robbo203
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robbo203 wrote: “Yes, but since you reject Marx’s “new materialism” in a favour of straightforward idealism…”
This is a figment of your own imagination, robbo, and doesn’t reflect anything that I’ve written here.
Actually, rather a lot of what you have written here, LBird, shows unequivocally that your view is one of “straightforward idealism”. Take your comment, that “Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent of humanity because humans couldn’t know it.” As I have explained to you many times what this very clearly means is that you think, for instance, that dinosaurs could have not have had a “real existence independent of humanity” even though the fossil record shows they existed and became extinct long before there were human beings around to “know” they existed. Your idealist philosophy is therefore anti-science, amongst other things.
I appreciate that it must be difficult for you, being a Marx cultist, to come to terms with the fact that your whole idealist philosophy and outlook on life is radically different from Marx’s. Not that that matters too much. I disagree with some of Marx views as well but at least I don’t pretend to agree with him in cases where I actually disagree with him just for the sake of wanting to appear as a Marxist as you do
For example, if only Marx had made clear that his ‘new materialism’ wasn’t just ‘materialism’ with a meaningless prefix, like ‘chocolate materialism’, but that the content of his ‘new’ was revolutionary.
Yes, but since you reject Marx’s “new materialism” in a favour of straightforward idealism – nothing exists (or like dinosaurs, existed) independently of our ideas, according to you – perhaps you need to make this clear. Otherwise, people here might get the quite wrong impression that you are some kind of “Marxist” who believes that other people exist independently of our ideas we as individuals hold in our heads or that there is such a thing as “social production”
Haven’t you read Marx?
Or are you, like robbo and now alan, now going to ditch Marx?Well, unlike LBird, I’m not a Marx cultist – there was stuff that Marx wrote that was clearly wrong and that I am quite happy to ditch. But having said that, Marx would probably laugh his head off at the thought that the idealist drivel that LBird has been coming out with has anything to what with what he (Marx) was saying.
The idea that dinosaurs did not exist independently of human beings thinking about them (which is what LBird is saying) is about as far removed from Marx and Marxism as it is possible to get. And since only the human individual is capable of thinking, it follows that nothing can exist independently of this individual and therefore influence what this individual thinks. For LBird there is no point in democracy since other individuals don’t really exist independently of him. This also means LBird rejects the very concept of social production.
But that’s fine LBird – you don’t have to pretend to be a Marxist for our sakes. I don’t think anyone here would judge you too harshly if you were to just honestly admit that you disagree fundamentally with Marx’s own philosophical standpoint which was very clearly NOT the idealist philosophy you very clearly embrace
LBird
If it is a “false allegation” that I made that your position is a purely idealist one and that you don’t allow for the influence of the “materialism” side in your “materialism-idealism” configuration then how come you come out with statements like this:
Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent of humanity because humans couldn’t know it..
So dinosaurs, according to you couldn’t possibly have had a real existence independent of humanity – even though the fossil record unequivocally shows they really existed and then became extinct millions of years before humans existed. What is this if not sheer idealism on your part?????
There are many other examples I could cite to back up my claim. For example, you believe individual consciousness was the product of social consciousness in the sense that you think that social consciousness is what enables us to experience individual consciousness. Clearly, this is idealist bunkum. Social consciousness profoundly shapes individual consciousness – the contents of our thoughts – but it cannot account for our capacity to experience consciousness as individuals. On the contrary social consciousness presupposes this capacity
You’re never one to disappoint those who know your materialist ideology, and its ideological belief that there are only two basic philosophies.
No, I don’t. I have explicitly stated there are 3 NOT 2 basic philosophies in this regard:
MECHANICAL MATERIALISM – causation is one way, from matter to ideas, from the brain to thoughts, from individuals (and so-called human nature) to society. I reject this materialism as does the SPGB despite your relentlessly misrepresenting the views of the Party
IDEALISM – causation is one way too but in the opposite direction. Ideas create reality so that “Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent of humanity, because humans couldn’t know it” This is your position.
