[twc]

Scientific FraudYes, but its fraud was detected, and exposed, by the very scientific enterprise it attempted to defraud.  Which was my point.  The scientific enterprise is self-correcting.It was unearthed as fraud by appeal to replicable experiment and, in this anti-Darwin case, not by appeal to inheritance theory, which was thereby delivered a near fatal blow of its duplicitous making — an own goal, on the grounds that it needed to be defended [could only be defended] fraudulently.[As for sociology, take the well-known case of Cyril Burt.  His fraudulent claims delivered his thesis its fatal blow, on the grounds that he was forced to resort to subterfuge in order to promulgate it.  There is no more compelling disproof than that!]Why Commit Scientific Fraud in the First Place?The only scientific question that needs to be answered here is — why did the scientific fraudsters feel compelled to resort to scientific fraud?Issues of prestige and funding aside, the main reason they were forced to resort to fraud was that they’d come horribly face-to-face with the inexorability of the scientific process — face-to-face with nature already exposing them.The scientific process had inexorably entered extreme doubts in their heads.  To prosecute their case further they attempted to bypass the scientific process.  They felt they had no choice but to delude themselves, for they can never delude nature.  Nature had turned them into fraudsters.In many ways, scientific fraud proves my case.  It is the very inexorability of the scientific process that produces its fraudulent casualties.  Those who attempt to buck nature get nature’s come-uppance.That has been my case for the integrity of the scientific process all along, and you have just proved it for me.My ResponseMy response, as I explained, has nothing to do with 19th century awesome-like respect for scientists, but has everything to do with respect for the hard won process of science that does deserve mankind’s respect in ways similar to the Party’s integrity deserves respect.I do not extend the same respect to other parties, nor to scientists who conduct scientific fraud.  But I comprehend human and social frailty, and pity it.I was merely standing up for a profession that you hold in supreme 21st century contempt — in line with the tabloid press and media.For you, the scientific enterprise is riddled with fraud, which the scientific enterprise is powerless to detect, expose and correct.

[twc]

YMS wrote:

I may have missed a meeting; but when did sociology stop being a science?

No, you didn’t, and sociology hasn’t.I read those sociologists as asserting that natural scientists lack scientific integrity.  This is I believe, for the reasons I gave, a quite undeserved charge against scientists of conscious human fraud.That is a serious accusation of duplicitous human behaviour, and is quite different in kind from a mere assertion that natural science is riddled with class prejudice.  Even if that were true, it is in human terms a case of unconscious, but understandable, human bias.Political AnalogyI took those unsupported sociological assertions as akin to accusing political parties of lacking political integrity.  In most cases, this is a justifiable accusation of conscious political fraud, masquerading behind a conscious veneer of ‘unconscious’ human bias.I know, however, that you would rush to the Party’s defence, against any sociological charge of political infamy, by citing the Party’s century-long unwavering adherence to its Declaration of Principles.That’s all I was doing for natural scientists   Defending what I believe against what I consider to be calumny.  No more than I know you always do in the Party’s justified defence of its political integrity.I know scarcely any sociologists, and those I’ve met personally don’t rank highly in my estimation — probable evidence of my socialist prejudice, for none of them was socialist.However, I know natural scientists, and they mostly work under the hammer, whether tenured or not.  Economics forces them to beg funding bodies to support their research.  All of them labour under pressure to generate publishable results.In short, most scientists are proletarians, just like the majority of mankind!Let us assume, that the funding bodies manage to warp their research outcomes.  That is primarily a critique of capitalism, and is something the socialist case holds we won’t have to contend with under socialism.I remind you, however, that LBird considers the Party’s view of socialism to be fundamentally flawed in this very regard.On LBird’s view, science and scientists are accurately and irredeemably [even under socialism] adequately characterized by their disgusting Murdoch-empire tabloid stereotypes.  They are to be perpetually feared.

[twc]

Attack of the Killer Bees

YMS wrote:

Erm, I linked to an article that demonstrated that Lbird's view was already incorporated into maintream academic discourse on the theory of science.

