[DJP]

ALB wrote:

But there are two levels involved here.

Just pulled this from wikipedia…

wikipedia wrote:

One must distinguish "stuff monism" from "thing monism".[3] According to stuff monism there is only one kind of stuff (e.g. matter or mind), although there may be many things made out of this stuff. According to thing-monism there exists strictly speaking only a single thing (e.g. the universe), which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism

So Deitzgen would be a "thing monist" I guess.But I'm not sure how well the distinction holds, can't we say that there is one single thing (the universe) and that is made of one kind of stuff (matter)? I guess the distinction mirrors the differences between metaphysical materialism and epistemic materialism…

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

I don't know why Stawson wants to give some credibilty to "panpsychism"(that mind is part of everything). which strikes me not only as a useless theory but as mumbo-jumbo. Or was he being ironic or provocative?

I think he's just trying to formulate a coherent materialist philosophy of mind and how you fit experiential reality into that.Very roughly we have three options.1. Experientail reality does not exist it just seems like it does.2. Experiential reality arrises out of or is an emergent property of non-experiencal matter when organised in the right way.3. Experiental reality "goes all the way down". That is there is little a proto-element of experience in the smallest components of matter, not that there is a "something it is like to be" for rocks, tables and chairs.The problem with number two is demonstrated below: Perhaps number 3 isn't as mad as it first seems. There's a 10 minute podcast here:http://philosophybites.com/2012/05/galen-strawson-on-panpsychism.htmlBut I don't think the question of socialism turns on any of these things…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

I'm merely trying to help you see the differences between 'materialism' (perceptual existence, something to be sensed) and 'realism' (causal existence, a power to make things happen). 

Sorry last time I checked that is not what "realism" means..http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

I was just concerned that he was apparently ruling out ideas as being part of "reality" but I see he seems to be saying that thinking is a form of experiencing like hearing or touching and that experience is the only reality, so thinking is an experience of reality. But I'm still not sure where this leaves thinking about thinking.

There's this in "Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism"

Galen Strawson wrote:

For the purposes of this paper I will equate ‘concrete’ with ‘spatio-temporally (or at least temporally) located’, and I will use ‘phenomenon’ as a completely general word for any sort of existent. Plainly all mental goings on are concrete phenomena.11 More strictly, ‘concrete’ means ‘not abstract’ in the standard philosophical sense of ‘abstract’, given which some philosophers hold that abstract objects—e.g. numbers, or concepts—exist and are real objects in every sense in which concrete objects are. I take ‘spatio-temporal’ to be the adjective formed from ‘spacetime’, not from the conjunction of space and time.

ALB wrote:

Is he saying that German materialism is a form of his "naturalistic realism" or that "German idealism" is?

Can't quite work it out either but after watching the questions and answers in that video (the last 15 minutes) wouldn't be suprised if he is talking about Idealism..

[DJP]

I don't know where you get the idea that myself and YMS are liberals from. We are both libertarian free marketeers following the teachings on Ayn Rand, after all this is the majority position in the SPGB these days so it must be true.

[DJP]

So LBird how do you square the above with the fact that you are the ONLY person that has been putting forward certain viewpoints?

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

And I'm glad that I missed the subsequent descent into "post-modernism". Bring back ordinary language, I say.But to return to young Strawson (interesting and maybe revealing that his dad should have given him a non-christian name), I haven't listened to the whole of his talk but I thought I heard him say at one point that only the physical forms part of "concrete reality". But isn't thisbegging the question since "concrete" and "physical" mean more or less the same?

I think Strawson would say that there are concrete and abstract elements to nature. We can only abstract from the concrete and can't really know that much about the nature of the concrete. Concepts belong to the experiential side of the physical are abstract not concrete. Numbers, beauty and love exist but you can't touch them so they are abstract not concrete. Though mental goings on are part of the concrete..Or have I missed the point of what you're asking?Surely abstract and concrete is a valid way of classifying things? You have to employ them to read Marx…http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/abstraction-abstract-labor-and-ilyenkov/FWIW a simular version of Strawsons talk is available in text here:http://www.metodo-rivista.eu/index.php/metodo/article/view/48

[DJP]

Yes he's the son of PF Strawson according to wikipedia. I'm glad that the linguistic turn was old hat by the time I started studying philosophy…The talk is called real naturalism, but he does see himself as a kind of materialist. I think he said he chose naturalism for the title as it is the widest of the terms. The real is related to realism as in scientific realism. Some of the content is the same as in the book "Real Materialism". He says the materialism of people like Dennett who deny the existence of pnenomology is not real naturalism since it denys the only thing we can only know.Might be worth a watch as it does touch on most of the stuff that we've been talking about…. The more I read or hear of this guy the more I'm persuaded..

[DJP]

Here’s a presentation by Strawson that is simular to the “Real Materialism” essay. Idealism (if you wait till the questions at the end), Philosophy of Science, why call it physicalism, Russell, Dennett etc it’s all touched on here…So much for materialists claiming to be sole guardians of The Truth….

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

So, no answer.

I thought I gave one a few posts back. But being as you word things so strangely it's hard to know what you want. Are you asking which school of philosophy of science Strawson and myself subscribe to?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Every time I've asked you to do the same, that is, tell me what ideology you use to understand the physical (or what ideology Strawson, or the other 'mind'-related theorists, whose links you have provided, employ), you haven't done so.

Read the book. I'm just using Strawson as an example of current "materialist" thought. No-one follows crude "mechanistic-materialism" these days (I include the Leninist's in that no-one as they really are a dying breed).Though there's definately a lot of overlap between Strawson, Dietzgen and Russell it seems..

[DJP]

1. We have perceptions 2. We label and classify these perceptions 3. We look for patterns in these perceptions 4. We use these percieved patterns to try and predict future perceptions 5. We then do things according to these predictions, if it doesn't turn out right return to step 3 or 1.Incedentally just come accros CR attempt to bring the 'is' 'ought' gap:

Quote:

If we establish some fact about the world, we are simultaneously implying that other people ought to believe it. This provides a model for deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.http://oro.open.ac.uk/20394/1/1._Hammersley_final_August_9_09.pdf

 But I don't think we need CR to understand Marx and attempting to use it to do so will be more of a hinderance than a help. After all you are not claiming that no-one understood Marx before the 1970's are you?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Why not the 'broad sense' of including 'idealism' within 'materialism'? Which is what Marx included.

This is confused because you seem think that "idealism" means "ideas" and "materialism" means "matter (which excludes ideas)". In short you seem to be stuck in a dualist way of thinking.

LBird wrote:

So, if 'idealism-materialism' is to be condemned as an oxymoron, 'materialism' is part of the problem, too.

So presumably when we criticize people on the same grounds for using the term "state-socialism" we are making a criticism of socialism which is "part of the problem, to"?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

But then, for 'materialists', this is a pointless exercise, because they have access to 'The Truth',

More junk. Why do you persist with the same strawman crap?

LBird wrote:

Why not read the book ALB says is recommended reading by the SPGB? That is, Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy edited by Bottomore and Rubel. At least it's a start for critical thinking about Marx's 'materialism'.

That was actually one of the first books about Marx a read many years ago thanks to a find in a charity, and before I'd even heard of the SPGB.But I'm stopping now because as far as I'm concerned you're just trolling…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

It just that 'mental' is a catergory of "material" phenomena…

So why can't the ideal supervene on the material, and the material supervene on the ideal?If the 'mental' is 'material', then ideas must produce material.You deny this by arguing for 'physicalism', which is just the modern term for 'mechanical materialism'.

Superveince is to do with levels of explanation, much the same as emergence is. Your question just doesn't make sense…

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