LBird
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twc wrote:For you [LBird], the scientific enterprise is riddled with fraud, which the scientific enterprise is powerless to detect, expose and correct.LBird wrote:Sometimes the active social subject can be fallible, thus knowledge is untrue.This can be established by a later attempt at producing knowledge by another active social subject, employing a different theory, interacting with the objective world.
twc, you seem to have the strange ability to 'write', but not have the usually concommitant ability to 'read'.As I never tire of saying, I'm attempting to support the 'scientific method', by explaining 'what' it actually is, rather than, as you seem to be trying to do, to defend the indefensible, that the activity of science can't be questioned, and to argue that those who do are trying to destroy science.We Communists have to defend science, on a basis that can be defended against the exposures of fraud, like Kammerer or Burt (and many others), and against the bourgeois authority of 'scientific Truth', which supposedly employs a method that produces a Truth which is final, and to which There Is No Alternative.Science, unlike the other bourgeois authority of The Market, can be saved.But we have to discuss it, and put science on a truly scientific footing which encompasses all scientific activity, from physics to sociology, through chemistry, biology, psychology, etc. Science is a human activity. We have to identify a Communist method, and reject the bourgeois method.The starting point, however, is to realise that science is a social activity, and is thus suffused with human ideology, biases, theories and, sometimes, outright individual or class-systematic fraud.In essense, science is a political activity, not a neutral method of discovery.
ALB wrote:Anyway, you have conceded the point by saying that the outside world precedes thinking. Which makes you a materialist after all.Well, since from my very first post I've argued that the 'object' exists outside of, and precedes, the process of cognition, your triumphal point about my 'concession' (sic) isn't very productive for a discussion of 288 posts, is it?What's being avoided is discussion of 'the process of cognition'.Why can't you describe your process of cognition, ALB?I accept object, subject and knowledge as separate entities in this process, and argue that the interaction between an active social subject and a pre-existing object produces knowledge.Thus, 'knowledge' can't be identical to 'object', because it's the product of an interaction with a subject which actively searches and selects from object, and with those materials builds a structure of knowledge.Sometimes the active social subject can be fallible, thus knowledge is untrue.This can be established by a later attempt at producing knowledge by another active social subject, employing a different theory, interacting with the objective world.But we can never reach a final, complete, absolute truth, because that would be to duplicate the object of cognition in every way, which is impossible.Finally, I'm not a 'materialist', I'm a 'historical materialist'.That's why I can explain the history of the production of knowledge, unlike those who see science as a discovery of the object, which Pannekoek also warns us against.IF HISTORICAL MATERIALIST GOTO: ENDELSE GOTO: POST1END"I accept Schaff's tripartite theory of cognition, of preexisting object interacting with active social subject to produce knowledge"
lets guess who wrote:I read those sociologists as asserting that natural scientists lack scientific integrity. This is I believe, for the reasons I gave, a quite undeserved charge against scientists of conscious human fraud.Perhaps those still afflicted with 19th century-like awesome respect for, gosh, scientists!, should have a read of, for example, Chapter 7 Scientific Misconduct, in Jonathan Marks’ Why I Am Not a Scientist.[to forestall a certain poster’s apoplexy, Marks does regard himself as a scientist, it’s just rhetoric for a book title, to help sales in our wonderful market-driven society]The ‘midwife toad’ fraud (pp. 171-7) is simply hilarious. The biologist Paul Kammerer experimented on the Alytes obstetricans, the common midwife toad, and produced ‘nuptial pads’ (a feature of water-dwelling species) on the land-dwelling midwife toad and got them to transmit through the generations. He said.
Marks wrote:Then Nature published the results of G. Kingsley Noble’s analysis of the nuptial pads of Kammerer’s midwife toad: there were no nuptial pads; the darkened patches were the result of injections of India ink.There are other examples. Some ‘natural scientists’, being human, are fallible, for any number of reasons, and lie about their experiments, results and ideas.Natural scientists commit ‘conscious human fraud’.
