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ALB wrote:

There was no post-war slump and with more or less full employment in the 50s working class conditions improved compared with pre-war days, with workers acquiring household goods and even cars.

 I would be very wary of citing post war economic conditions as a reason for the decline  in the SPGB´s membership from a  four figure number  to the few hundred it is today.  It is a standard position on the Left that a revolutionary surge is predicated on the occurrence of a capitalist crisis.  Marx and Engels at one time or another both argued that capitalist crises would get worse and worse and this was the underlying dynamic  that would lead to socialist revolution.  But the argument is wrong.  Crises don't necessarily get  worse and worse – the Great Depression in the early 30s was far worse than the 2008 crisis  – and if anything crisis generate reactionary tendencies among workers e.g. the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.  There is certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that economic downturn tends to make workers more conservative-minded and compliant  in order to cling on to their jobs. I can cite research done in this area As far as the SPGB is concerned, if you are going to rely on an economic downturn for workers to become more militant and receptive to socialist ideas then the implication of such thinking is that you must brace yourself for a loss of membership when material conditions improve which is what you seem to be saying,  Adam.  How do you reconcile that with Marx´s view that there are no permanent crises, that every crisis is followed by an economic upturn leading to boom?  The implications of what you are suggesting is that the SPGB will never be able to break out this parlous state of being a pitifully small party.  Just as soon as its starts growing, an economic boom will come along and  prune back all that growth it made under conditions of material austerity. I think such thinking is reductionist and there are numerous other factors involved that influence  the growth of the Party. I still maintain that the small party syndrome is the primary or governing factor through which many other factors are refracted. The small party syndrome is a psychological factor that asserts that you lack credibility because you are small and because you lack credibility this keeps you small. It is only when you reach a critical threshold in terms of numbers that this factor begins to abate.  Which is why every new member counts for far more now while the SPGB is well below this critical threshold than afterwards, when it has breached that threshold. I also still maintain that one of those factors that impedes the growth of the party, the effect of which is refracted through the small party syndrome , is the SPGB´s absurd policy on refusing membership to socialists who happen to hold religious views,  irrespective of the form of these religious views.  Comrades in the SPGB persistently misunderstand the argument that is presented here.  Yesterday I stumbled across, for the first time,   a YouTube talk given by Howard Moss back in 2008 on "Is Socialism a Faith". Howard´s talk was a very good one – a good example of the kind of nuanced approach to the question of religion that the Party ought to be evolving towards but I was less impressed with some of the comments from the audience.  It is not the case that some ex-members of the Party are arguing that there are hundreds or thousands of potential recruits to the party out there just champing at the bit waiting to join but being unable to join  because they hold certain  religious views.  What is being argued is quite different  – that the accumulative or incremental effect of the policy on religion as refracted through the small party syndrome is that the Party is much smaller now than it might have  been but for this policy on religion.  The policy is absurd because it is totally unnecessary or redundant. If holding religious led one to support vanguardism,  for example , then it is quite easy to expel a member advocating undemocratic vanguardist views for holding such views without reference to his or her religious views.  The unwarranted assumption being made is that holding religious views necessarily leads to all sorts of anti socialist postions but that is bunkum . There is no necessity about it and, as so called "scientific socialists" , the SPGB should be more open to the emprical evidence that might contradict such dogmatic apriori assertions.  Holding religious view does not necessarily conflict with being a socialist at all or indeed embracing a materialist conception of history.  Nor does it necessarily take power away from human beings as agents of change and place it in the hands of some godlike entity.  All that is sociological bunkum and the truth of the matter is that the Party has a very poor grasp of the sociology of religion.  Its sweeping claims are based on a  very particular narrow model of religion which is theistic and organisation or church-based and above all, Christian. Denying membership to socialists with religious views is as dumb as denying membership to socialists who hold atheist views just because the vast majority of atheists currently support capitalism. Its a pseudo-empiricist position But anyway enough about religion  and my hobby horse about the Party´s policy on the matter!  The point I'm making, really, is that there are numerous factors that influence the growth of a revolutionary socialist party.  Some of these are internal , some external.  Never mind the economic boom that supposedly decimated the ranks of the SPGB in the post war era – what about the devastating effect of the whole example of the Soviet Union on the socialist cause?  Cumulatively, I would have thought that that was far more important as a factor.  Also, of course,  there was the experience of the "socialist" Atlee government as well.  Workers  having had a taste of "socialism" in action  would probably have had good reason to turn away from any organisation that advocated "socialism".  But thats "just my opinion", as the bloke from  the Russia Today TV programme keeps saying

