Science for Communists?
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LBird wrote:ALL knowledge suffers from 'distortion' and 'suppression'.
Yes, as I have been saying, and thus that is a banal observation. Absent a social impact of class struggle, such distortion/suppression loses its ideological edge, and just becomes background radiation that we try through various methods to correct. It is the removal of power from science.I really have no idea why you think my other post beneath contempt?
So, Rovelli doesn't know, Einstein doesn't, we all know Newton didn't know, even Pannekoek says that the 'laws of physics' are a human construct, but to YMS this is all just 'banal'.Do you really not read anything at all being posted on here? Or understand the importance of what's being said?
LBird wrote:This post of yours is beneath contempt, YMS. You should be ashamed, and grow up, if you're going to discuss philosophy with the grown-ups.That is not really a comradely, grownup response. But it is consistent and typical, I will give you that.
Hi LBirdI'm not here to have a go or try and derail this thread. I'm genuinely interested in your view as to how this lack of scientific "truth" could or will impact on a socialist society or even the attempt to bring it into existence?
I'd have thought the important thing about science is that we know we don't know, but that, according to our best efforts, this is the way things stand. It's just one of those things you have to live with, much like the inevitability of death.Likewise, all language is inherently metaphorical, and any word can only refer to what it was iterpreteted to mean the last time it was used. This has radical implications, but not on a day to day basis: I mean, I can never fully know what you mean; but I can take a workable stab most of the time.If everyone is biased, no-one is biased. What matters is when classes introduce systematic bias. The bias of individuals is what we fight against through dialogue and dialectic. We will never eradticate bias.It's like the old saw about how maybe when I see red, I'm seeing the colour you see when you say green. I can never know. It's impossible. But what we can know is that when we point to something and say it's red, we both agree that it is red, and the sam boundaries apply to green.As the story goes:
Quote:Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence.SocialistPunk wrote:I'm not here to have a go or try and derail this thread. I'm genuinely interested in your view as to how this lack of scientific "truth" could or will impact on a socialist society or even the attempt to bring it into existence?No, I know that you are one of the few who seem to be able to recognise the problems that Rovelli discusses, and, further, realise that this has implications for human knowledge and its impact on society. So, I know your questions are genuine, and not simply bloody-minded refusal to think about the consequences of accepting YMS's 'banal' points.Put simply, if 'truth' is socially-produced, why shouldn't it be socially-controlled?And for us, discussing a 'socialist society' which by definition will be run on democratic lines, why shouldn't all scientific activity be democratically-controlled?The alternative is that 'truth' reflects 'nature' (and so is eternal 'Truth') and thus 'nature' should have the last word, not humans.But, when those who espouse the 'elitist' view of human knowledge production are asked, how do 'elite' humans 'know' what nature says, they revert to old-fashioned science, which we now know doesn't allow 'nature' to speak for itself. Elistist methods will produce elitist ideas.Humans always put words into nature's mouth. Once we recognise that, we can ensure that those doing the 'putting' are us. That is, socialist society.If this doesn't help, or is too obscure, or needs some clarification, please ask away!
Young Master Smeet wrote:I'd have thought the important thing about science is that we know we don't know, but that, according to our best efforts, this is the way things stand. It's just one of those things you have to live with, much like the inevitability of death.Likewise, all language is inherently metaphorical, and any word can only refer to what it was iterpreteted to mean the last time it was used. This has radical implications, but not on a day to day basis: I mean, I can never fully know what you mean; but I can take a workable stab most of the time.If everyone is biased, no-one is biased. What matters is when classes introduce systematic bias. The bias of individuals is what we fight against through dialogue and dialectic. We will never eradticate bias.It's like the old saw about how maybe when I see red, I'm seeing the colour you see when you say green. I can never know. It's impossible. But what we can know is that when we point to something and say it's red, we both agree that it is red, and the sam boundaries apply to green.As the story goes:Quote:Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence.YMS, I'm a Communist, not a Liberal.Why you continue to engage me with individualist ideas, I'll never know.Why not start a thread named 'Science for Individualists', and leave this one to the self-professed Communists?