ALB wrote:Actually, this gives me a chance to raise something I've been wanting to but have avoided till now so as not to get into an argument over semantics, i.e your view of what "positivism" is.Positivism is the view that the only source of ideas and knowledge is experience.I disagree with your definition of ‘positivism’, here, ALB. I think positivism goes further than ‘experience’, and claims that ‘experience’ provides ‘positive’ proof of ‘objective reality’. This claim can’t be true, because we know that science both makes mistakes and can only give a ‘partial truth’ of the ‘object’, at best.In its simplest form, it claims that the scientific method can’t be wrong. The twentieth century has put paid to that ideological claim!
ALB wrote:It is a rejection of all "metaphysics", i.e. of the view that there is anything outside or beyond the world of experience. In this sense both Dietzgen and Pannekoek were "positivists".I think most would now call this ‘realism’, rather than ‘positivism’ for the historic reasons given above. I think that perhaps Pannekoek and Dietzgen would now disclaim being called ‘positivists’, given its authoritarian and conservative overtones.
ALB wrote:Positivism is not committed to the view that "'sense impressions' tell us the 'whole truth'", only that knowledge is constructed by the mind by organising sense impressions.Not just ‘organising’ but determining what actually constitutes a ‘sense-impression’ and selecting from the overwhelming number by using a pre-existing theory.Positivism is the antithesis of Critical Realism, which I would argue is the best method for Marxists to employ.
ALB wrote:I can't see how anyone (other than an idealist) can argue that sense-impressions are not primary, but that before they can be experienced the person experiencing them has to have a theory.This is to argue that ‘sense-impressions’ are transmitted purely to the brain/mind. Young Master Smeet has already given an example which seems to contradict this belief, and DJP’s video shows that ‘sense-impressions’ are selected by an active mind, and that the ‘sense-impression’ of the gorilla was ignored.
ALB wrote:This is not how a child acquires knowledge (nor how the pre-human mind would have evolved into the human mind). For the new-born child, the world is indeed a mass of mere sensations which it eventually learns to make some sense of by learning the names of parts of it.We are discussing the method of science, rather than infants, but even so the child must be taught by society before it can ‘name names’.You show me a new-born child removed from all social influence, and 2 years later, I’ll show you, not a cognising human making sense of the world through their ‘sense-impresssions’ alone, but a corpse. The child is primed with ‘theory’.
ALB wrote:As someone once put it if not in so many words, sensations (or, rather, the outside world that gives rise to them in humans) have to precede thinking about them.No, the ‘outside world’, or object, precedes ‘thinking’, but ‘sensations’ don’t necessarily. Have your ever ‘sensed’ Tasmania (or somewhere you haven’t been, if my example falls down by you actually having been to Tasmania!), or is just a theoretical construct in our minds, but which we can scientifically prove, if we wanted, by flying there? Theory precedes practice.
Brian wrote:And we organise "sense impressions" by filtering those which have no immediate effect on our circumstances. This filtering also avoids overwhelming our mind with too much information.Yes, the ‘filter’ is a ‘theory’, as I have been arguing. Logically, the filter must precede the sense-impression. This is the mistake that ‘positivism’ was making, by arguing that ‘sense-impressions’ are primary (as opposed to arguing that the object pre-exists sensation), and that there is no filter, if the mind remains ‘passive’, just takes in sensations, and ignores ideologies. This can’t be done. The human mind is active, as Marx argued, and we all have ‘social-filters’ to all of our ‘sense-impressions’. The human mind searches through innumerable sense-impressions. This applies to physics, as much as sociology. Hence, we have the makings of a ‘unified method’, which Marx thought possible for humans to construct.Time to stop. I’ll try to come up with an example, later.
Pannekoek wrote:When, however, in consequence of the development of the productive forces, the world is changing, new and different impressions enter the mind which do not fit in with the old image. There then begins a process of rebuilding, out of parts of old ideas and new experiences. Old concepts are replaced by new ones, former roles and judgments are upset, new ideas emerge.http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/society-mind/ch03.htmobject (new experiences) interacts (process of rebuilding) with subject (old ideas) to produce knowledge (new ideas).
If we can leave the intricacies of Bogdanov side for the moment, ALB, you’ve said something that I don’t agree with.