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stuartw2112 wrote:

Thanks Adam, was looking forward to your analysis. What your conclusion should have said, though, is something like this: "given that LU has been going for barely a year, it had made remarkable progress, polling the same vote as longer established left parties where it has stood, and in one place doing rather better, beating the Tory candidate. Left Unity has also had a remarkably successful press operation, and its success, as well as the good work of people like Owen Jones and Caroline Lucas, had made the overall climate more open to left ideas generally. We in the SPGB have benefited from this too, so we offer our thanks to our left comrades and congratulate LU on its rapid progress."

 Hmm.  I dunno, Stuart, but I think there is something amiss with your analysis. As things stand at present any party advocating a "minimum" programme (which lets face it the LU is doing) ought to be inherently better positioned to garner more votes than a party relying solely on a maximum or revolutionary  programme to attract votes. That is because the general population or the working class as a whole is still currently thinking overwhelmingly  in a reformist mode.  That factor alone should more than wipe out any advantage the SPGB enjoys in terms of the longevity factor – i.e. the fact that the LU ought by rights to attract far more voters than the SPGB at the moment because of the predominance of reformist thinking within the working class to which LU essentially appeals despite its lip service to socialism. You know, Ive heard this argument before about how the "climate of opinion" is rendered  more "receptive" to socialist ideas by campagining reformist political parties and groups making political inroads. Its what they said about the Labour government in the immediate post war years.  That was a time when the membership of the SPGB was at its highest – in four figures.  The facile inference that might be drawn is that by voting for or supporting the Labour party the prospects of the SPGB making advances would improve.  But it doesnt work out that way. Quite the opposite .  The SPGB would sign its own death warrent if it tied its fortunes to that of the Labour Pasrty even if it were apparently true that the SPGB does better under a Labour government than a Tory governement. I refer you again to my analogy of the plate of soup and the ingredients it contains.  As individuals we all make an influence. We all add to the overall flavour of the soup,  however microscopic our contribition is to the overall climate of opinion.  The members of the SPGB are not making any  less of an influence because they happen to be members of the SPGB and not members of the Labour party, if you see what I mean.  So even if the hypothesis that "Labour governments are better for the SPGB than Tory governments" were true,  that is not an argument for supporting a labour government. The main problem with the SPGB and what holds it back is what I call the "small party syndrome".  Its a self perpetuating condition that affects all small parties . Smallness tends to reproduce smallness.  Small parties lack credibility simply by virtue of being small and therefore fail to attract people that would make them bigger. So they remain small.  It is only once they start to reach a certain critical threshold in terms of numbers that they can begin to overcome this factor.  Then when they pass that threshold we find the opposite factor coming into play. Increasing size attracts more support and makes for more credibility  so that  the organisation becomes even bigger and more and more quickly.  That is why it is reasonable to assume that the growth of a revolutionary socialist political party will take an exponential form beyond a certain point What the small party  syndrome does is to enormously magnify the effect of any obstable to party growth  in  the meantime.  For example, I consider, as some  people here know, that the SPGB's policy on refusing to admit individuals with religious views is totally absurd amnd represenmts a serious (and unnecessary) obstacle to its growth .  Religious minded socialists who totally agree with everything the SPGB  stands for except for the fact that they happen to hold some religious view , pose absolutely no threat to the socialist intergity of the SPGB. After all, the purpose of the SPGB is not to advance atheistic ideas but to help establish socialism. 99% of atheists are pro capitalist but I would consider it equally absurd to ban atheiosts from joining the SPGB because of that. If they or their religious counterparts did  in any way pose a threat to the socialist integrity of the SPGB there are more than adequate mechanisms already  in place to deal with this. In other towards the religious ban is totally redundant or superfluous.  Yet it holds back party growth The point that I'm making is that, at this stage of the game,  the significance of gaining every new member to the party is vastly greater than when the party has overcome the small party syndrome and is growing exponentially. That is, when it has past that critical threshold.   I venture the opinion that had the SPGB right back in 1904 when it kicked off, took Marx's advice to the IWA and decided not to rule out religious applicants  from membership, we would probably by now be talking of the SPGB being a party of several thousands of members if  you take into account the cumulative or incremental effect over such a long period of time. Most people who learn about the party's position on religion dont bother to apply  so it only appears that this is only a small problem but I suggest it is much bigger than people think.  Put in a historical or cumulative context of 110 years of negligible growth it could be a positively enormous Its a great pity that the SPGB does seem so set in its ways on this subject and I hope one day it will change its mind and at least soften its entry requirement as far as religion is concerned, perhaps only banning applicants who fromally belong to some religious organisation. Thats a good compromise position since it undermines organised religion and the reactionary policies endorsed by many organised religions which is the real problem as far as socialists are concerned – not some abstract metaphysical  concept of whether or not there is a god or an afterlife which is a totally irrelevant debate for socialists to be engaging in On other aspects, however,  I think the formula the SPGB has adopted of admitting only confirmed socialists is broadly correct and the problem with LU, as I see it,  is that it has bought into the same basic reformist paradigm that is shared by supporters of the Labour party.  If you go along with that paradigm then it doesnt really make much sense to join LU. Far better to join Labour and work from within that party precisely because the later at least stands a realistic chance of becoming a government whereas  with all due respect, Stuart, LU stands no chance at all. The niche has already been filled

