[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

You will never convince any worker that you can create 'entities' independent of the physical world by clenching and unclenching your fist.

But I didn't say that a 'fist' was independent of 'the physical world', Vin. I said that 'the fingers are physical'. I was using it to show how a 'structure' can be created by humans, and then destroyed.And then I tried to show how this applies to 'value', which is 'independent of the physical world' (if physical means material), because Marx tells us that, quite clearly. He says that there is no 'matter' in value. It's a relationship between things.I don't know to how explain any better; I've tried, but sadly failed.'Physicalism and reductionism' it is then. But no Marx, no value, no Capital, no Communism, no creative workers.Just the rocks.

[LBird]

But this ‘materialist’ assumption of yours is wrong, DJP: ‘theory’ is not ‘physical’. ‘Critical Realism’ is not ‘a physicalist theory’.I’m trying desperately to explain this to you, DJP. This is not your fault for not understanding, but my fault (and the fault of those other communists who claim to understand Marx’s ideas on ‘value’) for not explaining properly.This lack of explanation has, in my opinion, been the root cause of the failure of Communists to persuade other workers that we have a better method for understanding the world, than the one that workers are taught by bourgeois society: that is, individuals and their worth as money, explains the origins of society and its present workings. Telling workers to ‘read Capital’ has never worked, isn’t working now, and never will work. It’s the task of Communists (ie. class conscious workers) to explain, through propaganda and education, how the world works. Simple ‘experience’ of that world will not simply produce ‘class’ consciousness. Workers have to work at it, both to learn and to teach, which is a two-way street: the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the class itself. Rocks won’t emancipate us, nor ‘material’ conditions. Humans are the active factor, not ‘matter’ (sic).I’m trying to explain why the ideology of ‘physicalism’ and ‘reductionism’, which you presently use to try to understand the world, is of no use for us Communists. Using bourgeois science theories to understand reality is like using neo-classical economics to understand the market. The underpinning ideology of the links you’ve provided seems to be Anglo-American analytical thinking, logical positivism, and thinkers like Carnap, Hempel (the pre-war Vienna school), and further back, David Hume. On the contrary, Marx’s thinking is influenced by Hegel, Kant and Aristotle.Now, an attempt at an explanation of the differences.Physicalism holds that everything can be reduced to its ‘physical components’. But for Critical Realists, ‘structures’ (made of components) have emergent properties that don’t exist at the ‘physical’ or component level. Perhaps an example.I have five fingers on my hand. These are ‘physical’. There are five physical entities. But, if I clench my hand, I form a fist. To the physicalist/reductionist, this remains five entities. But to a Critical Realist, I’ve formed a sixth entity. A human, by an act of thinking and will, has created a new entity, that didn’t exist before. If I unclench my hand, a real structure has disappeared! Back to only five entities! So, clench, release, clench, release, sees, in the real world, creation, destruction, creation, destruction.This model applies also to entities that we can’t see, like ‘value’. As Einstein says, ‘it’s the theory which determines what we can observe’. So, ‘physicalism’ can’t explain value, other than by pointing to ‘physical things’, like tins of beans. Any worker can understand this: they can see a tin of beans, and the price label upon it! It’s obvious, innit? But that worker would be wrong, because ‘value’ can’t be ‘seen’, it can’t be ‘read off a label’.

Marx, Capital, wrote:

Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1Value can only be understood as a social relationship, which can’t be seen or touched, because as Marx says, ‘there is no matter in value’. Once we understand that we create value, like clenching a hand creates a fist, so we can understand the mechanism, and stop creating value or clenching our fists.If this doesn’t help at all, DJP, I apologise, and I’ll have to leave it henceforth to another comrade who has better communicative and teaching gifts than I possess. Perhaps that fact that it’s me explaining, is part of the problem, given the many difficult threads that have passed. Perhaps twc can help.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird Why on earth do you think theory is idealist?

I'm afraid it's the 'materialists' who think 'theory is idealist', DJP!For example:

DJP wrote:

Do you think the mental floats about in a different realm to the physical world?Unless you believe in some kind of spirit world or think that everything is in the mind you will be a physicalist or materialist (which is pretty much the same thing)http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism

I'm not a 'physicalist or materialist'. Are you? If so, 'why do think theory is idealist?'You haven't got the hang of Marx's critical realism, yet, have you? His 'idealism-materialism'.