Actually, you didn’t.  You linked, fourth-hand, to a [lefty] sociologist, third-hand, believing unnamed and unsourced professionals in “the field of science, technology and society”, second-hand, about what scientists do first-hand.And you expect us to believe it, fifth-hand.Above all, he did not claim to be talking about something as lofty as the theory of science, as you misread him!Aunt JobiskaThe position adopted by the sociologist is none other than a common belief shared by many today.  It’s become a “fact the whole world knows” [Edward Lear], and is common currency throughout the tabloid and media outlets of the Murdoch empire.Such naked truth is best stripped of academic nicety:  “scientists are up themselves;  they fool the public all the time;  they only engage in vainglorious lust for power over society;  they should be exposed as falsifiers of truth.”And so we find Fox, unconstrained by scientific integrity, gloating over the cautious findings, constrained by subservience to the ways of nature, of today’s nuanced IPCC report.Meanwhile, the lefty intelligentsia, also concur that, well yes, really, the only socially-responsible stance an intelligent person can take these days towards science is a very large dose of anti-science skepticism, soaked in sociological cynicism.Appearance and RealityA socialist might have thought that, if everyone agrees with him on a social issue, then he’s possibly falling for the capitalist husk, and failing to recognize the socialist kernel.Quid Pro QuoI’ll answer your insane questions to the best of my ability.No.Can’t.  I know nothing about the Bee Gees apart from their name as a pop group.  [You already know my love of classical music.]Can’t.  I have no idea who John Hurt is.Now, the quid pro quo.  If CCD isn’t your prime example of the inability of natural science to rise above the ideological constraints of a “belief in private property in the means of production”, what is?For example, do you take IPCC science as ideologically flawed?If not, I’ll give you a leg up.  What about finding ideological flaws in E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology, or in Richard Dawkins’s memes?But I was really seeking an example in the natural sciences, whose abstract categories of thought — like temperature and heat [totally different abstract objects that the climate skeptics conflate], or latent heat [where temperature decouples from heat] — that have no direct bearing on social class concerns.[Natural science’s divide-and-conquer division of the natural world, and its relative independence of social class, will send LBird into a tail spin, but let him prove his case by showing us a single instance of what he means, and I’ll take him seriously.]Apiarist IndustryMy point ran far deeper than your appraisal of little more than “the apiarist industry is a party to a power struggle to defend itself”.  It was the far-from-evident point that emerges from considering the scientific stressors:  “the wider apiarist industry are in this predicament right up to their necks.  The problem is of their making”.Fable of the BeesWhen I first read the sociologist’s report, I was left with the distinct impression that the beekeepers were innocent victims.  I automatically sympathized with the independent French beekeeper, who lives by spreading his hives in flowery meadows, midst rain and sunshine, and is mercilessly set upon by the global agro-chemical monopolies.

Quote:

“many French beekeepers became convinced more than a decade ago that the worsening trend of honeybee losses was linked to the introduction of Gaucho, a brand of products from the German agro-chemical company Bayer that contains Imidacloprid, a widely used neonicotinoid.”

But a glance at the scientific stressors reveals that beekeeping practice implicates the French beekeepers in typical capitalist interdependence between themselves and their agro-chemical bullies.Eden in ProvenceThe delightful insect studies conducted in 19th-century Provence by Jean-Henri Fabre — the ‘Homer of insects’ in Charles Darwin’s estimation — was a boyhood companion that constantly beat through my head as I rambled field and forest.I received as tenth birthday present Fabre’s Book of Insects, with stunning black-and-white woodblock images, to me more precious than Detmold’s tipped-in coloured paintings (protected by translucent rice paper) in the ancient 1921 edition that lay on the shelf of our school library.Fabre gave me the conviction to fight off a twelve year old, twice my size, intent on killing cicadas with his catapult.I only learnt much later that Japanese ecologists consider Fabre the father of ecology, a term I didn’t know of then, but whose content I absorbed by osmosis from the work of that great inspirer of natural science, dear old Fabre.Fabre should be patron saint of French beekeepers, but it’s distinctly possible that the modern agro-chemical generation of French beekeepers simply doesn’t know the close entomological observer their country once produced.Here, in Fabre’s own words, occasionally edited for continuity, is the world before it was invaded by modern agricultural chemistry and genetics:

Jean-Henri Fabre wrote:

“Finally, after 40 years of dreaming of it in poverty, I obtained in Provence, a tiny patch of red soil mixed with stones, with no wild thyme left, nor lavender, where I might question the Hunting Wasps and others of my insect friends in that difficult language which consists of experiments and observations.”“This curious Eden of mine is the happy hunting-ground of countless Bees and Wasps.  Never have I seen so large a population of insects at a single spot.”“Here, in my curious Eden, the Tailor-bee scrapes the cobwebby stalk of the yellow-flowered centaury plant, which she carries off proudly with her mandibles or jaws.  She will turn it, underground, into cotton satchels to hold her store of honey and the eggs.”“Here the Leaf-cutting Bees, carrying the black, white or blood-red reaping brushes under their bodies, will visit the neighbouring shrubs, and there cut from the leaves oval pieces into which to wrap their harvest.”“Here the black, velvet clad, Mason-bees work with cement and gravel.”“Here also are many varieties of Wild Bees:  One, who stacks her cells in the winding staircase of an empty snail-shell.  A second, who lodges her grubs in the pith of a dry bramble-stalk.  A third, who uses the channel of a cut reed.  A fourth, who lives rent-free in some galleries of the Mason-bee.”“Here are also Bees with horns, and Bees with brushes on their hind legs, to be used for reaping.”

Short SightedWhat I find most galling is the ready, unquestioning, acceptance of the scientific integrity of a [lefty] sociologist’s third-hand views upon scientific practice — a profession, accountable to no-one but popular prejudice and his academic, probably laborite, peers.But what is more galling is the ready, unquestioning, rejection of the scientific integrity of the ensemble of natural scientists, who are deterministically accountable to replicating their scientific results in the realm of that very nature they draw them from.That last constraint is the secret of the integrity of natural science.  It is, as nature poet Robert Frost might have said, what makes “all the difference”.

