[robbo203]

twc wrote:

 Before jumping to such rash conclusions that our “levels of reality” are absolutely autonomous,

 One further thought – this claim makes no sense because it is central to Emergence Theory that a higher level of reality supervenes on a lower level and therefore cannot possibly be "absolutely autonomous".  In the cognitive sciences, Emergence Theory does not disavow physicalism or the fact that the mind depends on the brain.  It merely denies that brain states are identifical to mental states – a fact proven by the phenomenon of "neural plasticity" inter alia.  There is a process of interaction going on in other words, involving also downward causation, within a framework in which mental states supervene on brain states That is why the emergence parardigm in the cognitiuve sciences is called non-reductive physicalism.  Note the word "physicalism"

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

Before jumping to such rash conclusions that our “levels of reality” are absolutely autonomous, and not partly relative to the necessary human practice of “divide and conquer”, and contrary assertion is absolutely incompatible with socialist thinking, you might first acknowledge that “levels of reality” are abstractions from experience…..In other words, your assertion is not proved by our necessary mode of explanation.  It can only be proved in practice, and we already know that Marx was able to bridge the greatest chasm of them all by reducing human consciousness to our hungry belly and our compulsion to labour. 

 I didnt say different levels of reality are absolutely autonomous with respect to each other. I was attacking the concept of "greedy reductionism", a term coined by Dennett himself.If you are going to be a full blooded reductionist why not go the whole hog and reduce human consciousness to an even more basic level of reality – like say, the sub atomic level, as I suggested – thus eliminating hunger as a superogatory explanation as to why people think what they think. As to your ridiculous claim that "Marx was able to bridge the greatest chasm of them all by reducing human consciousness to our hungry belly and our compulsion to labour", it will suffice to draw your attention to the quote from Engels  in a letter to a young student which appears in the SPGB pamphlet  "Historical Materialism":"According to the materialist conception of history, the factor which is in the last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor myself ever claimed. If now someone has distorted the meaning in such a way that the economic factor is the only decisive one, this man has changed the above pro-position into an abstract, absurd phrase which says nothing. The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure – the political forms of the class struggle and its results, the constitutions established by the victorious class after the battle is won, forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juridical, philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems, all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form.". In other words Engels is making a case for downward causation which flatly contradicts "greedy reductionism"

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

Sorry Robbo I still think you're off key here. Isn't he taking about supervience and not "emergence" here?Saying consciousness is an "emergent" property just doesn't explain anything at all. http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/I don't profess to be a expert on Dennett, though I have just spent the last 2 weeks writting an undergraduate essay on Dennetts rejection of  "real seemings" and the "Cartesian theatre"EDIT: I've just re-read that Dennett quote. I don't see even anything in that quote that is even an argument for non-reductive explanation of consciousness, after all it only those that subscribe to the "hard problem" that would claim that a reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible. Dennett's "theory of consciousness" is physicalist and reductionist, it's people like Chalmers that say the opposite.

 Hmmm. I dont think this is right although I could be wrong as I too am no expert on Dennett.  However, I have heard him described as an exponent of Emergence theory.  He is also known for his criticism of what he dubbed "greedy reductionism"  or strong reductionism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism) and in 1991 came out with his famous anti-reductionist statement in his essay "Real Patterns". He has also argued in favour of human consciousness being a cultural construction and considers that it is too recent an innovation to have been hardwired  innately Point is there is reductionism and there is reductionism.  The kind of reductionism that Dennett seems to be advocating – and here Im treading warily, conscious of the fact that Im not fully familiar with the subject –  is what is called "hierachical reductionism" which does not preclude emergentism or the appearance of properties at a higher order which are not apparent as a lower order upon which the former supervenes.  The quote from Dennett's book I gave you earlier is a good example of this.In an organism with genuine intentionality – such as yourself – there are, right now, many parts, and some of these parts exhibit a sort of semi-intentionality, or mere  'as if' intentionality, or pseudo-intentionality – call it what you like – and your genuine full- fledged intentionality is in fact the product (with no further miracle ingredients) of the activities of all the semi-minded and mindless bits that make you up….Thats is what a mind is – not a miracle machine, but a huge semi-designed, self-redesigning amalgam of smaller machines, each with its own design history, each playing its own role in the "economy of the soul"  (Daniel C Dennett, 1996,  Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life,  Allen Lane,  Penquin Press, p.206) Now you might say he is talking about supervention rather than emergence but is this a case of confusing form and substance? The capacity for human consciousness or fully fledged intentionality may be the product of activities of all the semi-minded and mindless bits that make you up  but what of  the stuff of that consciousness, the very thoughts we think.? The problem boils down to this.  Is the "whole" more than the sum of its parts (holism) or is it no more than the sum of its parts (atomism)?  In the former, the whole determines or  influences the parts through downward causation; in  the latter the part determines or explains the whole in a thoroughgoping reductionist sense. Because reductionisnm in this strong or  "greedy " sense, denies downward causation this means what happens at a higher level (eg a particular mental state) can be wholly explained by what what happens at a lower level – a particular brain state. In other wrods brains states and mental states are identiical . This is Identity theory or "reductionist physicalism" which is certainly not Dennett's view, as I understand it .  As I understand it, Identity Theory has been disproven by the direct evidence of neural plasticity  and by the evidence of downward causation itself (the placebo effect etc). But the main  problem with reductionism is that it collapses into a kind of absurdity.  If mental states are reducible to brain states then in principle  brain states must themsleves be reducible to something else?  What could that be?  The movement of atoms? And the movement of atoms would presumably have to be further reduced to the level of sub atomic particles? So how are we to explain the current crisis of capitalism?  Oh it must be a particularly quirkish alignment of sub atomic quarks that is creating the wrong energy vibes. It is is bad enough when bourgeois economists attempt to explain such crises in terms of entrepeneurial  misjudgements or the overzealousness and greed of individual capitalists (see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/disproportionality-theory-crises) but this is going way beyond that towards a kind of literal atomism  (or sub atomism). That different levels of reality require different orders or explanation to make any sense at all seems to be a very strong reason for repudiating reductionism or at least what Dennett calls greedy reductionism.  Indeed, would subscribing to such a form of reductionism even be compatble with socialist thinking? I dont think so – though it might be more in line  with Mrs Thatcher idea that there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