EMERGENCE THEORY/HISTORICAL MATERIALISM/MARXISM causation is two way. Higher-order phenomena, such as the mind, are dependent or supervene on lower-order phenomena (in this case the brain) but are not reducible to the brain. This is because the former is able to exert downward causation along with being subject to upward causation. Mental states can influence neurophysical states but neurophysical states can also influence mental states. There is a reciprocal relationship between them. Same with the relationship between individuals and society. This is my view
As an idealist, you reject the very idea of a reciprocal relation. So individual consciousness or the individual is, for you, simply the product of social consciousness or society and can’t possibly contribute to social consciousness. You completely lack any notion of a dialectic going on between these two constructs. You are a thoroughgoing idealist determinist and have shown this over and over again, despite paying spurious lipservice to Marxism
That’s because, according to Marx’s standpoint, there are only ‘ideal-material factors’.
Yes, and you reject completely the influence of the material side of this configuration. For you, material factors don’t exist. That makes your standpoint an idealist one in complete opposition to Marx’s standpoint and the standpoint of the SPGB
So, Pannekoek agrees with Marx, as do I.
You don’t.How can you possibly agree with Marx or Pannnekoek, LBird, when your perspective is a purely idealist one, and when you don’t allow for any interaction whatsoever between lower and higher levels of reality such as brain and mind or individuals and society?
For you, dinosaurs have never existed outside the idea of dinosaurs we hold in our minds – even though the fossil record refutes your idealist claim. You reject science and yet you want the entire world population to vote on tens of thousands of scientific theories for some obscure reason you have never made clear, rather than just have people agree to disagree on the merits of any theory
There is a contradiction between the SPGB’s alleged ‘democracy’ and ‘materialism’. One has to give way to the other.
Here we go again. Yet more misrepresentation from LBird. Are you ever going to stop with this relentless misrepresentation?
There is nothing “alleged” about the SPGB’s adherence to democracy both in principle and practice. As an organisation, the SPGB is unrivalled in the way it runs itself along democratic lines: Leaderless, no secrets, all it’s business conducted in the open, the rigorous control exercised by the membership as a whole over the Party via Conference, ADM and Party Polls …..
Democratic control is also fundamental to our objective – socialism – as stated in our literature: The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
Just because we don’t go along with your ludicrously impractical and pointless suggestion that tens of thousands of scientific theories should be subjected to a democratic vote by the world’s population does NOTmean we reject democracy
Where did you get the silly idea that
Democratic socialism will require a democratic science, and Marx can give us some pointers how this can be so.
What are these pointers indicating that Marx suggested scientific theories should be subjected to a democratic vote? Name a single one.
According to you
Marx reconciled both idealism and materialism, into a third philosophy – social productionism (in effect, part-idealism-part-materialism).
So that presumably means you advocate part-materialism alongside part-idealism. But if there is a contradiction between materialism and democracy as you claim then your advocacy of “part materialism” implies by your own reasoning that you too must accept there is some limit to the scope of democratic decision-making in any society, including socialism. Or do you expect a global socialist society will have a vote on what I can eat for breakfast or what I can wear to work?
I would argue that you are not even “part materialist” but are an idealist through and through.
Marx was critical of the kind of views you express. In his Theses On Feuerbach, he attacked the kind of mechanical materialism to which the SPGB is also opposed, as follows
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.
The reference to idealism here precisely sums up your position. You make no allowance for the influence of material factors. They don’t even exist from your standpoint. There is no sense of a two-way interaction between brain and mind, or between individuals and society. Dinosaurs for you don’t exist outside our idea of them even though the fossil record tells us that dinosaurs preexisted human beings and their ability to think human thoughts, by millions of years. For you the fossil record means nothing.
Actually, the construct you have come up with – idealism-materialism – is what would sum up the position of the SPGB. Although the terminology is misleading I get what you are trying to say. Except that you actually reject “idealism-materialism” in favour of pure idealism since you do not allow the “materialism” part of this construct to have any role or influence whatsoever. It’s a purely one-way relationship in your view – from ideas to matter (which becomes itself just another idea)
The SPGB view is quite different. As our Historical Materialism pamphlet notes:
The Materialist Conception does not deny the influence of ideas on history. In fact, there would be no revolutionary changes if ideas did not play a part. What it does is to trace the source of the ideas, but to deny the power of ideas alone
Note that last word, “alone”
You assert in response to my comment that the “SPGB’s materialism IS Marx’s materialism.”:
I’ve shown time and time again that this is an untrue claim. Marx was a democrat, Lenin wasn’t. The SPGB currently espouses the same ideology as Lenin did. But… the SPGB can change itself – unlike the SWP.
