Young Master Smeet
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Here's what I don't get. How is science being done by scientists different from baking being done by bakers? Sure, we'll have democratic control over the whole system, but bakers will be free to bake as they see fit, in democratic workplaces. No one will worry about a secret cabal of bakers (though they will have to be transparent about their methods, for our safety). Collective action doesn't mean everyone doing everything together, in fact, it's quite the opposite, it's people acting separately to achieve results for the community. If I have to do all my own baking, and all my own science, that is the acme of indvidiualism. I've outlined before how collectively members of the community ciould carry out science within a democratic framework. I simply can't see any point in voting on their results.
SPINTCOM > Files > Standing Orders Committee and look for the file called "Inaugural Meeting" (members only).
An example of the ideology of truth: it is entirely true that some people fiddle the welfare. This is incontrovertible. If this becomes the significant fact that is dwelt upon, that is an action of ideology. It doesn't change the truth (in fact, no factual disputation will avail, dole is for scroungers becomes the whole of thought).I would thus argue that ideology is distinct from error, misaprehension and social deixis.
Also, I'll pray in aid:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problemFermi estimation: sometims a rule of thumb is good science. Assumingfootballers are simply two metre high cones produces roughly useful figures for modelling rugby tackles, for instance. Truth just has to coincide with the world enough.
And the process of science is around minimising the potential for bias. You or could have an interesting argument down the pub arguing whether or not a wall was yellow. We couldn't dispute, after measured, whether it was reflecting light with a wavelength between 570 and 590 nanometers. Per Azimov's essay, we could refine that reading down with sucessively more powerful instruments, and get to ever smaller decimal places in our findings. That would be a fact which exists for me because it exists for another. Whether I choose to accept that fact will play with my biases. What I do with that fact will depend on my biass (yes, the truth is ideological too).
LBird wrote:YMS wrote:… ideology is by almost its definition unconscious …Who's 'definition'?
Well, Marx' (according to Zizek:http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/cynicism-as-a-form-of-ideology/
Charlie(ish) wrote:The most elementary definition of ideology is probably the well-known phrase from Marx's Capital: "Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es" ("they do not know it, but they are doing it"). The very concept of ideology implies a kind of basic, constitutive naïveté: the misrecognition of its own presuppositions, of its own effective conditions, a distance, a divergence between so-called social reality and our distorted representation, our false consciousness of it.Arguably, the dismal conservative view of humans as fallen is more suited to the notion that we will always be biased (per my mention of Tebbit before).(Article linked to for the phrase from Marx, though it is indicative of the sorts of debates that go on around this topic).
But, Shirley, ideology is by almost its definition unconscious (or non-conscious)? After all, that's why Althusser maintained that we could see ideology in literature, because it was exteriorised and, in a way, more alienated. At least, ion most of the models (I would exclude Chomskyian versions, because of the implicit intentionalism he ascribes to ideological actors, although, again, for the objects of propaganda, knowing ideology as ideology destroys its status as ideology).
I tend to post links on the basis that they are interesting, and perheps worthy fo further discussion, always with the proviso that I believe all Yorkshiremen are liars and everything that follows from that statement.
Indeed, in its own terms, fascism is not only right, but it's actions are tragically necessary to save the world from Bolshevism and the Jewish conspiracy. That all ideologies are equally valid is the outcome of your position, not mine. After all, is the abolition of the nation, of property and family a monstrous outcome of filthy socialist ideology?It is perfectly possible to do abhorent things scientifically: a science of torture is abomnible but does exist. The science of the atomic bomb and autonomous killer robots exists. Knowing how is different, though, from doing.
But then if everything is ideology, then it becomes a banal observation, and it becomes the eternal truth. Why should one ideology matetr any more than any other? It simply becomes the sort of thing accepted by Norman Tebbit (I recall seeing in an OU programme about ideology) blithely saying "Well, yes, everyone is biased, that's natural and indeed good, in some ways" never mind, lets get on. It's also the bedrock of empiricists what I have met.Now, there is an extent to which Goedel's theorem does demand ideology, or at least, unsupportable presuppositions, to use Austin's term. But that is arguable, and they can be laid bare. And it also has bnothing to say about class power.I'd suggest, in socialism, we wouldn't call these things ideology, just points of view.