Sorry Robbo the more I look into it the more I think there is no so called "hard problem" in philosophy of mind. Read the stuff by Dennett on Cartesian materialism."Emergence theory" just doesn't seem to cut it either

 Here's another quote from Dennett which you might find interesting DJP.  In one way it kinda – although not quite – bears out your point about there being no "hard problem" in the form of consciousness but in another way it reinforces what is pivotal to Emergence  theory – that is, its rejection of the reductionism that is part and parcel of Identity Theory (mental states being reduced to, or being explicable in terms of,  brain states);In an organism with genuine intentionality – such as yourself – there are, right now, many parts, and some of these parts exhibit a sort of semi-intentionality, or mere  'as if' intentionality, or pseudo-intentionality – call it what you like – and your genuine full- fledged intentionality is in fact the product (with no further miracle ingredients) of the activities of all the semi-minded and mindless bits that make you up….Thats is what a mind is – not a miracle machine, but a huge semi-designed, self-redesigning amalgam of smaller machines, each with its own design history, each playing its own role in the "economy of the soul"  (Daniel C Dennett, 1996,  Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life,  Allen Lane,  Penquin Press, p.206) In other words what emerges at the higher level is not to be found at the lower level – genuine intentionality.  The term  “emergence” incidentally  was coined in 1875 by the philosopher, G.H Lewes,  who had been much influenced by John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic(1843).  In that work, Mill spoke of “two modes of the joint action of causes, the mechanical and the chemical”.  By the former, he meant two or more causes providing a combined effect (which Mill called a "homopathic effect") that would be the same had each of these causes  acted alone.  In the chemical mode of joint action, on the other hand, the outcome of these different causes acting together is to produce a "heteropathic effect" which is different from what would have happened had each cause acted alone.In his critique of David Hume’s theory of causation, Lewes identified two different kinds of effects – “resultants” and “emergents” – which, respectively, resembled Mill’s “homopathic” and “heteropathic" effects.  The latter he defined as being “non-additive” in the sense that the different parts of a whole, considered separately or in isolation, do not have the same overall impact as when they are combined to form that whole. Something is missing from the equation which cannot captured by a process of merely “adding up”, one by one,  the input of each individual part  to the whole. In other words, emergents as a particular class of effects are linked to the holistic idea of the whole not being reducible to the parts.Whereas, in reductionist theory, the parts determine the whole in the sense that they add up to the whole, in holistic or systems theory, on the other hand, the converse is true: the whole determines the parts. This is what is meant by “downward causation”, a concept pioneered by Donald Campbell – except that, for Campbell, this determination of the parts by the whole need not be complete (as in extreme holistic theory) but could express itself, relativistically,  as a constraining influence on these parts

[robbo203]