This is about as wrong as you can possibly get and, no, you have not once shown my claim is untrue. I recently came across an interesting review of Anton Pannekoek’s Lenin as Philosopher in the Western Socialist (Fall 1976), a previous journal of our companion party in the United States, which was actually written by ALB himself whose views you have been constantly misrepresenting
Pannekoek talked of there being two kinds of materialism – 1) the mechanical or middle-class materialism endorsed by some of the early advocates of capitalism in their struggle against religion and the aristocratic state and 2) the historical materialism of Marx and others. The review article very clearly comes down on the side of Pannekoek in his critique of Lenin’s middle-class materialism
Your own brand of idealism, LBird, is the exact mirror image of Lenin’s mechanical materialism. You both have an over-deterministic view of the relationship between “ideas” and “matter” seeing it as an essentially one-way movement rather than interactive. The difference is that whereas Lenin saw matter determining ideas you see ideas determining matter, (despite you pretence at adopting a part-materialist stance). The “materialism” part in your formulation is completely stripped of any determinative power
Marx and the SPGB would unquestionably oppose both you and Lenin!
The sooner that the SPGB says ‘Goodbye-ee’ to materialism, the better!
Have you kept up with this thread, and decided to side with Marx?
I wish you would stop misrepresenting what you call the SPGB’s “materialism”. You know very well by now it is emphatically not the 18th-century mechanical materialism espoused by the likes of Lenin and co
The SPGB/s materialism IS Marx’s materialism. It recognises that the
mind supervenes on matter/brain but is not reducible to the latter insofar as it exerts downward causation on the latter. Same with society and the individual. There is always a two-way interaction between these different levels of reality – a point made by Engels who noted how ideas are not simply the product of the economic base but react upon the base.Unless you recognise and acknowledge this interactive aspect between different levels of reality, you will be trapped within the limitations of a purely idealist framework. Matter exists even if we can’t directly apprehend it apart from our human cognitive apparatus; we can still infer that it exists.
Dinosaurs existed and became extinct millions of years before human beings roamed the earth and thought thoughts. Denying this in the face of the fossil record is the height of folly
Or as the Preface to the German Ideology put it:
“Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in Germany.”
Do you believe we are subject to the law of gravity LBird?
LBird
How on earth is that Marx quote relevant to, or in contradiction to, what I earlier said about the need for a brain to think with and experience consciousness? As usual, you are not making yourself clear at all. Consciousness did not create the brain; on the contrary, it presupposes a brain. Unless it is the case you believe consciousness can exist apart from or outside of the brain and so gave rise to the brain. Do you?
I repeat again in case I am once again misinterpreted – that does NOT mean the brain “determines” what you think. Mental events are NOT reducible to physical events (neurons firing) even if they entail physical events. What makes them non-reducible is the fact that they exert “downward causation” along with being subject to “upward causation”
It’s the same with society and the individual. There is ALWAYS a two-way interaction taking place these different levels of reality
ALB, can I take it now that you’ve also ditched Marx’s concept of ‘social consciousness’, in favour of robbo’s ‘biological consciousness’?
LOL LBird. You don’t get it, do you? So once again you misrepresent what I was saying. I am fully in agreement with Marx on the question of “social consciousness”. But, unlike you, Marx would have entirely recognised that social consciousness is an emergent phenomenon arising from our nature as a biological species. In other words, he would have recognised, unlike you it seems, that you can’t have consciousness without a brain and that a brain is something that pertains only to individual biological human beings
The existence of individual biological human beings is thus the absolute precondition of social consciousness. The latter entails interaction and communication between these individuals. It is through such interaction and communication that social consciousness emerges and takes on a life of its own, as it were. It exerts “downward causation”, to use the jargon. But the key question here is – what does it exert downward causation on?