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ALB wrote:

Early on in the election we were asked by the Powys County Times, published in Welshpool, Mid-Wales, to submit three 250-word statements for publication, with those of the other lists, in their issues of 2 May, 9 May and 16 May. We have managed to obtain copies of the paper for these three dates. Here is what they published on 9 May (based on the script of our election broadcast).

I know this might sound a little pedantic but I slightly winced at the sentence in the statement as follows"By producing what's needed and wanted, not just what can be sold"That seems to imply that production for sale will continue in socialism and will operate alongside production for what's needed and wanted,  does it not?

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twc wrote:

Like all moral precepts, yours is pre-designed to paper over conflict.  To avoid it at all costs.

 Bollocks. Though I have no truck with Trotsky politically, I think the title of his 1938 work puts it rather well  -Their Morals and Ours  (www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm) Proletarian morality or bourgeois morality without the silly pretence that struggle for socialism can be shorn of any sense of moral outrage at what capitalism does to us

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Vin Maratty wrote:

Robbostill don't know what you mean by 'morality' . What is it?  When did it develope? Who decides its content?Is it not enough to say that we – like many other animals – have genetic traits of sociability, caring and empathy?  Such traits have been found in other animals. Or is it because with the rejection of 'creation' you still refuse to accept that we are animals that evolved from the animal world and developed an intelligence.Our predisposition to caring, sociability and empathy have been twisted by propertied society and its morality. We don't need another morality to twist our natural inclinations.  I have to say that the idea of a 'proletarian science' and a 'proletarian morality' sends shivers down my spine.2+2=5  is wrong but cannot be described as immoral. 