I tried to plough through the various screeds you submitted on this thread  that pretend to answer the questions I raised on another thread but, to be quite honest, half way through my eyes began to glaze over.  Talk about tedious, turgid and, for the most part, utterly irrelevant waffle.  You never seem to get to the point  Why can you not learn to answer a simple and direct question, simply and directly, without proposing to mount some pulpit to lecture an already half- bored congregation for the next four hours, eh?If you are to believed,  Robbo has foolishly allowed himself to be irrationally swayed by the sheer force of moral indignation alone and has summarily repudiated all science and employing a scientific method.  What rubbish.  All I am doing is denying the fact-value distinction which Marx himself incidentally regarded as a form of "estrangement". I have lost count of the number times L Bird has demolished your flimsy pretentious arguments,  making  precisely the same point as I am doing here.  But nothing will seem to budge you from your entrenched 19th century positivismThe thread from which these various "unanswered questions" (which still remain unanswered!)  derive is entitled "Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?" My point was simply  that, yes, of course the case for socialism is based on morality – how can it not be? – but I was not for one moment suggesting it was not ALSO based on cold logic (or science, if you prefer) or the long term interests of the species.  On the contrary it is based on all of these things.    You've just wasted a lot of your own time and mine and that of anyone else unfortunate to happen upon your long-winded bad-tempered and ridiculous attempt to constantly bark up the wrong tree.   Try, in future, reading what other people write before putting pen to paper. It might just helpIve told you already why I dont like the expression "scientific socialism" – because it conveys  precisely the wrong impression.  You have already admitted I was right to say:Most people don’t become socialists through an academic contemplation of the nuances of labour theory of value and then become indignant; when they learn from the theory that they have been exploited by their capitalist employer all along.  On the contrary, it is their own experience of exploitation expressed in a myriad of ways that gives rise to a feeling, however inchoate, that they are being exploited.  That becomes the spur to acquiring greater understanding.  In short, indignation generally precedes knowledge rather than follows knowledge, though of course it can be reinforced by the latterThen you protest that Im reading into your text something that was not there. Really? This is what you said in post no 60 of the other thread:Socialism doesn’t rely on indignation.  Indignation, like all emotion is impermanent.  It must be feigned to be kept alive, and then it becomes a mere self-serving pose.  Our opponents are expert poseurs at this.  We despise their subterfuge.You then proceed to read something into my text which I did not say. According to you I entertain some "plan" to "channel indignation against system faults into indignation against the system itself, devoid of any immediate prospect of solving the system fault that generated the fury you seek to channel without falling back on scientific socialism".  Surely, you ask,  I can’t be advocating that we hijack social movements as prelude to our human scientific socialism.   How pathetic can you get.  Its pretty obvious what I have been saying and only a compolete idiot could not have twigged this by now  – that the advocacy of the socialist case does not mean abandoning logic and science; only that it needs also to give due weight to the fact that people, for the most part,  are not primarily or initially drawn to socialism because they are presented with some irresistable "scientific" argument for socialism.  (If only that were true, most people when presented with the case for socialism reject it precisely becuase they dont think it is crediuble. They are prejudiced  which means we cannot sidestep the question of addressing the values on which their prejudices rest) Insofar as they do become attracted to the case for socialism it is primarily because they are indignant about things that the system throws up. We have to connect with that sense of indignation which is what also surely drives us as socialists and speak in a language that people can understand – the language of moral outrage.  That is where the limits of "scientific socialism" lie.  If such a socialism doesnt rely on  indignation then of course all it has to fall back on is cold logic and cold logic on its own is mnot going to motivate many to become socialists.  Socialist discourse will merely come to resemble kind of academic discourse carried out in academia increasingly abstract in tone and more and more removed from the everyday realities of working class expereienceThe naivete of your whole perspective  is well illustrated by your ridiculous logic expressed in post 91 of the other thread    (robbo.1)  the materialist conception of history is false.    (robbo.2)  base–superstructure determinism is false.    (robbo.3)  the objectivity of capitalist social relations is false.    (robbo.4)  we must therefore rely on emotion and morality.I don say the MCH is false .  What I say is that you hold a view of history which is at variance with what is called the materialist conception of hisotry. You are a mechanical or reductionist materialist.  As L Bird mentioned earlier. it is indeed surprising that no one in the SPGB has yet called you out on this.  Here is what the SPGB's own pamphlet on Historical Materialism has to say on the matterA few years ago a writer in the Guardian (March 5th 1965) put forward a common misconception of Marx’s view. He contended that Marx preached economic determinism by which, he alleged, Marx meant that all individuals act in accordance with their economic interests. A short acquaintance with Marx’s writings would show how absurd it was to attribute such a superficial view to him  That superficial view is the view you hold.  Make no mistake about it, you are preaching economic determinism with your dogmatic insistence that "base determines superstructure".  I challenged you to show how this was possible when a certain configuration of relations of production (one component of the "economic base" along with the productive forces themsleves) must presuppose certain ideas, values, beliefs etc  in order to come into existence. How can private property exist or come into being without a set of values that sanctions such an arrnagement?  You declined to answer my point.  Instead you infer illogically from what I say that " the objectivity of capitalist social relations is false".   No , thats not what I am saying. What I am saying is that it is not a question of PURE objectivity.  There is no such thing as facts standing alone accessible to all by mere observation. I emphatically deny the whole fact-value distinction which you constant insist on making with your fetishised  notion of "scientific socialism".  Your faulty logic leads you to further infer that I think we must therefore "rely on emotion and morality".  But since I dont deny the objectivity of capitalist social relations –  only the claim that such relations can be considered purely objective and standing completely apart from our values, your argument falls to the ground.  You seem to have this totally simplistic naive view of the world in which things are either black or white and there are no shades of grey in betweenAnd so we come finally to the question of exploitation.  You did not not answer my question at all.  All you did was parade your superogatory and oh-so-clever familiarity with Kliman's response to Steedman or whoever – like anyone gives a toss.  Well, if a bit of namedropping helps your cause and hides your own pitiful  evasions on the subject then why not  go for it, I suppose.   The basic question still stands, howeverIf exploitation is purely objective (which by your own definition means accessible to everyone) then why is it that most workers dont think they are exploited in the Marxian sense.  Not just workers but capitalists too. They are not even aware of such concepts as"surplus value". Exploitation to them simply means not getting a fair days wage for a fair days work.  The implication being that, in theory, you can operate capitalism without exploitation by being more generous and less harsh in your dealings with your workforce.The fact of the matter is that exploitation in the marxian sense is  theoretical judgement and as such presupposes a process of selecting the facts which in turn implies a set of values upon which such a selection is based.  Once again you cannot separate facts and values and this is why "exploitation" is NOT a purely objective matter.And you still dont understand the point I made about John Bates Clark.  I dont deny the objectivity of capitalist exploitation only that my recognition of it has come about separately from my socialist values. In raising the example of Clark I was playing the role of Devil's advocate to get you to see this very point and not as you idiotically claim as  a "hopeless spokesman for the capitalist". You warble on ridiculously: "your whole scenario is so inept, and so clearly imaginary, that no self-respecting capitalist would ever stoop so low.  But an idealist socialist might in his sterile ramblings.  I’d back the capitalist any day".  Are you really incapable of grasping the simple  point that the situation itself does not have to be an actual one  for it still to present the possibility of a theoretical defence of the capitalists claim that they do not exploit their workers but on the contrary that everyone gets their just rewards. – that they get out of production exactly what they put in – and that this is a process of evaluation?All you are doing is evading the argument by whining about how inept the scenario is becuase, well, no self-respecting capitalist  is going to stoop so low as to put in a little bit of work now and then  (Really? Are you seriously suggesting that no capitalist has ever done any work whatsoever? I think thats quite an extraordinary claim to make .  Years ago I worked as a gardener for a full blown multimillionaire who even had a heliport on his sumptuous grounds in Surrey and a helicopter to whisk him quite frequently to his office in the East Anglia where he could do some of the paper work).  Puhleeeeze.  The fact that that capitalist draws a profit doies not mean that the capitalist necessarily sees himself as exploiting his workers in the Marxian sense or that his workers see themselves as being exploited in that same sense. No one is denying that profit exists; the issue is what does it signify  and this is where the question of values enters the picture.  I cant seem to get that point into your skull.  All you are doing is to concoct some facile excuse to avoid confronting the issue of how you might evaluate the capitalist's contribution to the social product vis-a-vis the worker and that makes you , ironically enough,  a pretty piss poor exponent of "scientific socialism" in my opiniuon

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

Sorry Robbo the more I look into it the more I think there is no so called "hard problem" in philosophy of mind. Read the stuff by Dennett on Cartesian materialism."Emergence theory" just doesn't seem to cut it either

 I have understood Dennett to be an advocate of Emergence theory.  He is certainly opposed to Identity theory –  Reductive materialism  -and in philosophical debates on the question of free will, is a "compatibilist".  Here is Dennett's response to a question in an interview published in the a GuardianDD I haven't been angered but I have been frustrated by some neuroscientists who say we do not have free will and in some cases this position has implications in law and morality. They argue your mind is your brain, the brain is programmed, so there's no free will. I think science needs to be more circumspect and more creative. An economist might say, dollars don't exist, it's just a collective illusion, I think this is very bad advice and I also think it is bad, greedy reductionist advice to say free will is an illusion.http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/mar/22/daniel-dennett-theory-of-mind-interviewThe question of free will ties in nicely with the theme of this thread on morality 

