DJP
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If you can define what you mean when you say 'materialism', 'physicalism' and 'realism' we might be able to get somewhere..
LBird wrote:Theory and practice is not 'materialist', but 'idealist-materialist'.And that's where you're plainly wrong.Materialism entails that all things including 'theory and practice' are material.I think the problem with this discussion is that we are using the same terms to mean different things….
robbo203 wrote:The point Im getting at is that we should move away from this kind of crass mechanistic notion that material conditions "produce" ideas which the base-superstructure model often, unfortunately, seems to encourage. Actually this is a form of mysticism. Ideas are held to be latent in the mysterious workings of the universe and become manifest in its unfolding. This is to strip history of any kind of creative aspect and reduce us to the role of passive onlookersIndeed. And Engels said words to this effect in the 1890'shttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htmhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htmBut this is quite seperate to the metaphysical question of materialism and physicalism.
LBird wrote:It doesn't seem as if we're going to get to the bottom of Marx's quote, on this thread, now.It's quite simple. What makes a good a commodity and possess value is not the physical characteristics of the good itself but the social relations between the producers themselves.Now we get to the question of "what is a social relation". I'd say social relations are the aggregate outcome of the actions of people in society. How people act in society depends, to a certain degree on their consciousness and their consciousness is in turn conditioned by the society they are in. Both affect each other in a co-defining relationship.There is nothing in this that leads us to abandoning physicalism (in the metaphysical sense of the word).If you think physicalism is unable to deal with relations you are wrong.
Young Master Smeet wrote:My view is that value is material, entirely and completely and is subject to the laws of thrmodynamics, it is only created (and destroyed) in so much as it is one thing transformed into another, ultimately energy from the sun.LOL I don't think that's quite right either. You're going too far in the other direction now.How can concepts or social relations be subject to the laws of thermodynamics?The brains that hold these concepts or the bodies (and brains) that act out these relations will be but I can't see how the concepts and social relations are, these things supervene on the physical as it where..
LBird wrote:The social relation existed before the concept was dreamt up. I'm talking about the causal mechanism that destroys the lives of humans.Value existed before Marx identified it. Value is nothing to do with 'grey matter'. Capitalism ruined humans prior to 1867.Well yes, value is a concept that describes how certain kinds of society function. But then to claim how a society functions has 'nothing to do' with what goes on in peoples brains seems a little strange. Unless you're going to try and say that thinking has nothing to do with brains.
LBird wrote:So, you agree, YMS, that 'value' contains no matter, is not in the 'grey matter' of individuals (not even in one synapse of one head, never mind in all 7 billion), and is a real mechanism (but not physical) that causes our problems?Are you talking about 'value' the concept or 'value' the social relation?
LBird wrote:Well, perhaps I've succeeded (at last!) in pointing out to you the difference between a 'realist' and a 'physicalist' view of nature.The only trouble here is that physicalism and materialism are realist positions, but not the only ones.You're jumbling up definitions..
LBird wrote:If 'value' is in the 'grey matter' of individuals, 'all in the head', why doesn't everybody in capitalist society know about 'value' just by thinking about what's in their heads?I don't think anyone has claimed that value is 'all in the head'…
LBird wrote:God is real.I think a 'materialist' will disagree with that statement, but a 'realist' will agree with it.LOL I don't think realism entails one to have to say that! One can say that the concept 'god' is a real thing that exists as a concept in the minds of people (and so affects how they behave) but at the same time say that thing that the concept refers to does not exist in the real world.Surely you have to separate the concepts from the entities / non-entities they refer to. Otherwise you will have to say that anything that can be concieved is real. I don't think anyone would use 'real' in this sense.
That's what I'm talking about. I interviewed Andrew Kliman but the resulting article is probably about 4 pages long. I'm guessing they're waiting till there's enough room to put it in..
Vin Maratty wrote:LBird wrote:'the inseparability of ideas and material conditions'.Pure gold!!
I agree.
LBird wrote:I take it Vin now accepts that he's not a 'materialist'? Or a 'physicalist'?LOL. It's you that should accept that you are an adherent of (non-reductive) physicalism.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy wrote:Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/Perhaps now we should talk about monism
LBird wrote:I'm afraid it's the 'materialists' who think 'theory is idealist', DJP!Surreal stuff.Materialism is just the assumuption that all things (including the mental and therefore theory) are physical stuff or supervene on physical stuff in some way.
LBird wrote:You haven't got the hang of Marx's critical realism, yet, have you? His 'idealism-materialism'.There can be no such the as 'idealism-materialism' any more than there can be round squares.Critical realism is a physicalist theory as your said it takes minds as supervening on brains.
