[DJP]

Brian wrote:

Again its so obvious that your attraction towards Schaff is bordering on idolatry and therefore you are not applying critical thinking in a robustic manner towards him.  

I don't think this is fair. Complex issues like this do require a more extensive background reading than can be gleamed from reading a few forum posts. LBird says he is impressed by Schaffs theory of cognition and agrees with it, that is fair enough. The trouble is Schaff's work is hard to find and not available online. So most of us can't discuss Schaff, hence the references to Deitzgen and Pannekoek. You don't think we are Deitzgen or Pannekoek idolizers do you?

[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Perception trumps reality!!If it indeed “truth” coalesces with your politics, the Sun does goes around the Earth – the maths will prove it!   http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever Now the issue is how we combat such ideas

 What you are talking about are cognitive biases, this area of research has only really taken off in the last 20 or 30 years. It seems evolution has equipped us with brains that primed for jumping to conclusions and liking to be proved right.There’s been quite a few bestselling popular science books on this topic in the last few years, my favourites are “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman and “The Invisible Gorilla” by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.People who are discussing ideas should be as aware of these as they are logical fallacies.

[DJP]

To brush up on the larger general background issues of these questions I've been looking through the rather good Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Here are some articles which will be of interest:Truth:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/Physicalism (materialism)http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/Social dimensions of scientific knowledgehttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-knowledge-social/

[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

DJP, can you make a pamphlet out of the discussion? 

No, I don't think that is a good idea.If comrades want to volunteer proof reading I could reissue the two Deitzgen books that where put out by Kerr, though this would be quite a project…

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

By the way, does anybody know whether it was Einstein or Popper who coined the saying "theory always precedes observation".

It seems to be Popper, and as he was an anti-communist this should be rejected outright! 

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Why don't you just f**k off, you dim b*st*rd.

Come on, this isn't debating. Let's all play nicely http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/discussion-of-kants-philosophy-in-russia-ends-in-gunfire/2013/09/16/cf609472-1ebb-11e3-9ad0-96244100e647_story.html

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Theories don't emerge from data. Theories define their data. Selection is inescapable, from an infinite stream of sense-impressions from the object.

The second and third sentences I agree with but the first is false.Many theories have emerged from data, though of course you need a prior theory to be able to take data in the first place.Remember much of science is not induction or deduction but abduction. Finding the most plausable explanation from an incomplete set of observations.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts wrote:

History itself is a real part of natural history – of nature developing into man. Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

[my bold]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

Perhaps so, but we are still a long way off!

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Yeah, whether we should regard "uniting the 'natural' and 'social'" as 'taking it too far', is the essence of our differences, DJP.As a Communist, I think it is necessary to find a unified scientific method. I think Marx thought this, too.

You're getting me wrong again. My question is not should but does.If I have an engineering project to complete I don't think that the methods of the MCH are going to be of particular use to me.But, on the other hand, if I want to understand how and why the project is taking the particular form it is then the MCH is the tool to use.

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

You should have come to the talk last night on "What is History?" where the point was made that it is even more evident in history-writing than in the "natural sciences" that what is happening is that people are selecting from an array of empirically-established perceptions to construct a picture of what did happen. Of course the picture so constructed has to bear some ressemblance to the evidence.

Though I guess in the natural sciences the overall validity of the picture can be more easily tested. In the social sciences predictions and theories have a direct influence on future outcomes. For example, if someone predicts that a period of extreme inflation is coming people may act in such a way as though it where like a self fulfilling prophecy as it were.

ALB wrote:

One of the passages from Marx and Engels that the speaker quoted was this from the German Ideology:

Quote:

The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.

Yes, you could be right. This method is equally applicable to the "natural sciences". Not sure that Marx said so anywhere did he, but I could be wrong.

I'm not sure what I think of that quote. Would it not be "naive realism" to think that "real individuals, their activity and the material condition under which they live" can actually be a "premise"? I'm not sure that passage really makes sense.Premises and premises I don't see how you can insert real individuals into one's head without severe injury! 

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

The MCH is 'science'.

I think you're taking it too far here..Explain how the materialist conception of history enables us to dig stuff out of the ground, process it and arrange it in such a way as to enable us to have this discussion in the format we are having.

[DJP]

Adam Smith was not a natural or mathematical scientist…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

The subject interacts with the object (as Marx, Dietzgen, Pannekoek, etc. argue) and so knowledge must contain traces of 'subject'.

I'd agree that is true.

LBird wrote:

To argue otherwise, that knowledge contains no traces of subject, is to argue that knowledge is only object (or parts of it). This is naive realism or positivism.

But no-one has argued this.What I'm trying to get at, in order to try and understand what you've been putting forward, is your method for testing the truth or factual validity of knowledge (with the understanding that human knowledge can only be partial, not the 'absolute truth'). You've only really hinted at it so far…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

'Accepting general realism or materialism' means it is acceptable for Communists to accept 'naive realism' and 'positivism', which are 19th century-based ideological views of 'science', and would also allow Uncle Joe's 'Dialectical Materialism' in, too.

Since truth is only a social construct how do you know this is true?

LBird wrote:

The sun/earth relationship has a history. To argue that it is, on the contrary, a 'True Discovery', is to take the 'Historical' out of MCH. Thus, we are left with a Static 'Materialist Conception'.

Will please stop picking on poor comrade strawman.

LBird wrote:

Yes, but what comprises the 'MCH'? I think what I've been arguing is entirely compatible with the 'MCH', and that yours and DJP's views about the sun/earth relationship is not.

In all the years I have been reading Marx / Pannekoek / Deitzgen I have not come across a single reference that makes use of "truth" in the cognitive relativist way that you do. If fact Deitzgen says the flat opposite. So now the burden of truth is on you. Provide evidence that what you are claiming is in line with these people. That Pannekoek quote you keep repeating does not.Does Pannekoek in "The History of Astronomy" say that it used to be true that the sun went round the earth? Is there anything in Marx, Pannekoek, Deitzgen about creationism being true?I have little more time for this as I'm afraid what you're putting forward is another wild goose chase and distraction from the real tasks that are necessary for the propagation of socialism.I'm going to repeat a question posed by twc

twc wrote:

please show us just one instance of any piece of substantial scientific work performed by any natural or mathematical scientist which should, in your opinion, have been rejected but instead survived scrutiny merely because the scientist and the profession “believed in private property in the means of production”.

This is the real acid test. If you can't answer this then I think you have nothing substantial to say. But then if truth is a social construct it probably doesn't matter.

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

Do we know when and where yet? This could be an interesting debate as, if they believe their own election promises (which of course in private they may not), SPEW should logically be defending the proposition that it is possible to redistribute income within capitalism so as to benefit the wage and salary working class,

Not as far as I know, I don't think it's been decided yet. AK has a blog here: http://akliman.squarespace.com/ or I would have thought it would be publicised through MHI.Yes Kliman will be speaking against SPEW who do take the position you have suggested.

[Author]

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