Partly because you aren't saying anything that a professed empircist couldn't sign up to; partly because I too am saying that knowledge is socially produced, another way of saying that is that science is organised reliable knowledged produced with an other in mind.Or, as the story goes:
Quote:Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men. Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal does not enter into “relations” with anything, it does not enter into any relation at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all.Something I find extremely amusing here. The ambiguity of ideology and truth.Yet if we take the word "socialism", to us socialists there is no such ambiguity. We don't say it is a difficult meaning to pin down and waffle on aimlessly. We don't change its meaning to suit different discussions. In fact we get quite irate when Labour supporters call themselves socialists and talk about a socialist government, or when people claim the USSR was a socialist country. Sometimes if we are honest, we even take pride in being true socialists even though we hold a minority view.Why is that?
The fact that we mean one thing when we say "socialism" and others mean something else when they use the word shows that there is an ambiguity.No-one has a monopoly on meaning and meaning itself changes through time.Definitions are neither true nor false. The problem comes when people begin by not sharing common definitions of words and so end up talking past one another or when meaning slips during the course of argument (call this the moving the goal posts maneuver).
Bakunin wrote:A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established powers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction.But that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all constituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal suffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years' time of a body of politicans, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy. Witness the United States of America and Switzerland.Consequently, no external legislation and no authority – one, for that matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the servitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themsleves.Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed on me by no one, neither by men nor by God. ions and even their directions Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labour. I receive and I give – such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subbordination.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/authrty.htmHi DJPI did say that "us socialists" see no ambiguity in the word socialism. Obviously the examples I gave about Labour party socialists and the former USSR mean there is in wider society.
DJP, if as you say no one has a monopoly on meaning then why do socialists bother to attempt to explain the "truth" regarding socialism to those who think Labour and USSR was or is socialist?Just ditch the words communism and socialism and move on to another definition.I suggest the reason could be that socialism once did have a common definition and was distorted. So if socialists allow that distortion to become the accepted definition without any attempt to hold onto the original meaning then any other definition could just as easily be lost and so on etc etc.Not all words change meaning over time, the ones more likely to change or disappear are ones that are not commonly used. So if ya want a specific meaning attached to a word ya gotta work at it.
LBird wrote:YMS, I'm a Communist, not a Liberal.Why you continue to engage me with individualist ideas, I'll never know.Why not start a thread named 'Science for Individualists', and leave this one to the self-professed Communists?Ironically, it is your view that gives some standing to "individualist" ideas in that it makes any individual's "bias" (the new word here for "ideology") as good or as bad as the next while YMS's view says that it is possible for humans to share the same "bias", over non-social science today and over most things in socialism/communism, so that a common understanding/interpretation can be reached and acted on. He could claim to be more "common-ist" than thou. In the end of course It's relativism v universalism again (and again).
ALB wrote:LBird wrote:YMS, I'm a Communist, not a Liberal.Why you continue to engage me with individualist ideas, I'll never know.Why not start a thread named 'Science for Individualists', and leave this one to the self-professed Communists?Ironically, it is your view that gives some standing to "individualist" ideas in that it makes any individual's "bias" (the new word here for "ideology") as good or as bad as the next while YMS's view says that it is possible for humans to share the same "bias", over non-social science today and over most things in socialism/communism, so that a common understanding/interpretation can be reached and acted on. He could claim to be more "common-ist" than thou. In the end of course It's relativism v universalism again (and again).
Unfortunately, you've forgotten our earlier discussions about the nature of the 'subject', within the epistemological triad of 'object, subject, knowledge' (our 'Schaff' threads), ALB.For a Communist, the 'subject' is a 'social individual', not a 'biological individual'. For us, 'individuals' embody social ideas (or ideologies). That's why (except on this thread, where I've specifically attempted to discuss at a simpler level without links and quotes, as I made clear at the start) on the other threads I always gave authors, books, links, quotes to where 'my' ideas come from. This is the correct scientific method, to expose one's sources and thus ideology.I'm not an individual, I'm a worker. This identification affects ones view of the world, social and natural.In this context, of course, Marx is a 'relativist', not a 'universalist', to use your terms of reference. I suspect you're following Engels here. Marx's concept of 'mode of production' should be enough to remind comrades of Marx's 'relativism' on the subject of 'knowledge'.Different societies understand the world differently. This viewpoint means that Marx was ahead of 'bourgeois science' by about 100 years.This approach is very different from YMS's (and DJP's?) constant harping on about 'individuals', rather than 'classes'.
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