocial,The model described by Dietzgen, of the equivalence of 'ideas' and 'physical', is by contrast dynamic, democratic, social and historical.Change and critical thinking is at its heart, driven by humans.

[Young Master Smeet]

Do hunter gatherers have ideology?  Certainly, they have a world view (although the extent to which that 'blinkers' them may well be an interpollation of anthropologists imposing a protstant schema onto the purported and reported susperstition of the 'primitives' is debatable).Anyway, some recent reading.  noticeably in Botrh Pannekoek's HIstory of Astronomy, and Isaac Azimov's popular science behemoth New Guide to Science they both observe a significant shift, from about the birth of the Royal Society[*] from individual's working in attics to collective science as expressed in correspondence and societies.  Now, this must be a part of the standard history of science to have been mentioned by both writers so.Now, I've also been reading a book on the application of statistics to football (I pass ont heir prediction that there will be around 1,000 goals in the premier league this year, at an average of 2.6 per match).  Now, such statistics are being driven by the technology that suddenly makes measuring a complex phenomena like soccer possible, before we simply could not.  It has been tried, they quote Charles Reep, a pioneer of soccer stats:"Provide a counter to reliance on memory, tradition and impressions that lead to soccer ideologies" Here The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong / By Chris Anderson, David Sally.Interestingly, a quick google search for Reep & Ideology threw up this tidbit:"But the essential problem with Reep, as Barney Ronay masterfully detailed in a 2003 When Saturday Comes column, was that despite his experience as an accountant, his approach to understanding football was marked more by ideology than science." HereIn common parlance, ideology is one of those irregular verbs: I am scientific, you are mistaken, he/she/it is an ideologue.  of course, ideology 101 tells us that precisely is ideology in action. Interestingly, though, the accusation levelled by Anderson and Sally is that Reep, who was a mid twentieth century technocrat, precisely let his assumptions get in the way of the data.  So Anderson and Sally tell us that a manager can account for as much as 15% of a teams success, then that is what the data tells us.Anyway, two last tidbits.  Firstly, remember you can get most books for free (or a very small charge from your public library) and Worldcat can help you find out if a library near you actually has a book in stock (Universities may let you pay for a reference ticket).Finally, I leave you with Asimov on the wrongness of wrong, which is quite relevent, IMNSHO, to discussions here.http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

In common parlance, ideology is one of those irregular verbs: I am scientific, you are mistaken, he/she/it is an ideologue. of course, ideology 101 tells us that precisely is ideology in action.

You make the same point I've been making, YMS, and the same one Marx and Einstein were making.The correct conjugation is, of course:I am ideologicalYou are ideologicalHe/she/it is ideologicalWe are ideologicalYou(se) are ideologicalThey are ideological

[Young Master Smeet]

But then if everything is ideology, then it becomes a banal observation, and it becomes the eternal truth.  Why should one ideology matetr any more than any other?  It simply becomes the sort of thing accepted by Norman Tebbit (I recall seeing in an OU programme about ideology) blithely saying "Well, yes, everyone is biased, that's natural and indeed good, in some ways"  never mind, lets get on.  It's also the bedrock of empiricists what I have met.Now, there is an extent to which Goedel's theorem does demand ideology, or at least, unsupportable presuppositions, to use Austin's term.  But that is arguable, and they can be laid bare.  And it also has bnothing to say about class power.I'd suggest, in socialism, we wouldn't call these things ideology, just points of view.

[ALB]

Actually, I've no objection to DJP's schema as one possibily, even probably, useful way of understanding the passing world of phenomena. What we are arguing about is not the content of the theory (and of theories in general) but their status: are they uncovering  "the Truth" and representing the world as it "really is" or are they simply useful ways of describing and understanding the world? You're the one that has described the schema, mentioned by DJP, as purporting to represent "the Truth", not him.Yes, I know that "instrumentalism" was a term introduced by Dewey and that he wasn't a socialist/communist in our sense (though he is said to have regarded himself as some sort of "democratic socialist"), but the term has since acquired a wider meaning that can be applied to people both before and after his time who held the same general view of the status of scientific theories, eg:

Quote:

The instrumentalist position is that scientific theories are calculating devices that facilitate the organization and prediction of statements about observations. It is statements about observations that are true or false. Theories are merely "useful" or "not useful".

I thought this is fairly close to what you have been trying to argue but, for some reason, you have chosen to place yourself, at least in name, in the opposite "realist" camp which holds that scientists are seeking

Quote:

to formulate true theories that depict the structure of the universe.

Actually, Dewey seems to have been an interesting person. See this article on him and "dialectical materialism". He was a bit of a fellow traveller of Russian state-capitalism but defended Trotsky against Stalin's accusations against him.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

But then if everything is ideology, then it becomes a banal observation, and it becomes the eternal truth. Why should one ideology matetr any more than any other?

Yeah, I see your point, YMS.Why bother if the ruling ideology is Fascism or Stalinism, or democratic socialism, because 'why should one ideology matter any more than another?'.

YMS wrote:

I'd suggest, in socialism, we wouldn't call these things ideology, just points of view.

So, a Mengele will be able to vivisect pregnant women?I suspect, like ALB, you simply want 'science' to be non-ideological.We're back to:YMS is scientificMengele is ideological…

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