Science for Communists?

[Brian]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I look forward for some leisurely few hours to read through the new edition of New Scientist on what is reality. I am sure there will be a few points relevant to the socialist understanding of the universe that others might wish to discuss. https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/metaphysics/Register for free access to the articles

Sorry to disappoint you Alan it's not free access.  Except that is the tantalising introduction.  Not to worry I'm sure LBird will reveal those bits which suit his narrative for democratic control of the means of production.

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

Not to worry I'm sure LBird will reveal those bits which suit his narrative for democratic control of the means of production.

It's not my 'narrative', Brian, but a necessary 'narrative' for the class conscious proletariat, if they are to politically control production.And what remains unsaid, by you and the others who have difficulty with "democratic workers' power in science", is what 'narrative' youse are employing.No doubt, influenced by bourgeois ideology, you'll all argue that 'science' is an 'objective' method of 'discovery' of 'what exists' out there, rather than Marx's view that 'we create our object'.The mythical 'objective method' of producing 'True Knowledge' is a method only suitable to an elite (even youse argue that 'truth' produced by this 'method' cannot be voted upon), and any consideration of this 'method' leads one to see that it suits perfectly a ruling class elite, and denigrates the masses as incapable of forming views upon, and thus voting upon, whether 'knowledge' is 'true' or not. This 'special consciousness' that 'elite scientists' have, and which is not available to the majority, is also the 'scientific basis' of Leninism. I'm sure even youse can see the parallels between 'elite knowledge' and 'elite power' in both science and politics.As I always say, if youse disagree with the idea of the 'democratic control of the means of production', you have to reveal what your ideology of 'production control' is. And further, your notions are completely ahistorical and asocial, whereas those who look to Marx can situate your ideological scientific views in the ruling class ideas of the bourgeoisie, as they emerged c. 1660, with the coming to power of the bourgeoisie, and their determination to end any talk by the revolutionaries that the purpose of 'science' was to 'make a better world for all', and that 'better' could only be determined by the masses.The bourgeoisie wish to pretend, for their own interests, to have a 'politically-neutral method' of 'discovering' an existing 'objective truth' of a 'world out there', a world which allegedly they haven't produced, and which just 'is', and so can't be changed.Whilst workers, and even socialists like youse, look to bourgeois ruling class ideas, we will remain hamstrung in the political and ideological battle for the control of social production.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I look forward for some leisurely few hours to read through the new edition of New Scientist on what is reality. I am sure there will be a few points relevant to the socialist understanding of the universe that others might wish to discuss. 

[my bold]Put simply, alan, according to Marx we create our own reality, by social theory and practice.Many physicists throughout the 20th century have also argued very similar views.It's only 'materialists' who cling to outdated 19th century notions of the 'discovery of objective reality outside of any conscious activity'.Marx called this conscious creative human activity 'social labour'.With this notion of 'social labour' which creates our reality, we can change our reality.If you're still hoping for someone to tell you 'what is reality', outside of human consciousness and creativity, so that you can  merely contemplate 'the real world', you're doomed to disappointment, alan.

[alanjjohnstone]

Well,  the disappointment came a lot sooner that i wished. All the interesting articles were just introductions…had to pay for the "premium" articles…grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Reality in this world is that you rarely get anything for nothing

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Well,  the disappointment came a lot sooner that i wished. All the interesting articles were just introductions…had to pay for the "premium" articles…grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Reality in this world is that you rarely get anything for nothing

Well I've just ordered it, alan, and the 'bourgeois reality' is that it costs £5.54, inc. p&p.Of course, in 'socialist reality' we'd all have free access.Thanks for the tip about its publication!

[Brian]

LBird wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Well,  the disappointment came a lot sooner that i wished. All the interesting articles were just introductions…had to pay for the "premium" articles…grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Reality in this world is that you rarely get anything for nothing

Well I've just ordered it, alan, and the 'bourgeois reality' is that it costs £5.54, inc. p&p.Of course, in 'socialist reality' we'd all have free access.Thanks for the tip about its publication!

Is this just for the article or the content of the magazine?

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

LBird wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Well,  the disappointment came a lot sooner that i wished. All the interesting articles were just introductions…had to pay for the "premium" articles…grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Reality in this world is that you rarely get anything for nothing

Well I've just ordered it, alan, and the 'bourgeois reality' is that it costs £5.54, inc. p&p.Of course, in 'socialist reality' we'd all have free access.Thanks for the tip about its publication!

Is this just for the article or the content of the magazine?

Paper copy of Sept. 3rd issue. Seems to me to be worth a fiver. Let's hope so, even if just to confirm the weaknesses of bourgeois physics, eh?