Keith Frankish wrote:

Emergentism was popular in the early twentieth century – its best-known advocate being the Cambridge philosopher C.D. Broad (1887–1971) – and it still has defenders. It has, however, come under extreme pressure from empirical research. There are two aspects to this. First, physics has undermined the idea that complexity generates new causal powers. The general tendency of research since the mid-nineteenth century has been to show that all changes in physical systems, from the simplest to the most complex, can be explained as the product of a few fundamental forces, which operate universally. (Modern physics postulates just four of these – the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism and gravity, though it is widely believed that the first three of these are manifestations of a single, more fundamental force.) There is simply no room in this picture for the emergence of new causal powers in the brains of living creatures. The second source of pressure has come from physiology and, in particular, neurophysiology. If consciousness does exhibit a causal influence, then it is in the brain that we should expect to detect it. We should expect to find processes occurring there – brain cells firing or neurotransmitters being released – without adequate physical causes. And there is no evidence of this at all. It is true that we are still a long way from fully understanding how the brain works. However, scientists do understand its low-level functioning very well. They understand how brain cells work, what makes them fire and how their firing affects neighbouring cells. And, so far, there is absolutely no evidence of any non-physical interventions in these processes.

Im not too sure I would go along with this explanation.  "Emergentism" may have been around in the early 20th century – indeed even earlier – but emergence theory only really took off in the cognitive revolution of the 1960s.   That apart , Frankish does not seem to understand the argument in support of emergence theory.  The “non-reducibility” of higher-level properties – like mental states – fundamentally rests on the argument for “multi-realisability” (where a number of different lower-level properties – brain states, in this example –  can give rise to, or “realise”, the same higher-level property) and, more particularly, the argument for “wild disjunction”  (where there is no necessary or lawful connection between these different lower-level properties upon which the higher-level property is supervenient).More tellingly there is the question of downward causation. One commentators has put it thusWe can speculate whether the relationship of the mind to the brain represents an emergent quality. Individual brain-cells have no emotion, or memory, or self-consciousness. Consciousness arises through the interactions of billions of brain cells, and once it exists, there is a downward causation: the new structural level of consciousness begins to determine the behavior of the components, as the recently discovered brain functions that are summarized under the term “neuroplasticity” demonstrate. We now know that brain functions can be re-located to new areas of the brain in case of injuries. (Stroke victims learn how to speak again, re-learn motor skills, etc.) Learning a skill will create new synaptic connections, or even trigger the growth of new nerve cells. Consciousness exists within matter, but once it exists it is no longer determined by it. The physical brain is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for consciousness. The human mind, once created, acts according to a logic of motivations, emotions, and thought processes that is no longer determined by physical processes. Rather, it acts by ordering the causal chains of physical systems – The human mind begins to function as a cause in the physical world(http://braungardt.trialectics.com/sciences/physics/emergence) The case for downward casuation does seem to be quite a convincing one. With regard to the mind-brain relationship, there is considerable evidence to support this case in the form of psycho-somatic effects.  Perhaps the best known of these is the placebo effect where mere belief in a remedy, such as a particular drug, is sufficient to cause that “remedy” to be effective.  Researchers conducting double-blind studies on subjects have been able to verify that such an effect does exist.  Not only that, biofeedback studies and the like have shown that certain biological processes previously thought to be autonomous or involuntary (such as heart rate,  vascular responses and sympathetic discharges) are capable of being brought under conscious control. None of this , I repeat, is to deny that the mind is dependent on the brain; it is simply to assert that the mind cannot be reduced to the brain 

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Or are you seriously suggesting that, in principle, a neurosurgeon might be able to extract a thought from a person's brain and place it alongside a piece of brain tissue?  

Category error. Thoughts are dynamic brain processes not static objects. 

If so that can easily be rectified by  changing the example of  brain tissue with another of some physical or material process.  The same basic objection would still apply: thoughts are not physical  or material in themselves even if they depend – or supervene – on physical or material processes

[robbo203]

Vin Maratty wrote:

RobinBecause a surgeon cannot see it then it doesn't exist, it has left it's physical body? Really? And I am being absurd? Do you intend to layout in a post your own position on the subject and in your own words?Or do you intend to simply resort to vitriol and sneering at other people's declared position?  In the meantime, does your assertion that ideas exist outside of the brain apply to animals and insects. A pack of wolves for example? 

 Vin, I didnt say thoughts exist outside the brain (I did in fact agree that they depend on a brain and so logically they cannot exist apart from it). I simply asserted that they are not, and cannot be, physical or material.  They do not possess physical or material properties, do they?.  They cannot be directly or sensually apprehended.Why do you think I was resorting to vitriol and sneering at other people's position.  I wasn't .  I was simply criticising your position. You are being a wee bit over-sensitive, I think

[robbo203]

Vin Maratty wrote:

In my own words: To believe that ideas are not material is religious and/or idealistI really don’t think this is as complicated as we make it out to be. Ideas are produced by physical activity in the brain and they never leave the brain.     They are physical or material.  Collectively we think and create social structures that appear to have a non-material existence but they don’t:: they remain inside the human brain(s). Exchange value does not exist independent of human brains. . I accept that for analytic purposes these social structures including exchange value  can be studied as if they have an existence outside of our brains and it is  only in that sense that they do. However, remove the brains and the social structures no longer exist .  Exchange value has no existence outside of the human brain. Exchange value is a social structure created by brains.I have used my own words. I am not impressed by name dropping. I would rather hear criticism in your own words.