[twc]

 Colony Collapse DisorderRevenge of the BeesAn overview of the scientific and technical issues demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that, rather than being innocent victims, the commercial bee keepers and the wider apiarist industry are in this predicament right up to their necks.  The problem is of their making.LBird and YMS, please demonstrate how the following scientifically-proposed stressors exemplify anything other than stark “forms of appearance” of the normal workings of capitalism.All of this is shockingly contrary to LBird’s view that nature is a passive “social construct”, an object for cognizance by the active social subject — here the bee-keeping industry.For here we chance to glimpse just how a social construct, nature, has the indecency to thwart a capitalist industry’s commercial practice.For here we watch in horror, as nature turns active and, slowly but surely, she reacts on her own terms — the Schaffian object’s terms — rather than on the Schaffian subject’s terms.Here she attacks the rapacious industry thugs who, treating her with callous indifference, fondly hoped to sate their lust by keeping on actively raping her, as submissive social construct, contemptuously forever, and ever, and ever.Salutary as it may be to see the rapist getting his come-uppance, it’s hard not to conclude that despite the dire social consequences, for raped nature’s revenge, it’s about time!Plea for SanityThe bee industry has smoked its own hive, but craves a bail out, just like the self-immolating bankers who brought us the GFC.And, LBird and YMS, dutifully succumb to its plaintive cry, and help shift the blame, as perpetrators always manage to find willing hands, onto the hateful proletarian — here in the guise of the detested scientist.LBird and YMS, for sanity’s sake, admit you’ve fallen hook, line and sinker for the belly-aching of a capitalist industry facing its self-inflicted ruin by its very own grubby hands.LBird and YMS, confess that you’ve ignorantly sided with the terrified capitalist, powerless to halt his capital’s erosion, and you’ve unconsciously turned against the preordained-guilty proletarian — the scientist.LBird and YMS, who do you propose, in this rapacious capitalist world, who has the integrity to diagnose the cause, and solve the problem, but the scientist?Irrational Hatred of ScienceLBird, for whom no profession is more detestable than that of scientist, please moderate your venom towards the one profession in capitalism that’s based on integrity.  Desist from scapegoating the scientist for the ills of capitalism.  Your fanatical idealism is eroding your common humanity.I have never encountered such hatred as yours — such bitter contempt for the natural science that is the only reliable hope of diagnosis, and perhaps solution [in this instance] of the tragic plight of the world’s bees.Scientific StressorsPesticides — Specific agrochemical compounds disrupting the apian nervous system, e.g. neonicotinoids.Cocktails — Onslaught of a baker’s dozen of agrochemical compounds disrupting the apian nervous system.Parasites — Unregulated commercial bee trade spreading foreign apian parasites, e.g. Varroa mite.Viruses — Unregulated commercial bee trade spreading foreign apian viruses [e.g. nosema infection; Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus].Breeding — Apiarists selectively destroying genetic diversity among bee populations.GMO — Genetically modified organisms [GMO] damaging apian immune systems.Pollination — Monocultural pollination inducing migratory stress on dependent bee colonies.Destruction of Native Pollinators — Monocultural exotics out-competing the multicultural endemics — destruction of the native.Global Warming — Shifting seasons disturbing sexual-reproduction cycles.Global Warming — Extreme weather disrupting foraging cycles.Global Warming — Environmental changes altering the colony’s world.Deforestation — Destruction of native wildflower meadows — the bee colony’s means of production.All of the Above — Capitalism.[Source: http://sociologicalinsect.com/2013/09/16/colony-collapse-disorder/%5DCommercial Problem — Scientific SolutionEvery single stressor is commercial in origin, and is expressly not scientific in origin.LBird and YMS, only through natural science can we hope to determine which stressors are the active ones.  Only through natural science can we determine the seat of the stressor — nectar, pollen, petals, leaves, grasses, water, air.You are left with an insoluble riddle of your own making:  natural science is made responsible for causing the mess [even though it’s clearly not the actual culprit, the capitalist class] and yet natural science is still considered our only activity capable of clearing up the mess [not the capitalist class, which is both culpable and incapable].  Chew on that riddle!What flipping use here is Schaffian cognizance of pre-theorized objects in any but a vapid destructive superficial sense?‘Philosopers’ of ScienceThe most LBird gleans from out of this is cause to gloat over confirmation in the twaddle of unnamed and unsourced professionals in “the field of science, technology and society”.What a state capitalism has come to when its professional commentators on science can, from the authority of their sociology chairs, theorizing while sitting in the academic study, deflect hatred from the capitalist class onto the scientist, working out there in the field or experimenting in the laboratory!No wonder Thomas Kuhn, as soon as he discovered philosophy-of-science’s self-important prescribers to scientists of precisely how they ought to conduct their scientific practice ‘correctly’, fled that debased pontificating profession as fast as he could, never to return to it.Is This Your Alarming Flaw in Natural Science?LBird, if this is your single example of a gross alarming flaw in natural science, socialism has nothing to fear of science, and everything to admire.