ALB wrote:They would merely be saying that "sense-impressions" precede thinking about them (a not unreasonable position that we have been trying to convince you of).But ‘sense-impressions’ don’t precede thinking about them. Of course, the external world exists before we think about it, but science is the application of our minds (and their social theories) to the external world, through our sense-impressions. But what we consider ‘sense-impressions’ is determined by our theory. If we started from ‘sense-impressions’, we’d be overwhelmed by infinite sensation, and have to accept the ‘bucket theory of mind’. So, I think it is an entirely ‘unreasonable position’ to take! The notion of the ‘primacy’ of ‘sense-impressions’ is empiricism and inductivism. And the belief that these ‘sense-impressions’ tell us the ‘whole truth’ is positivism.
ALB wrote:Dietzgen and Pannekoek, starting from the same premises as Mach and Bogdanov (that all knowledge is derived from our sense-impressions), did not make this mistake.I’m not sure about this, ALB. We have ‘scientific knowledge’ of many things that we have never had a ‘sense-impression’ of, otherwise how could we account for the ‘scientific knowledge’ of ‘the ether’?The whole point of my argument is that science, being a human fallible method, can be wrong. But if ‘all knowledge is derived from our sense-impressions’, how do we account for false ‘scientific knowledge’, if it can be ‘sensed’?It’s better to regard scientific knowledge as built up from theory and sense-impressions, which leaves us the option of realising that the ‘theory’ was wrong (when confronted by a better theory tested against later sense-impressions). Surely ‘sense-impressionism’ is naïve realism?I’m still basing my ideas on Schaff’s tripartite schema of object and subject interacting, to produce knowledge. I’ll have to have a further look at Pannekoek, on your claim that he thought ‘all knowledge is derived from our sense-impressions’.
Prefatory comment:Rowley doesn’t define what he means by ‘scientific’, but he seems to share ‘common sense’ opinions that ‘science’ produces ‘objective knowledge’, in the positivist sense.
Rowley, pp.2-3, wrote:Marxism, however, [regarding]…working class revolution …predicted what must happen in the world as the result of the operation of objective laws of history… Marxism, precisely because it was a scientific statement about the world …How ever, the authority of its science depended upon a valid epistemology. Scientific socialists could act without moral blame only if they had confidence in their ability to know objectively the laws of history.As ever, no mention of the proletariat democratically determining ‘objective knowledge’, a ‘scientific knowledge’ which must always be ‘socially-objective’, rather than ‘objective’ in the positivist sense of ‘knowledge being a reflection of reality’. This is not possible.
Rowley, p.5, wrote:Bogdanov sought a form of empiricism that could provide certainty without relying upon Kantian categories. He realized the centrality of epistemology to the debate, but (in light of contemporary trends in philosophy) he declined to rely on Plekhanov's unsophisticated "reflection" theory of knowledge. Following the empiriocriticism of Ernst Mach, Bogdanov espoused a strict empiricism and denied the possibility of a priori knowledge of any sort at all.We can reject Plekhanov’s (and Lenin’s) ‘reflection theory of knowledge’ (naïve realism) without needing to fall into empiricism. Theory precedes observation.
Rowley, p.5, wrote:Following the empiriocriticism of Ernst Mach, Bogdanov espoused a strict empiricism and denied the possibility of a priori knowledge of any sort at all…. Bogdanov defined reality in terms of experience: The real world is identical with human perception of it. Bogdanov's universe was a monist system, but the monism was "a type of organization according to which experience is systematized." It is a monism of "knowing method." In Empiriomonism, the first major collection of his positivist writings, Bogdanov illustrated how this was possible. "The basis of 'objectivity,' must lie in the sphere of collective experience … The objective character of the physical world consists in the fact that it exists not for me individually but for everyone, and for everyone has a definite meaning, exactly, I am convinced, as it does for me." In this way the sense of a real external world, the knowledge, and the values of any particular social group are not the mere subjective whims of individuals. "Reality" is made up of the shared perceptions of the collective consciousness of a society. "The physical world is collectively organized experience."Bogdanov seems to equate ‘reality’ (ie. object) with ‘knowledge’. We have already seen that this can’t be done. Object, subject and knowledge are separate cognitive categories, and ‘knowledge’ is an on-going process, not a ‘once-for-all-time’ discovery, which some authority then ‘knows’ with finality.Given the rest of the article’s quotes from Bogdanov, I’m inclined to view Bourrinet’s opinion’s of Bogdanov in a more favourable light than you do, ALB.Rowley also mentions Lenin.