 Vin, this is absurd. If ideas are physical or material then they possess the properties of physical or material things.  Do they? Of course they don't! Or are you seriously suggesting that, in principle, a neurosurgeon might be able to extract a thought from a person's brain and place it alongside a piece of brain tissue?  Check out this little link on the "hard problem of consciousness":  http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_12/i_12_p/i_12_p_con/i_12_p_con.html What you really mean to say – surely –  is that ideas depend on brains.  That is fair enough but that does not mean ideas ARE material or physical because a brain is material or physical.  Nor does it mean that ideas or mental states can be simply reduced to brain states and there is now a huge body of research evidence that would refute that.  Rather than seeing the mind as merely the brain (identity theory) or the mind as somehow separate from the brain (dualism), there is a third approach which is now widely accepted within the cognitive sciences: Emergence theory.  Emergence theory accepts that mental functions depend on a brain but does not accept that such functions can be reduced to the brain.  Emergence theory might be called a non reductive form of materialism http://www.imprint.co.uk/books/emergence.html Talking of reductionism Im still waiting  to hear from TWC how he justifies his crude mechanical materialist perspective on the question of base and superstructure.  How does the base "determine" the superstructure, as he claims, when certain  ideas, values, beliefs etc are presupposed by any particular configuration of  production relations – what makes up the base along with the productive forces themselves.  How, for example, can private property rights be asserted or imposed without this implying an ethic that supports private property?I am also waiting for him to explain how the question  of exploitation can ever be separated from the question of values.  He claimed that exploitation is purely objective and defined "objective" as meaning "accessible" or apparent to all.  If that is true, why has 99% of the working class not come to the conclusion that workers are exploited in the specifically  Marxian sense (though they might agree that workers are exploited in the more mundane sense of being harshly treated or paid low wages).  The fact that the Marxian notion of exploitation is not readily "accessible" or apparent suggests that a process of selecting the facts is involved which presupposes a certain theoretical framework and set of values to go with that.As well as that, I am waiting to hear from TWC how he would respond  to the pro-capitalist riposte to the Marxian assertion that workers are exploited by pointing out that the value of the capitalist's contribution is exactly what he gets out of  the production process and therefore there can be no Marxian exploitation  (John Bates Clark).  If  a capitalist works for 10 minutes per day on what grounds would TWC refute his claim that that 10 minutes is worth a whole day's work by one of his employees?  Is there a purely objective basis on which one might refute such a claim, a way of weighting contributions to the social product that is purely objective?  Marx himself incidentally was quite clear that included in the value of labour-power is an historical and moral component..   People here who assert that the case for socialism is not also a moral case as well as one based on self interest might want to ponder on the implications of  that

[robbo203]

Sigh.  How many times do I have to say it TWC before the penny drops?  I only quoted  Castoriadis because of his critique of what he calls "objective rationalism".  Objective rationalism is what sums up your position in my opinion. I agree with Castoriadis' critique of that position.  I have not said anything about Marx's view on the matter and, truth be told, I think he somewhat misrepresents Marx view even if he accurately captures your view. That is because I dont think your crass mechanical materialism is the kind of materialism Marx espoused.  I think your materialism is more akin to the kind of materialism Lenin espoused which was criticised by Pannekoek in his "Lenin as philosopher" . Instead what we get from you is yet another long-winded bad-tempertered  turgid screed which is essentially much ado about nothing, All froth and no substance.   And you know TWC, you have a nasty little habit of attributing to people things they didnt say.  Just at random – and your peice is littered with such examples – here's one:  But please don’t attribute your phrase about kinship as being original to Levi-Strauss,  But I didnt say it was "original" to Levi Strauss did I ? Nor did I "fall for" Levi Strauss as you stupidly claim – like you stupidly think I go along with everything Castoriadis wrote.  I merely offered it up as another perspective, suggesting it was "food for thought".  You are constantly doing this sort of thing – making unwarranted assumptions – and it gets a bit tiresome having to wade through your torrent of misrepresentations all the timeI suggest you read in full the pamphlet Castoriadis wrote and then come back with more informed criticism.  I dont think you have understand what he is saying.  He is talking about the claim that the total pattern of history is rational; or determined, a point that seems to have wholly escaped you. Read in particular what he wrote about Objective RationalismOnce you ve done that you can turn your attention to the main arguments I presented which you misled us into thinking you would answer in your " Part 2".  For now, I have to buzz off to work pronto being a proletarian wage slave.  Im already late as it is…. 

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

You haven't begun to deal with the first of these and explain how exactly the base "determines" the superstructure when the elements that constitute the superstructure. – ideas beliefs values etc – have always been there right from the very start , coexistent with the base and indeed are, to an extent, presupposed by the very relations of production themselves that constitute that base, in Marxian parlance, along with the forces of production themselves.

robbo, I think that the 'base' consists of both 'forces' and 'relations' of production.What's more, both also contain human elements, and therefore, 'ideas'. This is before we even get to the 'superstructure'.

 Yup . Absolutely.  Thats what the above quote of mine actually says.  But people like TWC would have us believe that the base somehow  "determines" the superstructure.  I would love to know how and in what sense that is true. As I said in post 90 I think that is a particular way of looking at things which is arguably peculiar to capitalism. In other societies things may well be radically different .  Levi Strauss, as I mentioned,  ventured the opinion that in "primitive" societies the rules of kinship and marriage have an "operational value equal to that of economic phenomena in our own society" . Personally I like the quote from Carolyn Merchant  which seems to sum up things rather well:An array of ideas exists available to a given age: some of these for unarticulated  or even unconscious reasons seem plausible to individuals or social groups; others do not.  Some ideas spread; others die out.  But the direction and accumulation of social changes begin to differentiate between  among the spectrum of possibilities so that some ideas assume a more central role in the array, while others move to the periphery.  Out of this differential appeal of ideas that seem most plausible under particular social conditions, cultural transformations develop (The Death of Nature: Women , Ecology and the Scientific Revolution,  Harper and Row 1980 p.xviii) 

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

You can bloody well wait.Do you really imagine that someone can just wade through Castoriadis’s crap in five minutes, and provide a coherent critique of it.  Since no-one else on the planet has bothered to dissect him, mostly because his fellows are all philosophers of sorts and probably agree with him, why should it only take five minutes.Like all science it takes work.  Not like philosophy which can waffle on without constraint.Well, you fell for Castoriadis hook, line and sinker, or you wouldn’t have given him such prominence.  Now you back-track from him. Your integrity has immediately sunk in my estimation. You wouldn’t have proferred his critique of Marx if you thought it wasn’t devastating.  Now you lack the guts to stick to your guns, yet won’t admit as much, but instead make the feeble excuse that “Castoriadis was not central to my argument”. What unbelievable Jesuitical casuistry.