[twc]

LBird wrote:

twc didn't like my quoting of Smith when twc wanted a 'science' quote.  twc separates out so-called 'hard science', like physics, from so-called 'soft science', like sociology.  This can't be done: it is methodologically incorrect.

I didn’t dislike your quoting.  I felt pity.I saw your ploy as casuistry — something you’ve never repudiated.  You openly avow casuistry as proletarian science’s signature methodology.I saw your behaviour as adequate demonstration of your Schaffian-inspired practice of subjective selection–rejection of the object of cognition by prior theory.Recall the Context

twc, in #161 wrote:

Please explain why you assert that “in a Communist society … we assume humans can understand our society and its products.”Please explain how you propose that we put the authority of the market under our democratic control.All scientists have worked under some form of private-property social system: ancient chattel slavery, medieval feudalism or modern capitalism.Most scientists of the past were inspired by social and religious precepts that we would now despise.Given the above, please show us just one instance of any piece of substantial scientific work performed by any natural or mathematical scientist which should, in your opinion, have been rejected but instead survived scrutiny merely because the scientist and the profession “believed in private property in the means of production”.[Here I expressly exclude those scientists who are the hired prize fighters of capitalism’s economics profession or its social scientists.]One instance please, so that we gain a clear understanding of what you are driving at.

Long History of Unification of ScienceWe can discuss the unity of science later;  First, some history.The supreme trio: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx, saw unified science as the indispensable framework of their work.So did 18th century French encyclopedists Diderot and d’Alembert.So did 19th century German nature-philosopher Schelling, French utopians Fourier and Saint Simon and his disciple, and father of positivism, Comte.  So too did 19th century German materialists [not fit intellectual company for LBird] Büchner, Vogt and Langer, et tutti frutti.Theorizing DisunityOnce more LBird exposes his ‘theorizing’.  For LBird, a socialist who distinguishes between natural and social sciences must ipso facto reject their underlying unity.On the other hand, LBird [like Lassalle strutting before Marx] announces LBird will unite that which Marx failed (in LBird’s humble opinion) to unite.In this he is fortunate in the arrival on the scene of that exemplary model of scientific imprecision, the Schaffian materialist cognition of external objects, as conceived idealistically by LBird.LBird, you can only unite that which is already disunited, and thereby ipso facto you must on your own ‘theorizing’ already reject the underlying unity you crave.A marxian socialist quite easily makes the commonly agreed distinction between natural and social sciences.A marxian socialist accepts their unification in materialist conception of history terms — which your anti-materialist interpretation of Schaff opposes — and in none other!For a marxian socialist, it’s as easy as a darwinian distinguishing dogs from cats.Alarm over Scientific PracticeLBird, I was asking you to substantiate to us your doubts over scientific truth with concrete examples of scientific theory in the natural sciences surviving because its practitioners “believed in private property in the means of production”.Up till now you have given alarmist abstract examples of the — would you trust a scientist;  or atomic scientists have known evil;  or active scientific practice of truth is human and must be decided contemplatively by passive human democracy — variety.I doubt that you are equipped with “thousands” of LBirdian concrete examples, but only one will suffice, so that we may judge the extent of your concerns.If you could find just one convincing example coming from within the natural sciences then you might possibly have exposed a fatal flaw in modern scientific methodology — not just in how bourgeois scientists conceive or misconceive their social practice — but a flaw that demolishes our bourgeois-established scientific abstractions wrested from external nature.  That would be a welcome scientific discovery indeed.Where is your concrete example of bourgeois ideology preventing natural scientists from comprehending natural systems that demonstrate humanity’s natural science is methodologically flawed?Science is SubversiveI repeat from my first post to you — science is our most subversive activity.Sure, bourgeois society turns scientists into philosophical dualists, who hold a critical attitude towards their science, but also hold an accommodating attitude towards their society.But the scientist is consciously constrained to practice scientific integrity.  Nature forces him, as it does the engineer, to pursue his craft subservient to her ways, and not to his own will.  Nature is not deceived.Nature is a robust materialist, and subverts fragile human ideas.We recall that scientific integrity is something that LBird avowedly eschews in his own model of ‘proletarian science’ as being failed bourgeois scientific practice.However, the practicing scientist [even if of the bourgeois kind] is not an LBirdian.The practicing scientist is actively constrained by the piece of the universe he seeks to cognize.  In the long run, nature forces him to follow her.  His will is powerless before hers.Consequently, the practicing scientist is forced to follow his science fearlessly wherever it may lead him.  He only deludes himself if he thinks he can bend nature to his thoughts.If the practicing scientist’s ideas controlled science, he could hardly be practicing research.  He would already cognize it all.Ally or EnemyIncreasingly, as giant corporations commandeer science, the practicing scientist comes face-to-face with a commercial interest his scientific activity threatens.Increasingly, science unconsciously assists socialism in exposing anti-scientific practice in the interests of capital — particularly in environmental science, ecology, global warming — but must moderate its voice so as not to offend capital.Anti-scientific practice can only be practice that consciously opposes scientific theory.  It is scientific fraud.Nobody denies that, but no socialist believes that that is the issue you want to solve for socialism.Big corporations are currently successful at taming the scientist politically, but they can’t forever stave off the day when the evil, untrustworthy, elitist [LBird] scientists come out, and reveal themselves as our honest, trustworthy, sociable proletarian allies.So, What’s the Bourgeois Flaw in Natural Science?No-one believes the abstract theory of aerodynamics is flawed by bourgeois ideology to the extent that [its instances] jet aircraft fall out of the sky.Society relies on the abstract determinism of the inverse-square law from commuting on foot or by car, to bridge building, to firing rockets to Mars.Where is your evidence so that we may independently judge the seriousness of your concern?