 VinI have defined what I mean by "morality" several times. It means a sense of obligation or concern with respect to the welfare and wellbeing of others.  It means treating others as having value in  themselves, not as a means to your own personal ends.  Morality is "other-oriented".  It is the social cement that holds togther any conceivable kind of society or, indeed, any kind of social movement that seeks to alter the structure of existing society.  It is a social fact which cannot be wished away however much you might want to. The fact of human morality cannot be wished away but the contents – or form – of human morality can  alter from one society to the next, from one group to another.  The great error that lies behind the arguments of those who assume morality has no place in the struggle to achieve socialism is that they think morality is some kind of standardised or universal set of rules that different societies or movements can tap into in order to present themselves as being more "moral" than others. This is not at all what the argument is about.  Morality is a "group" thing;  The form of a given morality is closely bound up with the particular group that is the object of one's moral identification.  So a nationalist morally idenitifes with the nation state and the cirizens that supposedly comprise the nation as opposed to foreigners.  As socialists we dont share that sense of a moral identification becuase we see the nation state as being fundamentally an institution that arises out of, or reinforces, capitalism.  We have an altogther different  morality…. You say the idea of a proletarian morality sends shivers down your spine.  But why? Do you not morally identify with your fellow workers? Do you not feel concern for their interests , quite apart from your own  (and I have no problem with self interest being a motivating factor alongside a concern with the interests of others)? Do you not consider that your fellow workers have value in themselves and should not be used simply as  a means to your own private ends? If so , then by definition you exhibit a proletarian morality, like it or not. Make no mistake about it.  Rejecting a place for morality in the struggle to achieve socialism is tantamount to saying that the only thing that motivates socialists is, should be,  their own private self interests and that the interests of others are,or  should be  of no concern to them.  The usual counter to this argument is that socialism is about "enlightened self interest" (instrumentalism) rather than atomistic go-it-alone self interest.  But I would argue that so called  enlightened self interest is a fundamally unstable compound.  It will tend to break down and evolve in the direction of atomistic self interest or in the opposite direction,  towards altruism. Being instrumentalist in stance, it entails having to constantly renegotiate the terms and purpose of one's ( ultimately) self interested cooperation with others. This is  unsustainable. And it does not get round the simple stark  fact that if self interest was really your sole and only concern – what motivates you –  then you would be much better advised to strive to become a capitalist in a capitalist world and stab your fellow workers in the back in your bid to become one, than advocate socialism The Communist Manifesto,  in a particularly striking passage, evocatively talks of how the bourgeosie have left "no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation".    I would argue that those who subscribe to the absurd notion that socialism is a matter of "self interest" and self interest alone are in fact reinforcing bourgeois ideology. They are exhibiting an essentially bourgeois outlook and a bourgeois set of values  not the values of revolutionary socialism.  You might protest that this is unfair and that you are not suggesting that socialism should be only be about "naked self interest".  But if you say that then logically what you are saying is that the interests of other workers in a matter of concern to you, not just your own interests.  That ipso facto is taking up a moral position! Finally , yes other animals exhibit traits such as caring , socialibility and even empathy  But how do you deduce from that  thatOur predisposition to caring, sociability and empathy have been twisted by propertied society and its morality. We don't need another morality to twist our natural inclinations.It is those very "natural inclinations" that make the question of morality unavoidable. We are intrinsically moral animals because we are naturally  social aninimals . It IS  our natural inclination to be moral animals.  It is simply impossible to dispense with morality because the very fact  that we live in a society requires it.  All we can do is change the form of morality we espouse or endorse.  When socialists purportedly reject morality what they are really rejecting is what I call "moralising" – which is the explicit and strident appeal to some particular moral code usually associated with some particular religion like Christianity.  But that is not a rejection of morality per se.  You cannot reject what is part of your very nature as a social animal. Even if you are not prone to moralising you are still a moral animal And as for the other animals –  well,  you will be aware of the work of people like Frans de Waal who argue strongly that the building blocks of morality – a kind of proto morality – is to be found in other animals particularly the higher apes.  Our kinship with other animals which the theory of evolution , even before Darwin, increasingly brought to light, ironically prompted a reaction in the religious minded in the opposite direction in order to retain intact the notion of a human soul. The differences with animals and the uniquenss of human beings was emphasised by them whereas in the old Medieval concept (going back to the Ancient Greeks in fact) of a Great Chain of  Being, human were placed in a continuum or gradation from lowly inorganic matter right up to purely spiritual beings – the angels.  Thats is why in the 19th century, the Great Chain of being was abandoned – because with the input of evolutionary ideas it threatened certain fundamental  religious beliefs  about the nature of human souls and so on.  The only people who continued to subscribe to the basic outline of the Great Chain were, oddly enough, the racists who converted the Great Chain concept into a kind of racial hierarchy.  That fitted in very nicely with an expanding imperialism that sought to justify foreign conquest and the supposed superiority of the white man etc but that is another story…

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

But to talk of morality under capitalism is to talk of an evanescent or vulgarized thing, that is almost always a ploy, or bond of emotional selfishness, in a world where the sole nexus between man and his fellow is naked cash payment.  It is to abuse the word, because the action it connotes has become debased by the society wherein it can only be acted out.  That is an awful situation, but don’t shoot the messenger for alerting you to the reality.Every social movement lays claim to morality above all else.  You get upset when I refuse to go down that disreputable path.  Well you’ll just have to live with it.  I refuse to play the soppy game when all sides play the morality card, and you simply play the “more morality than thou” joker.Either discuss morality theoretically, or not at all.  By the way, I assume that you are aware of Trivers’s 1970s biological “altruism” that, of course, has scant relation to human altruism, but can only be negated theoretically, and not emotionally.