 My, my – you are certainly one for the melodrama.  I didn't "back track" from Castoriadis but Im not a Castoriadis groupie either.  Here's what I actually said before you get into even more of a lather:I am reminded of something that Castoriadis wrote in a little pamphlet called  History as Creation.  Though I dont agree with a lot of things he wrote (I have several of his works) he does sometimes hit the nail on the head as is often the case in this pamphlet.  Check out  the link here – its worth a read https://libcom.org/files/history%20as%20creation%20searchable%20and%20re… Here's the  relevant comment  which is directed at precisely the kind of "objective rationalism" to which you seem so fondly attached. I simply used the quote because I thought it rather nicely captured your perspective – which is precisely what  he calls "objective rationalism".  I haven't back tracked from that position at all.  I think that is what your perspective is and I think he is correct in his criticism of it. . Where's the backtracking?But the point still stands-  you have evaded my main arguments.  The Castoriadis quote was just the foreplay so to speak and it rather annoyed that you chose to focus exclusively on that while ignoring everything elseSo when, TWC , are you going respond to those main arguments as promised  . You said  earlier "that’s why I reserved a consecutive spot for Part 2 — the details".  Well,  "the details" didnt appear in Part 2 – did they?=  and in the meantime you accuse others of ..what was it?…lacking the guts to stick to their guns.  Hhhmmm

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

Robbo, that’s why I reserved a consecutive spot for Part 2 — the details.  It’s a pity my numbered cross references will be split across pages, but that can’t be helped.You’ll just have to wait.You just trashed most of Marx.  It’s easy to destroy.  Building takes a little longer.Rest assured, unlike you, I will answer every last point you make. 

 Im truly disappointed TWC. After the damp squip that was your Part 1, we have the equally damp squib that is your Part 2.  The Castoriadis quote was not really central to my argument  at all though I think the arguments you raise against him are weak and unconvincing , full of the usual non sequiturs and ad hominens,  The meat of my argument which did not centre on Castoriadis' views , unfortunately, you have once again evaded despite you promising you would answer "every last point" I made. The central planks of  my argument were two fold1) a critique of your reductionist and mechanical version of "materialism"2) a critique of your interpretation of "exploitation"You haven't begun to deal with the first of these and explain  how exactly the base "determines" the superstructure when the elements that constitute the superstructure.  – ideas beliefs values etc – have always been there right from the very  start , coexistent with the base and indeed are, to an extent,  presupposed by the very relations of production themselves that constitute  that  base, in Marxian parlance, along with the forces of production themselves.  How for example are private property rights asserted or imposed without this implying an ethic that sanctions and upholds private property? These are important questions that seem to fall below the radar of your mechanistic cum reductionist understanding of "materialism" You have made some attempt to deal with the question of exploitation but not very convincingly at all.   You have brashly asserted  Robbo Denies Exploitation is Objective missing the point of what I was actually saying  which is that exploitation necessarily implies a  moral dimension (which is why the case for socialism must necessarily involve a moral aspect insofar as it seeks to abolish  class exploitation) and so is not purely objective in that sense.  Note that Im not saying  that it is not objective at all. There is a difference You have defined "objective" thus:  People can disagree on their evaluation of any phenomenon, but still agree on its objectivity.  For if something is objective, it is accessible to others. Well, if exploitation is purely objective why is it that is does not appear "accessible" to the great bulk of the population who see nothing intrinsically exploitative in the wage labour-capital relation?  Why do most workers go along with the slogan "a fair days wage for a fairs day work",  the implication being that if they got a fair days wage they would not be exploited? Exploitation to them is not what exploitation is to us schooled in Marxian economics.  Exploitation to them simply means being harshly treated by your employer or being paid a lower than average wage.  Exploitation in our sense of the word is not  really  obvious or "accessible" at all and therefore by your own definition. is not purely objective at all. It isa a particular interpretation or selection of the facts that allows us to say workers exploited in the Marxian sense and how we interpret or select the facts necessarily brings in the question of VALUES  – something you baulk against as an old fashioned 19th  century positivist Oh, and by the way, Im still waiting to hear how you get round John Bates Clark's  claim (see post 90) without invoking the question of values.  If a capitalist works for 10 minutes and claims his 10 minute contribution is equivalent to a full days work by one of his employers how would you refute his claim? What are the purely "objective criteria" you would use to weight different labour contributions that would convincingly show the capitalist is still exploiting the worker if as you suggest, exploitation is a purely objective matter?

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

Robbo Denies Exploitation is Objective

robbo203 wrote:

The point that I am getting at is that [exploitation] is, at bottom, a value judgement, not simply a cold mathematical calculation that workers are exploited in terms of socially necessary labour time.

This is bourgeois idiocy.

 TWC can you not  for once resist the temptation to always resort to ad hominen argument?   Its getting to be a bore, frankly,  and only fuels the suspicion that you are unable to answer the point being made.  Read again what I said .  I said exploitation is at bottom a value judgement and not simply a cold mathematical calculation You are trying to teach people here how to suck eggs.  We know very well, thank you very much, that capitalists are forced by competition to seek profit.  How very illiuminating of you to point that out.  The point at issue however is not that but the significance or meaning of profit itself. I quoted Clarke not because I agree with his position – of course I hold that workers are exploited –  but becuase I wanted to see how you would respond to that argument he made without invoking the question of values.  As usual you havent.   What we get from you is the usual longwinded circumlocutionary peice of rambling irrelevance that deftly hides your inability to answer a simple point in a straightforward manner Try for once to break the mould and address the argument being presented  TWC. It would make a refreshing change,  believe you me

[robbo203]