[LBird]

mcolome1 wrote:

In some way Engels had the same stand of Lenin who did not move away from the 18th Century Philosophy of their time.

Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 14 wrote:

…ideas and sensations are copies or images of these objects…

Popper condemned this as the 'bucket theory of mind'. That 'nature' simply 'pours itself' into the passive receptacle known as humanity.Compare Lenin's unhistorical, naive realism with Marx's rich account of 'social senses', of the historical development of our human, social senses:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

On the other hand, let us look at this in its subjective aspect. Just as only music awakens in man the sense of music, and just as the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear – is [no] object for it, because my object can only be the confirmation of one of my essential powers – it can therefore only exist for me insofar as my essential power exists for itself as a subjective capacity; because the meaning of an object for me goes only so far as my sense goes (has only a meaning for a sense corresponding to that object) – for this reason the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense.> For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htmClearly, 'sensations' are not simple 'copies' of reality, for Marx. Different societies experience the same things differently.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

My limited aim, for the moment, is to establish that the mature Marx of Capital explicitly adopted the materialist stance, and explicitly repudiated the idealist stance. In other words he remained a materialist despite — and in full unswerving cognizance of — his devastating Hegel-inspired critique of “all hitherto existing materialism”.Marx [and Engels] operated in life-long opposition to Hegel’s idealist conception of history. As materialists they always opposed the primacy of ideas over social being throughout their entire intellectual and practical lives.

[my bold]Marx was not a 'materialist'; he was an 'idealist-materialist'. Marx argued for theory and practice.

Marx, Capital, Chapter 7, wrote:

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htmThe stance that Marx was a 'materialist' stems from Engels, who was an amateur and did not understand philosophy.This is clear from the Theses on Feuerbach, where Marx praises (parts of) idealism and condemns (parts of) materialism. He produced a theory that combined the insights of idealism with the insights of materialism, which was a philosphy of theory and practice.

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach wrote:

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

[my bold]The 'active side' of humanity is thinking, human ideas and creativity.The stance that we are 'materialists' is a regression to Feuerbach, and is an idea that was created by Engels, under the enormous pressure of 19th century positivist science, and its apparent successes.Einstein and relativity in physics shows us that it was only an 'apparent success'.Humans have known this for 100 years now, and yet some Communists are still trying to pursuade the human race that we should stick our heads in the sand, and return to 'materialism'.Marx knew better, and so should we.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Yes but to say minds supervene on or emerge from brains doesn't answer the question of how that can be so. What is it about a particular configuration of physical stuff that enables it to be a mind?

This is the same as asking, "Yes but to say water supervenes on or emerges from hydrogen/oxygen doesn't answer the question of how that can be so. What is it about a particular configuration of physical stuff that enables it to be water?".In the ideology of Critical Realism, things that don't exist at the component level emerge at the structural level.So, water emerges from elements that are dry, and mind emerges from brains that are material. It's what nature does, according to the theory.

DJP wrote:

All aproaches in philosophy of mind have problems and like I said I am holding off making a judgement for the time being. But my preference is to try to go for an explanation that does not involve the kind of property dualism that emergence seems to entail. All that you are doing is pushing the problem one step back rather than explaining it.

Well, you're 'not holding off making a judgement'. You're making tentative judgement based on the philosophy and ideology that you're using to understand these issues. We all have an ideology; it is inescapable for humans. The good news is, being conscious, we can reason and choose our ideology! But we can't be without one.If you want to continue to employ 'reductionism', that's fair enough, but at least accept (and preferably be open about) the fact that you are using a theory of reductionism. There is no 'objective point of observation' in the universe, according to physics. We all have a standpoint, in physics and in society.As to 'property dualism', I know a man who starts a book with a section entitled 'The Two Factors of the Commodity: Use-value and Value'. Perhaps you know the book, comrade?