[twc]

Theory and PracticeTheory precedes practice.Practice precedes theory.Does the human condition comprise a vicious cycle of (1) ⇆ (2),  or does it comprise just (1) or (2)?(1)  IdealismRealist LBird and absolute-idealist Hegel hold that     “theory [spirit/mind] is prior to practice” (1).LBird and Hegel hold differing philosophical views, and yet both are united in holding idealist philosophical priority of theory over practice, even if for different reasons.  [LBird has asserted “a thousand times, that theory precedes practice”.]Hegel’s proof of (1) lies in the working out of his philosophical system in the concrete world of phenomena through history.LBird’s proof of (1) is now so obvious it’s a “no-brainer” — common sense — and those who disagree “ignore the conditions that exist prior to practice” and are “fundamentally conservatives” who don’t have a plan of action for the future. AbstractionThis is where LBird exposes his theorizing.  For LBird, materialists who hold the priority of practice over theory, must ipso facto deny theory itself and confront the world blindfolded.In actuality, materialists affirm that theory is the essential indispensable product of practice.  They also affirm that practice is the essential subverter of theory.  Practice is ultimately what keeps theory honest.LBird must surely understand that abstraction never corresponds unmediated to the concrete from which it was abstracted.That’s why we need abstract theory, so that we can mentally concretize our abstractions and deterministically plonk them back into the concrete ensemble whence we got them, in order that we may comprehend that ensemble in theoretical terms.That’s why you can find Marx’s statements that appear to contradict his avowed guiding principle, the materialist conception of history.CrisisA marxian materialist is bound to see the world as process, recognizing that both (1) and (2) hold in different phases of the same social process. The phase in which theory dictates practice (1) is the social phase that corresponds to normality — stasis.  It’s what we fondly hope might happen forever, all of the time.But mankind’s theory is not robust enough to last forever.  Stasis is temporary.  Theory is provisional.Unexpectedly, from out of the blue, practice precipitates a crisis in theory.And, when theoretical crisis strikes, it shakes our misplaced confidence in theory to the core.Crisis is nothing other than theory failing to dictate practice [not (1)].It is then that we truly glimpse who is actually the boss — practice or theory!Theoretical crisis is that rare, but precious, moment when we actually get to glimpse the reality beneath the cracks of confident theory.Theoretical crisis forces mankind to confront the delusional side of its theory, and to comprehend crisis’s salutary lesson that mankind’s theory is, after all is said and done, only mankind’s comprehension of its own social practice.It is disruptive crisis that reveals precisely how dependent man’s mental construction—his theory—is on his robust activity—his practice.Crisis, and its resolution cries out to all the world: the demise of theory by practice!  The profane assault of practice upon theory lets slip the hidden esoteric truth, beyond all doubt, that practice actually dictates theory (2)!It is through crisis that we find the explanation of exactly why we must let theory dictate practice in normal times — precisely because crisis has just disclosed its secret: that human theory is nothing other than the abstraction of human practice.That is why, in subservience to theory, our practice is, in actuality, in subservience to its very own abstraction.Practice replicating its theoretical self, fools LBird into thinking that theory dictates practice.The only way human practice can operate in the world is as reflection of its own abstraction.LBird, how can your pre-Marxian Schaffian selection of concrete objects by prior theory account for those shocking moments when subversive practice precipitates crisis in prior theory, without acknowledging the subservience of prior theory to subversive practice?(2)  MaterialismMarx, in opposition to LBird and Hegel, holds that ‘social being [existence] determines consciousness’ — his materialist conception of history (2).  That is materialism.LBird rejects Marx’s materialist conception of history — Marx’s guiding principle (2) for his own guiding principle (1).On the RoadLBird may very well be setting out on a road to the unification of natural and social sciences, although that seems unlikely.Whatever road LBird is on, it is a non-Marxian road.  LBird has acknowledged that.

[twc]

Please explain how Marx doesn't oppose you.