OK, TWC, I'll have a crack at responding to the theoretical challenges you have issued in posts 77 and 81. Work commitments in the past few days have prevented me from responding sooner  The gist of what you seem to be saying is that DJP, Robbo and L Bird have succumbed to the "might of bourgeois philosophy" and are presumably to be dismissed as  unreconstructed idealists.  I think you are talking bunkum, frankly and not for the first time. If anything the opposite is true.  It is you, old chap, who is the quintessetially bourgeois philosopher here and your brand of mechanical materialism  strikes me as just a cover for a kind of mystical idealism,I am reminded of something that Castoriadis wrote in a little pamphlet called  History as Creation.  Though I dont agree with a lot of things he wrote (I have several of his works) he does sometimes hit the nail on the head as is often the case in this pamphlet.  Check out  the link here – its worth a read https://libcom.org/files/history%20as%20creation%20searchable%20and%20reprintable.pdf.  Here's the  relevant comment  which is directed at precisely the kind of "objective rationalism" to which you seem so fondly attached.Marxism does not therefore transcend the philosophy of history . It is merely another philosophy of history. The rationality it seems to extract from the facts is a rationality which it actually imposes upon them . The 'historical neces­sity' of which it speaks (in the usual sense of this expression, namely that of a concatenation of facts leading history to­wards progress) in no way differs, philosophically speaking, from hegelian Reason. In both cases one is dealing with a truly theological type of human alienation. A communist Providence, which would so have pre-ordained history as to produce our freedom , is nevertheless a Providence. In both cases one elim inates the central concern of any reflex­ion: the rationality of the (natural or historical) world, by providing oneself in advance with a rationally constructed world. Clearly, nothing can be resolved in this way: a totally rational world would, by virtue of this very fact, beinfinitely more mysterious than the world in which we struggle. A history that would be rational from beginning to end – and through and through – would be more massively incomprehensible than the history we know. Its whole rationality would be founded on a total irrationality , for it would be in the nature of pure fact, and of fact so brutal, solid and all-embracing that we should suffocate under it"There's incidentally a colourful little passage in the "Introduction" which nicely situates your fetishisation of science uber alles – or should that be science at the expense of everything itself – in the context of bourgeois society itself and so helps to throw light on the very bourgeois influences that inform your own thinking:This was the science that the founders of "scientific socialism" had sucked into their  bones; the science of elegant universalism, of cosmological laws to which there were no exceptions, of systems that would encompass the whole of reality in their net.  The very structure of this kind of thinking reflected the confident ambitions  of a capitalism in full development.  In the air was the promise  that life itself would soon be amenable to the same mathematical manipulations  that had successfully predicted the motions of the stars, the combinations of the atoms and the propagation of light  (C. Castoriadis, Introduction to History as Creation , Solidarity Pamphlet, London 1978. p.4)As I said before I would banish the expression "scientific socialism"; it is thoroughly misleading and sets quite the wrong tone.  Please dont get me wrong.  This is not a denigration of science or the scientific method.  It is simply to recognise the limits of the scientific approach when it comes to changing society. You dont seem to recognise any such limits.  And you singularly failed to answer my earlier point  vizI think youve got it precisely the wrong way round.  Most people dont become  socialists through an academic contemplation of the nuances of labour theory of value and then become indignant  when they learn from the theory that they have been exploited by their capitalist employer all along.  On the contrary, it is their own experience of exploitation expressed in a myriad of ways that gives rise to a feeling, however inchoate, that they are being exploited.  That becomes the spur to acquiring greater understanding.  In short , indignation generally precedes knowlege rather than follows knowlege though of coure it can be reinforced by the latter.Anyway on to the business at hand. Ill deal with the two main points you make.  Firstly this one"For Marx, essence determines appearance — base determines superstructure; social being determines consciousness".Weve been here before, haven't weTWC?  I referred you to Peter Stillman's article "The Myth of Marx’s Economic Determinism" (http://marxmyths.org/peter-stillman/article.htm) .  You did not answer the central claim Stillman was making but just airily pooh-poohed what Stillman had to say.What is the "base" and what is the "superstructure" and how does the former "determine" the latter? I come back to this point again and again because frankly, for all your swaggering  bravado, you never seem to get beyond a dogmatic repetition of a rather crude and reductionist materialist catechism.The problem with the base – superstructure model was perhaps unintentionally revealed by an off-the-cuff comment by Engels in his speech as Marx's funeral vizJust as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.What Engels was seemingly invoking here was the notion of temporal priority.  Before you can think or engage in ideological activities you have to eat, drink, find shelter and so on.  This fits in with a kind of mechanistic "billiard ball" view of the universe in which cause and effect is made visibly apparent.  You hit one ball with your cue and it impacts upon another, causing the latter to drop into the pocket.  Two separate events in time. In the same way, a crude reductionist materialism purports to "explain" how a certain configuration in the economic basis of society – that is the particular combination of the "forces of production" (crudely, technology) and the "relations of production "- "gives rise to" a certain idelogical form.  G A Cohen calls this the "fallacy of equivocation".  The fact that ideological activities may be dependent on material activities does not mean they can therefore be explained by them. Its the same with the brain-mind interactions in "emergence theory" in the cognitive sciencesNow I dont think Engels actually meant to literally suggest a kind of temporal prority at work here but that is what an uncritical acceptance of the thrust of his reasoning can lead to and has led to in your case, in my opinion. You are thinking "as if" such a temporal priority applied.  Hence your claim "base determines superstructure"The plain fact is that there is no such thing as a "base" without a "superstructure".  That being so how do you demonstrate the determing influence of one upon the other?  At no point in time did mankind strive to eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, without also engaging in ideological activities.  In fact, if you look into the anthropology of early hunter-gatherer groups you will see this very clearly illustrated.  Everything is mixed up in such societies.  You cannot identify anything that individuals did that was "purely economic"  or "material" or for that mattrer purely religious or spiritual.  Activities such as hunting or gathering while meeting the group's need for food also had religious significance – that is, they were pregnant with religious meaning.In fact, the identification of a distinctly separate "economic domain "as Louis Dumont brilliantly showed in his "From Mandeville to Marx" really only came about with the rise of capitalism and the growth of individualism.  The supposedly autonomous nature of this domain was captured by Adam Smith's quasi-theological conceptualisation of the "invisible hand of the market".  It fitted in with the mechanistic thinking of the times and the growing influence of the "machine metaphor".  "Scientific socialism " was an offshoot of such thinking as I suggested above and is predicated on certain bourgeois ways of looking at the world which postulates precisely a separate economic domain which is thus able to  impact upon the superstructure of society.  