DJP wrote:

Emergence seems to work very well when describing the structure of concepts and properties created by minds but not so well as an explanation of how minds can be in the first place…

Being and consciousness, now eh? You are delving deep today, DJP! But I think we'll leave that alone for now, eh? We've got enough to digest about what's been said on this thread already!

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

Simply, the 'mind' is not the 'brain'. These are differing philosophical positions, DJP, between what we're saying.

Yes that is correct. But mind is not independent of brain..

No-one is arguing that it is, DJP.Just like Marx argued that value is not independent of commodity, for example, a 'tin of beans'.But value cannot be reduced to a 'tin of beans'.It's the 'tin of beans' in a specific social relationship.To  reduce a 'structure' (mind, value) to its components (brain, commodity) is an example of 'reductionism'.When components are in a particular, specific, relationship, they can form a structure. This structure can then produce emergent properties, that are not present at the level of the individual components of the structure.So, if firefighters pour oxygen and hydrogen on a fire, it causes on explosion.But if those firefighters take the elements oxygen and water which have been previously chemically combined into a compound called 'water' (there is no special 'wetness' added, it is a product of the structural combination), and pour that on the fire, the fire is extinguished.'Wetness' doesn't exist at the elemental level; 'value' doesn't exist at the tin of beans level; mind doesn't exist at the 'brain' level.Wetness, value and mind are all products of a particular combination of their components, but the structure doesn't exist, as you say, without the components. But it can't be reduced to those components, either.The key concept, for us as for Marx, DJP, is relationship.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

If one places the 'x' between the ears of the individual, one is 'fetishising' the 'relationship' which exists between the nearest ears of the two individuals.

Clattrap. I'm really starting to think you're aff yer head.If I was to aim the cross hairs of my revolver firmly between your ears and pull the trigger your mind would cease to be.Simularly if I was to slip some LSD into your drink the only effect would be in your mind, not in the mind of any others near you.Your mind is firmly placed inside your skull.I think we should change the discussion now to angels and pinheads.

Spoken like a true individualist and reductionist, DJP!Simply, the 'mind' is not the 'brain'. These are differing philosophical positions, DJP, between what we're saying.That's why your understanding of value is 'materialist', whereas I'm with Marx, and see value as a social relationship.

[LBird]

mcolome1 wrote:

Vin Maratty wrote:

LBird wrote:

Or do you think 'value' doesn't exist, because 'there is no-thing outside or beyond matter'? Marx clearly thinks 'value' is 'outside' of 'matter'.

Does he?  Without getting out and dusting down my copy of capital I think Marx refers to 'Value' as a  relationship between people expressed as a relationship between things. The relationship is in all our heads and has a material existence within our grey matter.

That is what Marx called the fetishism of the commodity.

Yes, I gave an example of this 'fetishisation of relationships', earlier. That is, the making of a 'relationship' into a 'thing'.

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

If we are to presume mind-brain identity then the concept 'ghost' or 'father christmas' are just the result of a certain configuration of grey matter inside the brain.

[my bold]To hold that opinion, DJP, is fair enough. But it's an individualist explanation, and so is likely to be anathema to Communists.The opposite viewpoint, that the mind is social, suggests that the mind lies in relationships between 'brains'.That is "the concept 'ghost' or 'father christmas' are just the result of a certain configuration of relationships outside the brain".This is a social and historical view of concepts, not a 'grey matter', mechanical materialist, view of concepts.One way of picturing this difference between us, is to ask which ears does the mind lie between, when given a photo of the two of us together.On the photo, you'd put an 'x' between your ears, and another between my ears. Our faces would each have an 'x' on them. Whereas, I'd place a single 'x' between our two nearest ears, in the middle of the photo.

If one places the 'x' between the ears of the individual, one is 'fetishising' the 'relationship' which exists between the nearest ears of the two individuals.'Relationships' are not 'objects' (or 'physical things'); they are relationships between 'objects'.As Marx says, there is not an ounce of matter in value (not even 'grey matter'), because value is a social relationship.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LOL I'd like to know how philosophy of science escapes the tag of 'bourgeois' to.