To say that:
Marx argued that an ‘individual consciousness’ came into being as a result of ‘social consciousness’. ‘Social consciousness’ is a product of human ‘conscious activity’.
is to miss the point.
You are talking about the contents of individual consciousness which is indeed shaped by social consciousness, by the interactions that occur between individuals. I am talking about the capacity or potential for consciousness – individual or social – which is indeed biological inasmuch as it necessitates, and presupposes, a biological organ called the brain.
Therefore it is not possible to argue, and Marx himself certainly did not argue, that that consciousness and being are both necessary in any account of ‘origin’ of either. How can consciousness explain the origin of being – that fact that we are a biological species that possess an organ called the brain that allows us to experience consciousness in the first place? That’s absurd and that’s not what Marx meant. It would imply that you can have consciousness without a brain capable of human consciousness which then works to bring that capacity into being
LBird
The last person I need “help” from, as you patronisingly put it, with respect to understanding philosophy is you, my feathered friend.
I note that you have nothing to say about the fact that you have, yet again, completely distorted my views when you said “Well, you stick with ‘brain equals mind’”. “Brains equal minds” is precisely the mechanical materialism that everyone here has repudiated yet you continue wilfully misrepresenting what the SPGB means by materialism
I have explained briefly what emergence theory is about as a broad paradigm. In the cognitive sciences, it means mental states depend, or “supervene”, on neurophysical states but are not reducible to the latter. This is demonstrated by the fact that mental states can exert “downward causation” on neurophysical states, the placebo effect being one of the more noteworthy numerous examples of how this can happen. But neurophysical states can also exert upward causation on mental states as exemplified by such things as mood-altering drugs
So there is an interactive relation between body and mind – it is not purely one way despite what your idealist non-Marxist philosophy tells you.
Moreover saying that the emergent property of the mind to exert downward
causation is a “social product” is not very useful in this instance because this presupposes the very thing it is supposed to account for. It’s in effect saying human consciousness came into being as a result of human consciousnessYou seem to identify with Fichte, who regarded the ‘subject’ as ‘individual’.
Human consciousness or subjectivity is something that only biological individuals can experience. This is because we have an organ called a brain. If you think society or a group can experience human consciousness explain how. Note that saying only biological individuals can experience human consciousness has got nothing to do with “individualism” about which you have made no end of crass ill-informed comments
Well, you stick with ‘brain equals mind’, which is as profound as ‘power equals muscle’. I know that you’re never going to read any explanation that I can give to you, which is historical and social, so I won’t bother.
No the saddest part is that YOU never read anything that other people tell you. I’ve just explained to you that I’ve reject mechanical materialism in favour of emergence theory. I will make allowance for the fact that you are philosophically and sociologically ignorant and inept (which shows particularly with the drivel you write about what you imagine is “individualism”) But I did make a brief attempt to explain to you what emergence theory is about
Emergence theory holds that higher levels of reality supervene or depend on lower levels but are not reducible to lower levels. So mental states – mind – depends on a brain but is not reducible to the brain. Meaning I am saying (and said quite clearly) the brain DOES NOT EQUAL the mind. In the same way, society depends on individuals in order to exist but is not reducible to individuals.
Why don’t you ever read what other people have to say first, LBird, before posting your nonsense?
I am still waiting to hear from you whether you consider whether or not you consider dinosaurs had a ‘real existence independent of humanity’ as confirmed by the fossil record or whether you actually believe they never really existed prior to humanity despite the fossil record. I guess I will be waiting forever for you to respond – like I will be waiting forever for you to explain how – and why – you propose to organise tens of thousands of votes among the global population (nearly 8 billion people) on the validity of scientific theories
You won’t answer these questions and you will steer the conversation right away from them because you know in your heart of hearts they expose the utter folly of what you are constantly warbling on about
“robbo203 wrote: “Subjectivity is a function of the individual alone…”
Read the post.
If you shooting yourself in the foot isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is!
You’re an ideological individualist. I’m a Marxist social productionist.Its is clear from this that you really don’t understand what individualism means at all LBird. You never have. Your grasp of sociology is crap TBH. Saying that “Subjectivity is a function of the individual alone…” is NOT what individualism is about. It should be fairly obvious to anyone what I meant by that.