[twc]

Anti-Marx

Marx (Preface to the Critique) wrote:

The guiding principle of my studies:The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

Marx opposes LBird’s guiding principle that theory [consciousness] precedes practice [social existence].LBird accuses all such opponents of LBird’s own guiding principle, as clinging to the “fundamentally conservative stance of pre-Popperian induction, and of holding a positivist bucket theory of mind, in which the mind is a passive bucket into which sensual experience just pours itself”.For LBird, Marx never kicked the [pre-Popperian] bucket!Poor Marx.  If only he’d been born post Popper.

[twc]

Marx and Schaff

LBird wrote:

'theory' must precede 'practice', otherwise how do we account for the moment of 'selection'?

The answer is, of course, practice!

Hegel (Smaller Logic) wrote:

Such a doctrine would find its parallel, if we had said that eating was impossible before we had acquired a knowledge of the chemical, botanical and zoological characters of our food; and that we must delay digestion until we had finished the study of anatomy and physiology.

Why Schaff gets it WrongBefore society has the freedom to theorize, it is compelled to practice.  It must practically reproduce its own conditions of existence.Schaff forgets that his own privileged academic freedom to ‘select’ whatever theoretical object of cognition he so desires, rests upon the social unfreedom that removes this freedom of selection from the working class.Instead, the working class, which performs the indispensable practice of reproducing society, spends its working life cognizing objects that are thrust upon it by its ruling class.Consequently the working class’s objects of cognition are not of its own freely active ‘selection’.  To that extent, the working class can be said to start out as reluctant passive selector of its objects of cognition.In the course of performing society’s necessary social labour on behalf of the whole of society [including performing privileged Schaff’s social quota for him] the working class is forced to settle for cognizing objects that directly oppose its desires.Of course, the working class must eventually come to actively cognize its alien capitalist objects of cognition out of social necessity for its own survival as a working class.  But those objects themselves are not there to be cognized in the working class’s direct interest but in the indirect interests of the capitalist class.To consider working-class cognition as comprising “moments of selection”, informed by ‘theory’, is to abuse the terms selection and theory.  Theirs are moments of taking orders, subservient to expanding capital.  ‘Prior theory’ turns out to be post-festum rationalization of class rule.Nature’s CompulsionBefore man has a chance to theorize what he’s doing, he must act to reproduce his conditions of existence.This compulsion holds for all living creatures — even those unconscious ones and those stationary ones that are rooted to the spot, like limpets.  It is nature’s dominance over life, or life’s dependence upon nature.The most that man can do, as sentient creature, is for him to comprehend nature and to wield that comprehension in his own interest.  As mere part of nature, he can never circumvent it.Materialist Conception of HistoryMarx has no time for this thread’s tripartite formula — the traditional philosophical trinity of cognition.For Marx, man doesn’t freely set out to seek theory — knowledge of [concrete] objects.  Man’s theory is part of the social superstructure.For Marx, man’s life is practical.  Man is above all compelled to reproduce his conditions of living.The social relationships, that society forms out of necessity to reproduce itself, constitute Marx’s social base, upon which arises society’s theoretical superstructure.All such social relations, that are formed and sustained in order to reproduce society, can only be the necessary “forms of appearance” of social determinism — of nature compelling society to reproduce itself.The most fundamental of these social relations are those of ownership and control of the means whereby society must reproduce its conditions of existence. They form the core of the social base, since they continually reproduce themselves as the true invariants of a social formation.So long as the relations of ownership and control of social reproduction persist, so too does their particular mode of relaying determinism, and hence so too does that form of society.As we all know, the history of society, since the advent of private property in the means of social reproduction, has consisted in long periods of stasis in class ownership and control of the means of reproduction. Or looked at actively, it has consisted in long periods of stasis in which ruling classes have robbed and ruled the rest of society in their very own characteristic way.We should never forget that history has turned out this way, not by chance, but deterministically, precisely because rule and ownership are always and everywhere aided and abetted by the social determinism for society to reproduce itself.Comprehend that, and you comprehend the necessity for socialism, and the necessity for socialism to reproduce itself.The social relations that nature imposes upon society to reproduce its conditions of existence are appropriately compulsive relations in class societies.  In a society, in which the means of social reproduction are common property and democratically controlled, these indispensable relations are deterministically cooperative.In other words, common ownership and democratic control keep on reproducing social cooperation at the same time as they keep on reproducing socialist society as socialist society.Comments on SchaffThe following thoughts arose from reading Chapter 1 of Schaff.  The book is hard to find, and I have only read his first chapter on cognition.Schaff knows practice, and so insistently characterizes man as relating to objects through practice as “reflecting interaction”.  In other words, cognition remains for him merely cognition of the object that is external to him.  In that way Schaff preserves vestiges of Lenin’s cognition of objects.I have no idea how close Schaff approaches Marx’s discovery of the social foundation in the necessity for society to act collectively [though not necessarily cooperatively] to reproduce itself, whether society comprehends what it’s doing or not, and in so doing comes to comprehend its own practice.I have no idea how close he comes to recognizing that society comprehends its own practice when it perceives the necessity of its own practice.Finally, two minor points …Marx identified human essence with “the ensemble of social relations.” [Thesis VI].  Schaff, at times, asserts that Marx identifies the human individual with the ensemble of social relations.Schaff’s [concrete] objectivity would seem to rule out his ostensible concern — history and truth — whose content does not lie “outside of any cognizing mind and independently of it”.