Rowley, p.12, wrote:Lenin attempted to achieve an objective justification of his social ideals. He required objective proof of proletarian revolution without which his program would have been mere subjective idealism. In order to preserve scientific inevitability, Lenin had to insist on materialist monism and the possibility of objective knowledge.As we now know from the events after 1917, those who argue for ‘the possibility of objective knowledge’ and ‘scientific inevitability’ are defending ‘authority’ in science, which inexorably leads to defending ‘authority’ in politics.Communism must involve the democratic control of all social authority, including ‘science’.
Rowley, p.12, wrote:Why did Lenin insist on Plekhanov's and Engels' scientism, determinism, and materialism?Yes, Engels will come into our discussions, eventually, but it needs to be on another thread.
Rowley, p.15, wrote:Bogdanov's Empiriomonism may have been originally conceived in order to justify violent revolution, but his intellectually honest philosophical development toward moderation and cultural transformation has left him with a deservedly high reputation as both a philosopher and a revolutionary.Needless to say, I don’t share Rowley’s opinion of Bogdanov’s ‘deservedly high reputation’. I think Bogdanov was a bourgeois intellectual, as was Lenin and is Rowley.None of the three mention workers’ democratic control of all aspects of social life. That, to me, is the peak of ‘intellectual honesty’.All in all, ALB, I think that I have great differences, epistemological and political, with Bogdanov. I’ve ordered Kolakowski’s book, and will read his opinions of Bogdanov, but I think that your advice to me to look to Bogdanov, in some way, is seriously misplaced.
ALB, have you read:Bogdanov and Lenin: Epistemology and RevolutionDavid G. RowleyStudies in East European Thought, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 1-19
Quote:ABSTRACT. This paper explains how A. Bogdanov changed from a left Bolshevik impatient for armed insurrection into a moderate proponent of revolution through cultural transformation by placing him in the context of a debate over epistemology among Russian Social Democrats in the early twentieth century. By relying on neo Kantian epistemology to justify socialist revolution, N. Berdyaev actually began to turn away from Marxism. Lenin espoused a naive realism that was consistent with scientific socialism, but which did not satisfy Bogdanov. Empiriomonism, Bogdanov's neo-Positivist epistemology, led him away from violent revolution and toward a proletarian cultural revolution.I haven't read it, yet, myself, but will do so soon.
Thanks for your opinion, ALB.
ALB wrote:Anyway, (for what it's worth) here is Kolakowski's summary of some of Bogdanov's views (he devotes 11 pages of his Main Currents of Marxism to discussing them).I'll have to get hold of Kolakowski's first volume, and dig a bit deeper.
For ALB, info regarding our discussion of Bogdanov:
Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900-68), pp. 229-30, wrote:Within the RSDLP, and especially in the bolshevik fraction, there was a whole tendency, represented principally by Bazarov, Lunacharsky and Bogdanov, which defended, within the party and even externally, the empiriocritical conceptions of Mach and Avenarius, with the aim of ‘going beyond’ Marx’s limitations. With Bogdanov, the social process was reduced to the biological process of the organism adapting to the environment, and the relations of production were reduced to the purely technical aspects of the organisation of labour – a thesis which in some ways prefigured the stalinist view. At the same time, by affirming that social life is in all its manifestations a conscious psychic life”, that “social existence and social consciousness are identical in the exact sense of the word”, Bogdanov denied the marxist thesis that consciousness only reflects social life more or less, that it lags behind it, and that material social existence develops independently of the social consciousness of humanity. The implications of Bogdanov’s view were that social classes were always conscious of the social relations presiding over their activity in production, and thus that the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat – which in Marxist theory is alone capable of seeing social reality clearly – was no different from the consciousness of other, non-proletarian social strata. In this sense, Bogdanov was simply reflecting his old populist conceptions, which Bolshevism had always fought against. Under the cover of ‘empirio-criticism’, Bogdanov’s theories opened the door to a mechanistic, fatalistic conception of the revolutionary process as well as to idealist voluntarism on the political level.[my bold]What do you think, ALB? Is it a fair reflection of Bogdanov’s views, in your opinion?