[Dave B]

Well I see L bird is up to his old tricks as a non scientist talking about science, putting up straw man arguments about true knowledge and using false Marx quotes etc. The nature of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ and ‘what is the truth’ is a very old one and pre bourgeois. As Pontius put it to JC. Actually it was a Democritus (first chemist- hurrah) question (Karl did his Phd thesis Democritus) and had a Democritus answer which was also in the Gospel incidentally as a kind of joke; John 4. The Democritus answer is that the ‘truth’ lies at the bottom of a deep well. In other words it pre- exists, materially, outside of human consciousness before it is discovered or pulled out. And we are forced to fit our consciousness around material ‘reality’; as Karen Horney said,; it refuses to go away and ignore us. Is that realistic and true? Did the earth revolve around the sun before it was discovered? Did Neptune exist before it was discovered?; in 1846. The nature of discovery is problematic on its own as a computer scientist/astronomer   claimed that Galileo saw it in 1613. I went to a lecture by the guy that wrote the programme that ante-dicted the positions of the planets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune  Or is L bird saying that we have created the ‘reality’ of Neptune. On this mythical ; “mythical objective method of producing True Knowledge” ‘True’ scientists couldn’t give a rats arse for the ‘subjective’ opinion of others; 'future reality' is their judge. We will design a big F**k off plane using tested ‘objective methods’ and you watch the mother f**ker fly perfectly first time. And screw your artificially ‘created’ realities.  There is a kind of related theory on reality sometimes referred to as ‘sense perception theory’ which can include conscious experience of ‘reality’ etc.  

---

 In fact L Bird is crediting scientists with being Descarte’s  evil demon. Descarte was not as idiotic as L Bird though! Among the accusations of blasphemymade against Descartes by Protestantswas that he was positing an omnipotent malevolent God. Kennington[3][4]states that the evil demon is never declared by Descartes to be omnipotent, merely to be not less powerful than he is necessarily deceitful, and thus not explicitly an equivalent to an omnipotent God. The evil demon is capable of simulating an external world and bodily sensations, but incapable of rendering dubious things that are independent of trust in the senses, such as pure mathematics, eternaltruths, and the principle of contradiction.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon  Enter Hegel’s phenomenology of Logic.

[alanjjohnstone]

A short useful article to hone up the argument to never say never and that truth changes with time.https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/04/moby-dick-and-gravity-understanding-the-truth

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

A short useful article to hone up the argument to never say never and that truth changes with time.https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/04/moby-dick-and-gravity-understanding-the-truth

Yes, very interesting article, alan, and it contradicts Dave B's earlier post.It would be very interesting, too, to discuss these differing conceptions of 'truth' (a 'changing social construct' versus 'a reflection of what is out there'), but we never get that far.It seems to me that Marx, contrary to Dave B's Engelsist Materialism, would have argued for the socio-historical approach, in which different modes of production produce different 'truths'. Dave B's approach is essentially ahistorical and asocial, and locates 'truth' in a 'reality out there' which simply 'is', and can be 'discovered' by a 'neutral method', but only by 'elite experts' who 'do science'.I'm fully behind Marx's social approach, of locating the production of 'truth' in the society in which it is produced.If we employ Marx's socio-historical method, we can soon come to see the socio-historical roots of Dave B's ideology – it emerged with the bourgeoisie, who, through their 'science', attempt to 'universalise their rule', and claim that they alone (to the exclusion of the masses) have the key to 'truth'.The fruits of Engels' complete misunderstanding of Marx's ideas, eh? So-called 'socialists', like Dave B, who insist that workers cannot control production, and thus cannot vote on 'truth'.It's much the same, politically, as Leninism. An elite with a 'special consciousness', which not available to the masses (otherwise democracy would be part of the method), tell the producers just what it is that is being produced. Of course, they claim it is not 'produced' but just 'is'.

[Lew]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

truth changes with time.

Is that always true? If it is, then the statement is self-contradictory. But if the above statement changes with time then there is no reason to accept its truth.

LBird wrote:

I'm fully behind Marx's social approach, of locating the production of 'truth' in the society in which it is produced.

I did ask before but didn't get a response; so I'll ask again: Is the above statement true? — Lew

[LBird]

Lew wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

truth changes with time.

Is that always true? If it is, then the statement is self-contradictory. But if the above statement changes with time then there is no reason to accept its truth.

LBird wrote:

I'm fully behind Marx's social approach, of locating the production of 'truth' in the society in which it is produced.