Subjectivity or consciousness requires a brain. A brain is an organ located in biological individuals (normally between the ears but elsewhere in the case of some people I can think of!). Society however does not possess a brain- unless you are talking figuratuively. Ergo, society does not possess, and is incapable of experiencing, consciousness
Contary to your crude attempt to caricaturise people here who oppose your nonsensical ideas, as believing that ‘mind’ is equated to individual ‘brain’ and thoughts are just neuronal reflexes, there is a middle position between your own non-marxist idealist philosophy and this mechananical materialist perspective you false attribute to us – namely emergence theory.
This holds that that the mind supervenes or depends on the brain but is not reducible to the brain. In the same way, society supervenes or depends on individuals but is not reducible to individuals. That is the position I hold at any rate. It allows for human creativity in history but avoids falling into the trap of making ludicrous claims such as you
have made that Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent’ of humanity, because humans couldn’t know it.As I keep on pointing dinosaurs has a ‘real existence independent of humanity’ as confirmed by the fossil record. Since that existence was many millions of years prior to the existence of humanity – dinosaurs died out 66 million years long before we came along – it was clearly ‘independent of humanity’. If you think otherwise then I take it you don’t go along with the fossil record on this matter, yes?
robbo203 wrote: “Subjectivity is a function of the individual alone since “society” is not some entity capable of “thinking”
Yet again LBird has shot himself in the foot!” [my bold]
LOL! Ironic!
How is it ironic? If you object to the statement could you explain how society is something that “thinks”? Do you or do you not agree that thinking is a function of the human brain which is what the individual happens to have?
Your ‘subject’ is the biological individual, and so you assume ‘something independent of itself’. This is dealt with by Dietzgen earlier. Having started from this political assumption, you then assume that the biological individual brain is passive, so that ‘something independent’ actively impinges upon the brain. You make the ‘independent’ into the ‘active side’, to quote Marx. Your ‘subject’ is the biological individual, and so you assume ‘something independent of itself’.
I said nothing of the sort. I wish you would learn to read. I said “Humanity produces the idea of matter but not literally matter itself”. What do you think “produces the idea of matter” denotes if not a human subject that actively structures their view of the world around them.
So my subject is not as you say the biological individual but the creative and active individual except that unlike you I do believe that dinosaurs existed many millions of years before human beings did and therefore existed independently of human consciousness. But by all means
if you wish to argue, along with the reverend Bishop Ussher, that the world was created intact with dinosaurs and humans alike on Sunday 23 October 4004 BC, please feel free to argue this point here.The “idea” of dinosaurs is a product of human minds but the reality of dinosaurs predating human beings is an objective fact demonstrable by the fossil record. Do you agree with what the fossil record suggests or are you a creationist? Do tell us
So, since you’re not a Marxist or social productionist, you conclude that ‘the very term makes no sense’. It doesn’t ‘operate on’, it ‘produces it’. Nothing ‘exists for us’ until we produce it.
That nothing exists “for us” doesn’t mean it doesn’t or didn’t exist. Did dinosaurs exist many millions of year before human beings existed? Yes or no LBird? Please answer the question!!!
No, you are not a Marxist and the logic of your whole argument shows that you are not a “social productionist” either. You are what I would call a bourgeois idealist. You think the world is wholly created out of the human mind which spontaneously generates ideas about the world and that there exists nothing out there for the mind to interact with or actively “operate on” to use your expression. Your worldview has got nothing to do with Marxism. Its pure idealism
Also since we cannot directly access other people’s mind only our own this flatly contradicts your whole claim to be a social productionist since nothing exists for you outside the human mind which can only be YOUR mind as an individual. Everything you see around you is the product of your mind and according to your logic other minds cannot exist for you in the same way that dinosaurs cannot exist for you. On the contrary, you produce both of them. Therefore according to you, there can be no such thing as social production
Marxists on the other hand – unlike you – would take the view that other minds exist despite being objective or external to us and can influence our own mind and that ideas are social in origin.