So we have the paradoxical situation in which the base-superstructure model is itself an ideological product of a particular kind of society which it seeks to explain.  In other words, it is not transhistorical or universal but peculiar to capitalismInterestingly, some anthropologists – like the structuralist , Claude Levi-Strauss  –  have argued that in "primitive" societies the rules of kinship and marriage have an "operational value equal to that of economic phenomena in our own society"  (quoted in  Marxism and "Primitive" Societies: Two Studies by  Emmanuel Terray, Monthly Review Press, 1972,  p.139).  By that he meant kinship, rather than economic phenomena as such,  is the organising  principle of such societies – the prism through which they need to be viewed.  In other words, kinship replaces economic infrastructure as the basis of these societies.  Its food for thought,  I supposeOne final point to throw into the discussion under this heading is something that exSPGBer Keith Graham  mentions in his excellent book "Karl Marx Our contemporary".   Graham refers to certain objections raised by people like Acton and Plamenatz to the Marxian thesis that "phenomena  such as social, political and intellectual life cannot be understood on their own, and are conditioned by material life"  (p.50).  Acton, for instance, has argued that para-technological relationships such as property laws and customs have to be in place at the outset if any kind of production can commence since these define the rules under which production is to occur.  That being so, laws and morals "cannot properly be regarded as superstructures" but instead form  part of the relations of production.  Similarly, the point made by Plamentz is that it is "impossible to define relations of production except in terms of the of the claims people make on one another" and this entails the recognition of "laws", broadly speaking.  Graham's response to such objections is not unreasonable:We can distinguish between base and superstructure by reference to the de facto/de jure distinction. To have the power over some productive force , whether legitimately or not, is to stand in a basic relation of production to it; to have a right over it is to stand in a superstructural relationship to it.  The very fact that people sometimes have ineffective rights or illegitimate powers over such resources  demonstrates the conceptual distinctness of base and superstructure"  (p.52)What counts as a "relation of production", then, is what actually happens on the ground in terms of ownership and control of the productive forces – the de facto situation. The de jure legitimation of one's ownership and control of these productive forces is in a sense superogatory – a kind of rubber stamping of the status quo.  This counter argument is fair enough as far as it goes but a distinction surely needs to be made between a moral right and a legal right .  Durkheim said something of relevance here on the relationship between morality and the law –  that the latter will tend, in the long run, to reflect, rather than determine, the moral values of a given society.  This, curiously enough,  is somewhat  homologous to the putative relationship between base and superstructure (bearing in mind the caveat about the latter simply "reflecting" the former).  It is questionable whether someone who has "power over some productive force , whether legitimately or not" would not, at the same, time feel morally entitled to exercise this power.  Or, indeed, that those thus excluded  from this productive force would not have consented to such an arrangement and considered it to be quite normal and morally acceptableAnyway on to your next point TWC as this post is already getting much longer than I expected  viz"Question:  Is Capitalist Exploitation Actual?For your brand of Idealism, capitalist exploitation is mere working-class ideology.  [Capitalists shouldn’t hold it, but in practice more capitalists seem cognizant of the source of their revenue—exploitation—than members of the working class.]Since capitalist exploitation is mere working-class ideology, capitalist exploitation needn’t actually be taking place in society!Please then explain to us:how you ideologists can ever know that capitalist exploitation is actually taking place in society?"My first response to this would be to say that you are asking the wrong question. The right question would be to ask –  if exploitation is indeed objective or "actual" can it really be apprehended in terms that are devoid of ethical import?  I woud say emphatically no. The very concept of exploitation is intrinsically value laden.  This is why it so obviously silly to claim that the case for socialism is not also based on morality – nor their morality, the moraility of the capitalist class, but ours, a proletarian moirality.  It is not just a case of what is in "our own self interests" as individuals.  If you identifiy with the wellbeing of others (your fellow workers) then ipso facto,  and by defintion, you are taking up a moral position,  Morality is afterall an "other-oriented" perspective which regards others – in this case our fellow workers – as having value in themselves.  So calling on the workers to unite in  class struggle cannot but involve taking a moral position – logicallyThere is a further point I would make which is a little more elaborate and roundabout.  Back in the late 19th century  when  the marginalist revolution in economics got underway, one effect of this was to radically reconceptualise the whole question of distribution in a capitalist society.  Within the general framework of  marginalist theory, capital and labour were deemed  – subjectively, of course – to get back exactly what they put in – no more and no less  The theoretical possiblity of exploitation was thus precluded by an ex cathedra type statement which rationalised massive inequalities of outcome as something that is wholly explicable – and justifable –  in terms of the  commensurate contributions to production made by capitalists and workers respectively.  Ironically, while the Marxian labour value theory was severely criticised on grounds that it did not adequately deal with the problem of the heterogeneity  of labour inputs and how to assign different labour time values to different skills,  no such scruples were raised with regard to the distribution of income between labour and capital.  Michael Perelman quotes the once prominent American economist  – John Bates Clark – on the matter, that "the distribution of income [is] controlled by a natural law, and…this law, if it worked without friction, would give to every agent of production the amount of wealth which that agent creates….Free competition tends to give labor what labor creates, to capitalists what capital creates, and to entrepreneurs what the coordinating function creates. (Michael Perelman, The Perverse Economy: The Impact of Markets on People and the Environment, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 p. 152).  Now I put it to you, TWC – how would you counter Clarkes point?  If the capitalist countered your objection that he is exploiting his workers by pointing out that, in fact,  the value of his contributiuon to the production of wealth is at least equal to that  all of his workers combined, how would you respond?  You can recite the labour theory of value all you like but you cannot get round the fact that different labour contributions impart different values to the end product.  The capitalist has only to assert that 10 minutes of his time in a flying visit to his factory office to sign a cheque is equal in value to a full day's work by one of his workers to counter the charge that he is "exploiting his workers".The point that I am getting at is that this is, at bottom, a value judgement, not simply a cold mathematical calculation that workers are exploited in terms of socially necessary labour time.  If you deny that, you cede ground to the bourgeois economists and you will find yourself engaging in a debate that will inevitably be rigged in their favour. Beware and be very aware of the perils of insisting that the case for socialism is one essentially based on objective scientific  rationalism

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