I did ask before but didn't get a response; so I'll ask again: Is the above statement true?– Lew

Lew, I always answer these questions by 'ahistoric and asocial logicians', but they don't like the answer because the answer is from a political perspective which the 'ahistoric and asocial logicians' don't share.That's fine, of course, that different political perspectives have different views about 'truth', but the problem with the 'ahistoric and asocial logicians' is that they insist that only their political perspective on 'truth' is the 'true' one.Marxists don't do this, and locate the various perspectives on 'truth' in their socio-historical orgins.So, after that necessary explanatory preamble, I can answer your reasonable question, once again:Yes, "the above statement is true".'Truth' is socially-produced, and the statement that I (and I think alan) make is a socially-produced one, with a political underpinning, that allows us to change 'truth', because it is humans that produce 'truth'.Would all societies and classes have agreed with me and alan? No, because they have a different political and ideological belief in what constitutes 'truth'.So now, we could go on to discuss these varying socio-historical approaches to the ideology of 'truth', but we never do, because the 'ahistoric and asocial logicians' ideologically remove that possibility at the outset.The alleged 'contradictoriness' of alan's statement in your belief system is a product of that belief system.There is no 'contradiction' if one doesn't share your political ideology.'Truth' is a social construct (Marx's social theory and practice), not an eternal, fixed, unchanging, universal 'Truth' that your political perspective wishes to 'contemplate', but a social product that our political perspective wishes to 'change'.

[alanjjohnstone]

“truth changes with time”My, (admittedly rudimentary) understanding was that everything was ever changing. That historical materialism was another way of describing evolution. That the forces involved is material conditions, and again, my basic knowledge of Dietzgen, is that what ideas people hold, is a material force involved in change and those ideas itself are dependent on material conditions but possess a flexibility. That the very existence of any particular thing depends on its relations to everything else if I cite Dietzgen correctly.I may have misinterpreted Dietzgen (and I may have misunderstood your question, Lew)  but he does not talk of eternal non-changing moral truths but of an ethics and morality that undergo evolution.“To lay down regulations for all times and conditions, as our system makers claimed to have done, is in the highest degree immoral. We have seen that morality is based upon the general need for social co-operation. With the growth of that need, morality and civilization grow. The continued development of morality is as necessary to the welfare of our race as food for the body. Any moral prescription which claims to be more than a local or temporary expediency turns necessarily into an immoral limitation, just as a prescribed bill of fare turns finally into an unbearable diet. As bread is a general food, so is truth a general virtue. But remember, my friends, that that fact is by no means a metaphysical prescription with a claim to eternal validity, but an empirical rule which admits of exceptions. An absolute right is, like an absolute truth, theological or metaphysical moonshine. The moral world has but one commandment: permanent social progress, limitless social evolution.”In another place he says:“In order to get a clear conception of morality let us compare it with a tool. The tool is as eternal and yet as changeable as morality. Can a knife of the stone period be regarded to-day as a knife? It is surely an antiquated knife, but no more a knife in the modern sense; a knife of to-day must be from steel, and of modern finish. But just as a knife consists generally of a handle and blade, so is morality in general the subordination of personal desires to the local, national and, finally, international welfare.”But again I must plead an amount of ignorance but isn’t the Nature of Human Brainwork correct in saying all truths contain some amount of errors ad also in error there is some truth.Our "proletarian philosopher" taught that thought is determined by the thinker's class position. What thinking produces is not truth but "ideologies." Which I think is what LBird always lectures us about.The Jupiter we understood yesterday, has changed today with the knowledge acquired from the recent space-probe fly-pass. It is now a different Jupiter, is it not, and not the same one as previously. Another version of that we do no stand in the same flowing river twice analogy. 

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

What thinking produces is not truth but "ideologies." Which I think is what LBird always lectures us about.

[my bold]My political advice, alan, is to change your statement to 'What social theory and practice produces is…'.Otherwise, you'll be condemned by the Religious Materialists as a blasphemer (well, an idealist ) who is arguing that 'ideas produce reality', and you'll be consigned to the lowest level of hell, here with me. The materialists like their world, black- and white-hatted. Materialism Good, Idealism Evil. Anyway, that's what 'LBird always lectures us about', about the difference between Marx's social productionism and Engels' materialism. 

[Lew]

LBird wrote:

Yes, "the above statement is true".'Truth' is socially-produced, and the statement that I (and I think alan) make is a socially-produced one, with a political underpinning, that allows us to change 'truth', because it is humans that produce 'truth'.

How, why and where did the above statement (concerning Marx's notion of truth) become socially-produced as true?– Lew

[Author]

Posts