Young Master Smeet wrote:Indeed, that the apiarist industry is a party to a power struggle to defend itself was, kind of, part of the point.Yeah, the link between 'power/authority' and 'science'.Since twc doesn't do 'discussion', and prefers one-sided harangues, full of irrelevant asides, where twc's opponents must 'confess their sins' for daring to be 'critical of science', it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff of their posts. twc has clearly done a fair amount of reading, but doesn't care to engage and explain, so that we can all ask questions and try to advance all of our understandings of this vital issue about the nature of 'science'.I've tried at least twice to interact with twc, but all I've received is personal abuse. I refuse now to deal with twc, though I'd be interested to read other posters' discussions with twc, if that's at all possible.
Thanks for the link, YMS.
Bee Article wrote:Facts are not simply discovered by science as absolute truths, but are instead constructed in social contexts that are riddled with power relations. As the old adage suggests, knowledge and power are always intertwined.What becomes a fact and what does not is a social and political issue that is concerned with what kind of knowledge – and importantly whose knowledge – acquires legitimacy and therefore authority.Yeah, this quote seems to support some of the things that I've argued:'Facts' are socially-constructed by authorities, not just simply 'innocently discovered by a neutral method'.We have to question 'who' produces the specified 'facts', and for what and whose 'purposes', and using what 'method'.The days of just accepting 'scientists' disinterestedly gathering 'obvious data' as an act of charity or professional pride, is long gone.'Science' is about power, legitimacy and authority, and there is no 'method' which avoids these human issues.Communists must take a critical interest in these questions. It's my opinion that if science is not under our democratic control (and I mean 'cognition', too, not just funding, research aims or teaching, for example), it will be under the control of a self-selecting elite.
DJP wrote:So what do you think we should do with facts that contradict our true faith, sorry ideology?The ideology of 'I don't use an ideology, I just use facts' is an ideology. It's a 'true faith', which can't be argued with, as we have seen, no matter what evidence is presented to contradict it, even with those who present videos that contradict it!
ALB wrote:But we are in danger of turning yet another thread into a discussion of your theory of science.Yeah, let's just stick to the 'facts', eh?
ALB wrote:Which is where the neuroscience and (yes) neuroscientists come in. They do indeed seem to be doing our work for us. After all, we are not qualified to do it ourselves, are we? Are you?I like the 'personalisation' of the argument, ALB! Always the touch of those who are unsure!In fact, yes, I am 'qualified' to argue with the results of behaviourists' and neuroscientists' work: I'm a Communist. It gives me a head start.But… we wouldn't want a 'science' thread to turn into a discussion of 'science', would we?Fancy continuing to challenge the 'True Faith' of 'objective scientific method' which neutrally produces 'facts', which we then interpret.No, 'cart before horse', or 'slab before sea', as a critical Carr would say. But then, you'd know Carr, wouldn't you ALB? Remember, the guy that the SPGB holds up as a source for ideas, but then ignores those ideas in their practice?Right, I'll leave this issue alone now, on this thread, and refer anyone who's interested in finding out how 'science' actually does work, to the Pannekoek thread.
colinskelly (about Kliman), wrote:That what is require is not leaders but popular consciousness: “…the core issue is not one of “taking power,” but of what happens after… There needs to be a new relation of theory to practice, so that regular people are not just the muscle that brings down the old power, but become fully equipped, theoretically and intellectually, to govern society themselves. Nothing short of this can prevent power from being handed over to an elite. It seems very utopian, but there really is no alternative.”[my bold]This is the key factor, in my opinion. And if the Leninists want to damn me as a 'utopian', so be it.And I include 'science' in this scenario.
DJP wrote:Behavioral economists and psychologists are doing the hard work for us!Well, they'll collect 'facts' which accord with their ideological theories, so we'll have to sift and re-order their 'facts' according to our ideological theories, and then use our theories to accumulate more 'facts' from our perspective, and see how this mass of accumulated 'facts' from various sources seems to 'fit' together.Science means ideology.