 You still dont get it – do you? – after its been repeatedly pointed out to you.  Its not a question  of playing the “more morality than thou” joker.  Thats a naff, one-dimensional criticism that presupposes some kind of timeless universal and standardised notion of morality which individuals or social movements can tap into – some more effectively than others, so permitting themselves to pass themselves as more moral or "holier" than others. Nobody is making this argument  As usual you are barking up the wrong tree completely.  As Ive said several times now the relevant criterion  has to do with whom one morally identifies.  A proletarian morality implies a proletariat as the object of one's moral identification. Just as a nationalist morality presupposes "the nation" as the object of moral identification.  What makes you think you are so special as to be above  and superiour to the rest of us in not having  to adopt a moral position  (which you do anyway though you refuse to acknowlege it)?I note you have evaded the completely the thoroughly bourgeois implications of the argument that socialism is purely a matter of what is in our "self interests".  Yes I am aware of Robert Trivers' work on reciporcal altruism – what of it?

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

On the contrary, overt morality is essential to a conniving society like capitalism.  Overt, and ostentatious, morality, of your obvious kind, is inextricably built into capitalism.  It drips from the capitalist air you breathe, because it is indispensable to the functioning of class oppression.  That’s where you pick it up your overt, ostentatious, morality from; unlike Marx who saw through capitalist appearance and exposed its rotten core.I’m sorry, but you and robbo are falling for the veneer of capitalism, even while convincing yourself you aren’t by giving lip service to its rotten core.[

 This is rubbish.  Your are confusing morality with "moralising" or what you call "overt morality".  You dont seem to understand what morality is. Morality is inextricacbly linked with notions such as altruism and empathy. It is inherently other-oriented, regards others as having value in themselves and not merely a means to your own ends (instrumentalism) and is based on a fundamental concern for the welfare and wellbeing of those others, whoever they may be. Some people get very confused about this, mistaking form for substance. Since capitalism (like any other conceivable form of human society) relies in some measure on morality, the inference is made that we must therefore reject "morality".  This is illogical and unwarranted.  What we need to reject is not morality but, specifically,  capitalist morality. I refer you once again to Engels statement in Anti Duhring: We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and for ever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. We maintain on the contrary that all moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or, ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its indignation against this domination, and the future interests of the oppressedWe have not yet passed beyond class morality. A really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practical life A really human morality.  That is what socialism is about!  What in anthropological terms is called a moral economy is predicated on a sense of reciprocal obligations to one another as human beings.  This is one of the strongest arguments against the "human nature" brigade who assert that socialism could never work because humans are inherently self-interested greedy and lazy yet, incredibly, some socialists seem unwittingly intent on endorsing such a view with their rejection of what they  call "morality ". They cede ground to the bourgeois apologists for the atomistic idea of the purely "self interested individual".  Its Adam Smith's invisible hand of the market all over again except the resulting social order that is meant to transpire from this mechanical application of the principle of "self interest" will be socialism and not  a "free" market.  As if. I find it absolutely astonishing that any socialist could reject the notion of morality.  The class solidarity and unity that we seek in order to overthrow capitalism precisely consists in a proletarian morality. How could it not?   The idea that socialism is nothing more than an objective that is in our "self  interest" to pursue is,  by contrast, a thoroughly bourgeois way of looking at things. It reeks of bourgeois individualism and bourgeois hypocrisy.  Of course socialism will be in our own self interest but it will be much much more than just our own self interests that will be involved ; it will also necessarily  involve the interests of fellow workers around us.  And since we cannot achieve socialism without the involvement  of our fellow workers necessarily that entails a vital  role for morality in the class struggle. If all you are really concerned with as an individual is your own private "self interests" well then you might as well strive to become a capitalist in capitalist society  and stab every other worker you encounter on the way, in the back, as you slither up the greasy capitalist pole of "self interested" material advancement. Socialism would definitely not be your cup of tea.  

[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

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