Young Master Smeet
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DJP,Ideas look like they are immaterial and infinite, but they require processor time (to abuse a computer analogy), and can only come into being through the transformation of energy.
I used that quote since it seems an adequate refutation of your claim that value, for Chucky, doesn't contain an iota of matter.My view is that value is material, entirely and completely and is subject to the laws of thrmodynamics, it is only created (and destroyed) in so much as it is one thing transformed into another, ultimately energy from the sun.
Lbird,what I wrote was a (slightly edited for context) quote from Marx. "Substance" and "Material" (Materiatur)are his words.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/appendix.htm
With regard to value, what I think is that only through a general character does the value-form correspond to the concept of value. The value-form had to be a form in which commodities appear for one another as a mere jelly of undifferentiated, homogenous human labour, i.e. as expressions in the form of things of the same labour-substance. For they are all material expressions of the same labour, of the labour contained in the linen or as the same material expression of labour, namely as linen. Thus they are qualitatively equated.
LBird wrote:Well, perhaps I've succeeded (at last!) in pointing out to you the difference between a 'realist' and a 'physicalist' view of nature.It's your choice, comrade, which ideology you want to employ to help you to understand the world (physical and social).Leaving aside the substantive issue of 'value', etc. and how we understand it, I'm just glad that I've been able to finally explain something!I think it's more like we now understand your terminology. You say Critical Realism, I say Cultural Materialism, after the deaths of millions of electrons, we now agree that what we've been calling materialism is what you call critical realism….Now, potato, or potato?
Wikipedia wrote:Transcendental realism attempts to establish that in order for scientific investigation to take place, the object of that investigation must have real, manipulable, internal mechanisms that can be actualised to produce particular outcomes. This is what we do when we conduct experiments. This stands in contrast to empiricist scientists' claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between cause and effect and impose meaning. Whilst empiricism, and positivism more generally, locate causal relationships at the level of events, Critical Realism locates them at the level of the generative mechanism, arguing that causal relationships are irreducible to empirical constant conjunctions of David Hume's doctrine; in other words, a constant conjunctive relationship between events is neither sufficient nor even necessary to establish a causal relationship.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_realism_%28philosophy_of_the_social_sciences%29Not so far from what Engels said, unless I'm misreading one or the other heinously…
DJP,of the cuff, I'd say that the point is that subject and object are not separate but part of the same thing/process, the concepts are a part of the system that needs them (or, another way, that concepts are just transformations of the same substance).Let's not forget my basic oprating position is that I don't exist, the mental state called 'I' is just a retroactive justification of a small portion of my brain for the operations of the meat-bot and it's associated system.
LBird,Maybe we come from different experiences of philosophy, but I'm actually a bit sniffy about real, given its etymology, i.e. that real = royal, i.e. that what is real is a product of authority (Money is "real" because the King says so). Maybe you could define what you mean by real (and by critical-realism)?
DJP wrote:But where then does this "real substance of social relations" exist?Everywhere, and, importantly, historically, during the process of creation: i.e. in the concrete social actions of sensuous human beings,
LBird,Charlie pre-dated Einstein by a wee bit, so didn't have the benefit of knowing (or is that "flapping") that E=MC^2, i.e. that matter and energy are the same thing.Anyway, it would have helped if you'd continued the quote:
Uncle Charles wrote:If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.My bold. The value is a substance, and definitely material. That is, not in human minds, not in the mind of God, but in the real substance of social relations.
I think you're working slightly hard to drive a wedge between Charlie and Freddy, given Fred acknowledges the contingency of knowledge himself.I think what this discussion needs is a bit of "For whomness" — science for Joe Schmoe on the street is one thing, for the working scientist another, and for the philosopher of science another, their objects (and objectives) are different, given the massive body of scientific ideas we cannot see them accurately and see them whole (to be slightly Heisenbergian).I agree that religion was scientific, in as far as it was part of the practice of tryign to understand and control the world with the means then available.Consciousness is material, the precise opposite of cartesian dualism, I don't know where on Earth you got that.
LBird, I said "I normally stop at Pragmatism", normally it is sufficient to live with that.Everythign is matter, there is no-thing outside or beyond matter.
LBird,if you applied more critical reason to my posts, you would find your answers contained within already.
LBird wrote:And if this "Ha'peth of tobacco" is 'not sarcasm', as you insist, could you explain why you find adding 'idealism' to the front of 'materialism' so time-consuming and irritating, and yet have time for a complex scientific term like "Ha'peth of tobacco", which, I admit, I've never heard used for scientific explanation?According to my stop watch it just took me 1.5 seconds to type idealism. By using the commonly understood term "Fishcakes" without typing idealism, I could save myself upwards of a minute of my life before I die. Likewise, i shall henceforth compound truth/knowling/believing/understanding into the single word "Flap". So, I flap the speed of light, and that'll do pig.