Well, you know my views that 'science' comes in both 'bourgeois' and 'proletarian' flavours, and I've tried to stimulate a discussion on it before, but we never get very far, do we?I've asked questions, to try to bring into focus the differences, but it seems 'unspoken assumptions' are preferred to 'outlining beliefs'.Ah well, never mind!

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird,Maybe we come from different experiences of philosophy, but I'm actually a bit sniffy about real, given its etymology, i.e. that real = royal, i.e. that what is real is a product of authority (Money is "real" because the King says so).  Maybe you could define what you mean by real (and by critical-realism)?

Perhaps it's best for you to read:Roy Bhaskar (2008) A Realist Theory of Science Verso, LondonHe thinks that the 'real' consists of mechanisms, events and experiences. It's not an easy book, but it's a key text for realism.A bit easier is:Margaret Archer (2003) Realist social theory CUP, CambridgeA collection of differing writers on the subject can be found in:Jon Frauley and Frank Pearce (eds.) (2007) Critical Realism and the Social Sciences Univ Toronto Press,which includes an introduction to Bhaskar's ideas in chapter 2.Happy exploring!

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

None of this supports your previous argument. In fact it is unrelated.

That's not a very helpful comment, Vin. Mere opinion without supporting argument. It's not clear what you actually want: a reply or a confession.

VM wrote:

Are you merely saying that human beings actively think and are creative.

Beats saying that 'rocks talk to us', as the materialists insist!

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

"Naturalism" is the view that most things can and are best described through the framework of the natural sciences. Therefore it is a physicalist position.I think you need to look at the broader literature rather than trying to do a micro-Marxologist job.

Where do you get your views from, DJP? Links to bourgeois philosophy sites are not too useful, as I've pointed out to you before.As to 'broader literature', I suggest the 'philosophy of science' for you!

[LBird]

As promised, YMS:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the action of world history.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htmSo, Marx's 'naturalism or humanism' is neither 'idealism' nor 'materialism', but their unity. So, perhaps, 'idealism-materialism'; or 'critical realism' is better, nowadays. Engels, by the 1880s, seems to have forgotten these works from the 1840s (if he ever understood them?).

Marx, EPM, wrote:

Only here has what is to him his natural existence become his human existence, and nature become man for him. Thus society is the complete unity of man with nature – the true resurrection of nature – the consistent naturalism of man and the consistent humanism of nature.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm'Nature' isn't something to be 'discovered', but something to be 'humanised'. Knowledge is created by active humans, using the scientific method of 'theory and practice'. And humans are fallible, and knowledge is not a mere reflection of reality.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird,Charlie pre-dated Einstein by a wee bit, so didn't have the benefit of knowing (or is that "flapping") that E=MC^2, i.e. that matter and energy are the same thing.Anyway, it would have helped if you'd continued the quote:

Uncle Charles wrote:

If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.

My bold.  The value is a substance, and definitely material.  That is, not in human minds, not in the mind of God, but in the real substance of social relations.

[my latter bold]This is the key philosophical point, YMS.'Real' doesn't mean 'material' (or, 'matter')So, I'd agree that 'value' is 'real' (ie., as Marx says, and opposing DJP, 'not in human minds'), but it is not 'material' (as Marx also says, in the quote I gave earlier).'Matter' is a 19th century concept that has given way in 20th century philosophy of science to 'real'. That's why we can say that human thought is real, but is not some mysterious, and never defined, 'matter'.As you rightly observe, 'Charlie pre-dated Einstein by a wee bit'. But we post-date Albert, and we have to update our 'idealist-materialist' views. And as it so happens, Marx's views are entirely compatible with modern Critical Realism. However, the same can't be said for Fred Engels' travesty of 'materialism'.If we maintain Marx was a 'materialist', to put it simply, we're f*cked. The religious know it, too. We can't undo what humans have learned about nature since Einstein.But, if it turns out Marx was an 'idealist-materialist' (or, perhaps what we would now call a 'critical realist'), and 150 years ahead of his time, then we can still use his insights. Otherwise, if we stick to Engels' 'materialism' (dialectic or not), we might as well join a religious order, because they are in advance of 19th century thinking (and us, if we cling to 'materialism').PS. I'll dig out a quote from Charlie

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