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I must suppose that what Aron said was that you can’t do history without a theory of history.  And Schaff is quite correctly agreeing with that.In this context, the “philosophy [= theory] of history” is logically prior to doing any history.  In Kuhnian terms, that is the straightforward way to conduct “normal science” [well, of conducting normal history].But whether Schaff is prepared to ignore the other side of the coin that only comes with Hegel’s dusk — when we find out what we really were doing all along — that period of revolutionary transcendence — we can only speculate.  However, one thing is certain, even Schaff is not giving himself whole-heartedly to Aron’s absolute claim.

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See post #132.Einstein is saying something different — that it is theory that determines what may be observed.  Nobody disagrees.However, the revolutionary science of designing a new theory out of the wreckage of the old is bound to be a stormy and contentious process, in which generalizations are flung around.I don’t think that the quantum mechanists were greatly impressed by this statement’s relevance to the issue at hand — for they proceeded to ignore it, I feel.

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Not according to Schaff p. 47, it was Raymond Aron.

Schaff wrote:

If philosophy cannot be eliminated from history, if on the contrary (as Raymond Aron maintains and, given a certain interpretation of his statement, I agree with him completely) “theory precedes history”[R. Aron, “Introduction to the Philosohy of History ”. 1948]

I have no knowledge of what that certain interpretation of his statement involves.  But, you see, Schaff has reservations over the absolute claim.At the most trivial level, history has already taken place before the historian arrives on the scene. But that’s another thread.

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Schemas for Discussing LBird’s Theory of CognitionCognitive Trinity — Schaff

Schaff wrote:

“A framework of an activistically modified theory of reflection, a model of cognitive relationship in which both the subject and object retain an objective and real existence and, simultaneously interact upon each other.”“This takes place within the framework of the subject’s social practice, as it recognizes the object in the course of activity.” [History and Truth, pp. 51 and 52].

Schema 1Here is a representation of Schaff’s model of cognition.Follow the arrows of advancing time [history] → top-left to top-right; then ↓ down to bottom right; then ← reverse from bottom-right to bottom-left; then ↑ up to top-left again.       knowledge → subject → object ↓     ↑  knowledge ← subject ← objectIn the Schaffian cycle of cognition, knowledge is built — not by iteration [accretion] — but by recursion [the new modifies the past as foundation by building upon it].Schema 2Here is an alternative representation — with the [abstract] phases of the Schaffian cognition process numbered and annotated with Schaffian terminology.Follow it downwards 1 to 9 in time [history] and then back to 1.  knowledge [theory]    → [guides]        subject [society]            → [practice]                object [nature]            ← [reflects]        subject [society]    ← [transforms]  knowledge [theory]            repeat ad infinitumConsensusAre you happy with either representation 1 or 2 for agreed discussion?Schaffian InterpretationFrom my reading of the posts, you hold the following Schaffian interpretation:Knowledge = theory.Knowledge is irreducibly subjective Schaffian objective cognition because the “active role of the subject in the process of cognition” necessarily brings with it the subject’s technology, language and social class [History and Truth, pp. 64 and 65].Schaffian objective cognition claims objectivity because it (1) reflects, by Schaffian objective-social reflection, an object which exists outside of the perceiving mind, and independently of it; (2) it possesses content that is of social and not just of individual value; (3) it is not “emotionally coloured”.Therefore Schaffian knowledge comprises our subjective internal [abstract] concepts of objective external [concrete] objects.Subject = society.

Schaff wrote:

“Firstly, the Marxist concept of the human individual as an ‘ensemble of social relations’.” [History and Truth, p. 58.]

The Schaffian subject is, depending on context, (1) the human individual understood as, in reality, a truly social being; (2) society as a whole — the ensemble of social relations which determines the consciousness of the human individual; or (3) a social class within society.Practice = social practice.

Schaff wrote:

“The cognizing subject ‘photographs’ reality while possessing a specific socially created mechanism which guides the “lens” of this apparatus.”“In addition it ‘transforms’ the information obtained on the basis of a complicated code of social conditionings which enter his psychical make-up by means of the language with which he thinks, through his class position and group interests connected with it, through conscious and subconscious motivation and, above all, through his social activity without which cognition is speculative fiction.” [History and Truth, p. 58.]“The par excellence active character of the subject of cognition is linked with the fact … that man comes to cognition by action.” [History and Truth, p. 59.]

Object = nature.For materialist Schaff, nature is the concrete realm where all external [concrete] things exist independently of us.

