[DJP]

To be honest now that this exists:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/archiveI can't see the point of this blog. Why not just scan the articles in and email them over?Just would seem a waste of your work if the articles are not going up here as well?

[DJP]

Does drawing an income from a pension that is derived from investment funds make one a capitalist?Does owning a paultry amount of shares make one a capitalist?Does the fact that the socialist party now (or soon will have) has funds in investment banking mean that it's members will no longer have to sell there labour-power in exchange for a wage?

[DJP]

Ed wrote:

I take it as a given that capitalism and ownership of the means of production is 'unethical' to most.

Well it's actually the actions of the working class that reproduce and expand capital. It's something we're all tied up in wether we like it or not.It seems to me the only way that you are going to avoid being ethically implicated in day to day doings of capitalism would be to live in a cave and eat moss. Hence the bankruptcy of trying to condemn capitalism from a moralising position..

[DJP]

admice wrote:

O, sorry I see some posts about them now that I know it's Kliman related, but if you want to recommend is OK too.

This is the Kliman related group: http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/

[DJP]

FWIW I prefer the plain wood panels. Like the big round sticker in the window though.

[DJP]

Can you please post the page location?Thanks

[DJP]

Quote:

Popper thinks that all legitimate inquiry is about solving real problems, and scientific theories are those that are potentially falsifiable: they make definitely predictions about the world that, if these fail to be true, would show that the theory is false.

He did but it turned out to be more complicated than that. See Kuhn, Quine and others…Speaking of podcats a recent and fairly informative episode of in our time was about Wittengenstien, seeing as he was mentined earlier.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054945

[DJP]

I suggest if you want to know about Trotsky you should read this:http://libcom.org/library/the-kronstadt-uprising-ida-mettThat should dispel any misconceptions about Trotsky or the nature of the Bolshevik party.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Natural and social science both employ the same method.

No, you can't perform experiments in the same way in the social sciences as you can in the natural sciences.The phenomena that the social sciences study are "multi-realisable" in a way that the phenomena of the natural sciences are not.Chapter 5 of Minds, Brains and Science by John Searle raises some interesting points.http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yNJN-_jznw4C&lpg=PA71&ots=rA9_cwx1Xn&dq=John%20Searle%20prospects%20for%20the%20social%20sciences&pg=PA71#v=onepage&q=John%20Searle%20prospects%20for%20the%20social%20sciences&f=false

[DJP]

Here's another quote from the review above. Hopefully useful..

Quote:

Marks's complaint (and this is a familiar one) that science has always been wrong in the past again reveals a misunderstanding of the nature of science and scientific knowledge. If scientific knowledge were absolute in the same sense that religious knowledge claims to be, then it would be quite an embarrassment to find that past discoveries were imprecise, wrong or somehow needed refining. But since scientific knowledge is always tentative, subject to a correcting fact, understanding or experiment, it is not and cannot be certain knowledge. However, to quote Bertrand Russell, "When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others."http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2GJDSNOEUPNFJ/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0520259602&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=266239&store=books 

[DJP]

I just pulled this from a review of that J Marks book. I'm not sure if it adds anything to the debate but I think it makes some good points.

Quote:

What I think Marks is deliberately missing is that science is not a philosophy, not a religion, not a way of life; it is not something only people with grants from the National Science Foundation can do. Science is a tool. Anybody can use it. It is neither good nor bad. The technological applications from science may be medicines that save lives or they may be nuclear weapons, but that is not the fault of science. That is the fault of human beings. And besides there is no putting the genie of science back into the bottle. Science is a genie of great power and utility. The society that shuns science will risk disaster.http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2GJDSNOEUPNFJ/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0520259602&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=266239&store=books

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Doesn't it concern you that religious philosophers are currently ahead of many in the SPGB, when it comes to understanding science?

Religious apologists just latch on to any argument that seems to support there cause. I honestly don't think that what is being demonstrated is a higher understanding of science..

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

 What have you got to hide, DJP? Ignorance of scientific method?

I have nothing to hide. But I don't have the time to write an amateur expose' on the scientific method. Read Chapters 6 and 7 of "Beyond The Hoax" by Alan Sokal as I think this highlights where our views diverge quite well…

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

That and the rest is all very well, but you still haven't said whether you think Pannekoek was studying and teaching "bourgeois astrology"

I wonder if you'll get an answer to this. It seems at the slightest nudge LBird's profound theory collapses into contradiction. Oh well..PS i think you meant "astronomy"

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

The religious are currently ahead of the proletariat in their thinking.

Oh dear!

[Author]

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