On the founding conference name debate:
Quote:Anderson and Lehane moved:"That the name of the Party Shall be 'The Socialist Party of Great Britain."'Neumann and Blaustein moved an amendment:"That the name of the Party Shall be 'The Social-Democratic Party'".A good discussion followed, Hawkins, Jackson, E. Allen, Turner and Kent speaking in favour of the motion, and Martin, Mrs. Salaman, Killick and Albery for the amendment. On a show of hands, there voted for the amendment 27 against 76. The amendment was therefore deemed lost.Martin and Neumann moved a further amendment:-"That the name of the Party should be 'The Social-Democratic Party of Great Britain'."After some discussion a vote was taken, and there were 31 in favour and 73 against. The amendment was declared lost.Another amendment was moved by McEntee and Hutchens:"That the name of the Party shall be 'The Socialist Party of Great Britain and Ireland'." This amendment was also lost, only 6 voting in favour.There being no further amendments, the motion: "That the name of the Party shall be 'The Socialist Party of Great Britain' was put to the meeting and carried by 91 votes to 3. The announcement of the result was greeted with loud applause.Via SPINTCOM files
Do hunter gatherers have ideology? Certainly, they have a world view (although the extent to which that 'blinkers' them may well be an interpollation of anthropologists imposing a protstant schema onto the purported and reported susperstition of the 'primitives' is debatable).Anyway, some recent reading. noticeably in Botrh Pannekoek's HIstory of Astronomy, and Isaac Azimov's popular science behemoth New Guide to Science they both observe a significant shift, from about the birth of the Royal Society[*] from individual's working in attics to collective science as expressed in correspondence and societies. Now, this must be a part of the standard history of science to have been mentioned by both writers so.Now, I've also been reading a book on the application of statistics to football (I pass ont heir prediction that there will be around 1,000 goals in the premier league this year, at an average of 2.6 per match). Now, such statistics are being driven by the technology that suddenly makes measuring a complex phenomena like soccer possible, before we simply could not. It has been tried, they quote Charles Reep, a pioneer of soccer stats:"Provide a counter to reliance on memory, tradition and impressions that lead to soccer ideologies" Here The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong / By Chris Anderson, David Sally.Interestingly, a quick google search for Reep & Ideology threw up this tidbit:"But the essential problem with Reep, as Barney Ronay masterfully detailed in a 2003 When Saturday Comes column, was that despite his experience as an accountant, his approach to understanding football was marked more by ideology than science." HereIn common parlance, ideology is one of those irregular verbs: I am scientific, you are mistaken, he/she/it is an ideologue. of course, ideology 101 tells us that precisely is ideology in action. Interestingly, though, the accusation levelled by Anderson and Sally is that Reep, who was a mid twentieth century technocrat, precisely let his assumptions get in the way of the data. So Anderson and Sally tell us that a manager can account for as much as 15% of a teams success, then that is what the data tells us.Anyway, two last tidbits. Firstly, remember you can get most books for free (or a very small charge from your public library) and Worldcat can help you find out if a library near you actually has a book in stock (Universities may let you pay for a reference ticket).Finally, I leave you with Asimov on the wrongness of wrong, which is quite relevent, IMNSHO, to discussions here.http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
OK, poll ended:http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_498584c6116bc7ebSome points. I could have chosen cartoon characters, favourite deserts, or anything, but I wanted somethign people on the board could feel connected to. I was only after non-random preference orderings, so I was a touch narked when a few people took the poll seriously enough to just enter spoilt or effectively blank ballots — though I suppose it is illustrative of what would happen in practice.Yes, there were some errors in set up that could have been overcome with more preparation. Is houldn't have allowed voting while write in votes were in operation (that meant that early votes cast effectively didn't count against about half the options); I think I shouldn't have allowed "No opinion" options, again, because that meant a straight abstention, it would have been better to have forced a low ranking; none of the above should have been called re-open nominations. And "Breat Britain".Aside from that the results have been moderately instructive.So, if we had only had a first past the post race, the results would have been:World Socialist Movement (Britain) 4World Socialist Party UK3None of the above2World Socialist Party of Breat Britain2World Socialist Movement UK1World Socialist Party (Britain)1World Socialist Party (GB)1World Socialist Party (UK)1Clearly, opinion would be split, and the result would be unsatisfactory to many (and lack a mjaority legitimacy). So, by some procedure, to make a decision, we'd have to winnow down the choices. Yes, we could have gone to a committee, but the result would have been the same, a choice of a less preferred option for some of the electorate, at least the below actually reflects the degree to which people support alternatives. 123456789101112131. B : World Socialist Party UK -978897108898102. A: World Socialist Party of Breat Britain 3-7867968877103. World Socialist Movement UK (write-in) 76-9891071298784. World Socialist Movement (Britain) (write-in) 765-8867968855.
World Socialist Movement in Great Britain 5667-7768788106. World Socialist Party (Britain) (write-in) 56567-97996767. World Socialist Party (UK) (write-in) 644774-7987758. C: World Socialist Party of England and Scotland 1556545-6676109. World Socialist Party (GB) (write-in) 76367557-887610. World Socialist Movement (GB) (write-in) 765775577-88511. F: Common Ownership League 3545476565-7912. E: The Wage Labour Abolition Society 45454665755-1013. None of the above (write-in) 233625626632-World Socialist Party UK is the undisputed winner, ranked above evry other choice by more voters.What I'd suggest is that we could use such polls, not to make final decisions, but in place of the committee (or by a wider committee), after which we could have a fuller vote on either confirming the result, or between the top two choices. The rich information given by the rankings helps us understand trends in thought.