Schaff wrote:

“For materialists … the [concrete] object of cognition, being the external stimulus of sensory impressions of the cognizing subject exists objectively, that is, outside of any cognizing mind and independently of it.” [History and Truth, p. 52.]“all theories of reflection … agree that the object of cognition is knowable” — even if they interpret it differently. [History and Truth, p. 61.]

Reflect = Schaffian reflection.Unfortunately for us non-Polish speakers, Schaff’s detailed theory of reflection remains inaccessible:

Schaff wrote:

“As for a more detailed interpretation of this problem [of reflection] … we must refer the reader to our earlier works on the subject — [A. Schaff, Niektóre zagadnienia marxistowskiej teorii prawdy]” [History and Truth, p. 62.]

However, the content seems clear enough from:

Schaff wrote:

“The objectively existing object of cognition is the external source of sensual impressions”“the object is knowable [and] in the process of cognition ‘The thing in itself’ becomes ‘The thing for us’.” [History and Truth, p. 62.]

Are you happy to proceed on this basis?

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LBird wrote:

Humans predetermine which 'sense-impressions' count.

Yes, but not in the first instance by thinking but by doing — by acting not by contemplating — by practice not by theory.Comprehension comes later.  That is the nub of “social being determines consciousness”.Action First, Theory LaterThis is the fundamental position of Marxian cognition, openly taken from, and in agreement with, the supreme Idealist thinker Hegel.Marx’s critique of Hegel was simply that Hegel only knew theoretical action — action of the philosophical kind — and not practical action — action of the necessity-to-reproduce-society kind.It is worth taking the time to comprehend what Hegel is driving at in his Preface to the Philosophy of Right.

Hegel wrote:

“Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be.  For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late.  Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready.  History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom.When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of “Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.”

Schaff’s model of cognition can be said to follow Hegel and Marx.  It starts with society [subject] that acts [that’s your “interaction”].  But Schaff can only see the subject [society] acting on an object, whereas with Marx it is compelled to act in concert to reproduce itself.This is in diametric opposition to the stuff you’ve gleaned third-hand from Lakatos.Recall Thesis VIII

Marx wrote:

All social life is essentially practical.  All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.

Comprehension, as Hegel profoundly says, only takes wing at dusk.

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Classical Political Economy

LBird wrote:

Weath of Nations by Adam Smith.

Nonsense.  Marx expressed supreme intellectual respect for the giants of classical political economy — Petty, Quesnay, Smith, Ricardo — and for the scientific foundation they laid for understanding the functioning of capitalism.His Capital pays them the greatest homage a scientist can ever extend to his scientific forebears — he takes their scientific achievement absolutely seriously, to the extent of rescuing forgotten achievements from obscurity.And he honours them by critiquing their intellectual labours from a later social time, and a vantage made possible from the theory they bequeathed him

Marx in Capital, Vol 1 wrote:

By classical Political Economy, I understand that economy which, since the time of W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society in contradistinction to vulgar [political] economy, which deals with appearances only.

Note, Marx’s crucial distinction between appearance and reality.But DJP is quite correct.  Political economy is a social science not a natural science.  We all expect social science to be consciously or unconsciously inspired by class positions.  Every socialist is hourly reminded of that.But natural science is another matter.  Please give us one example from the natural sciences so that we may understand your concerns.Confusing the Natural and the SocialSchaff’s “theory of cognition” expressly starts from natural objects that exist independently of cognizing society.  Yet when you attempt to explain him, you deliberately start with a social object — the NHS — whose [disgusting] existence is entirely dependent on society.In the case of Adam Smith, you deliberately — against your mentor Schaff, who is a historian openly conscious of working outside the natural sciences — make the same identification of the natural and the social.And, as usual, in your treatment of scientists you look down on, you savagely malign them from a position of prejudice and, it seems to me, complete ignorance.[That’s just like Lakatos — if Ptolemy is pseudo science then so is Copernicus, because they adopt identical scientific methodology.  In which case, our central Sun is Lakatosian pseudo science, something the philosopher never intended to imply.]I haven’t the reference to hand — it’s possibly in Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value — where he praises Smith as the great representative of capitalism in its developing stage, as a fearless pursuer of scientific truth, and a man endowed with [and this is the highest praise] genuine scientific naivety and wonder, willing to follow the science honestly wherever it leads him.[What changed, in the interim, was the rise of the working class and its equally fearless political economy that homed in on the class vulnerability of Smith and Ricardo.]You trivialize Marx’s Capital, which he offered to the world as his critique of political economy, if you dismissively consider for the sake of your argument that classical political economy “should have been rejected”.  You unconsciously accuse Marx of wasting his time.The irony is that those — who did believe in private property in the means of production — did reject classical political economy because it failed to develop the [abstract] concept of marginal utility, which was less vulnerable to working class attack.Please make the necessay distinction — as your Schaff clearly does — between the natural and the social, and show us any natural science that has survived professional scrutiny merely because the scientist and the profession “believed in private property in the means of production”.

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