Rosa Lichtenstein
25th February 2006, 10:28
This is from my summary to Essay Eight (the full Essay will go into much more detail when it is posted in a month or so):
"Dialectical mystics ofen appeal to 'internal contradictions' to account for change.
Lenin depicted things this way:
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….
"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58.]
This is a rather odd passage since it suggests that things can move themselves. If so, much of modern mechanics will need to be re-written. Presumably, then, on this view, when someone throws a ball, the action of throwing does not actually move the ball. On the contrary, the ball moves itself, and it knows exactly where it is going and how to get there. Intelligent balls like this, it seems, need no guidance systems -- they happily 'self-develop' from A to B like unerring homing pigeons. It is to be wondered, therefore, why the US military do not invest in such smart projectiles, and save themselves billions of dollars.
Thank goodness those at the Pentagon do not 'understand' dialectics!
Unfortunately, Lenin failed to note the origin of these ideas. Hermetic Philosophy is based on the belief that the universe is alive; indeed it is a cosmic egg -- later transmogrified by Hegel into a Cosmic Ego. Since eggs appear to develop all of their own (that is, they appear to do so to those who know nothing of heat and oxygen (etc.) fed externally into eggs), and just as Hegel's immaterial cosmic Ego self-develops too, it clearly seemed natural for Lenin to think this of nature.
Nevertheless, not even eggs develop of their own; in fact, it is hard to think of a single thing in the entire universe (of which we have knowledge) that develops of its own, or moves itself. Not even Capitalism does. Switch off the Sun and watch American Imperialism fold a whole lot quicker than Enron.
Nevertheless, based on the bird-brained ideas of ancient mystics, and no evidence at all, we find Lenin yet again propounding cosmic laws that do not make sense even in DM-terms -- and ones that not even chickens observe.
But, if Lenin were correct, no object in the universe could interact with any other (since that would amount to external causation, and objects would not be self-motivated). On this view, self-motivated beings must be causally isolated from their surroundings. Clearly that would mean that, despite appearances to the contrary, nothing in reality could interact. This would, of course, make a mockery of the other dialectical dogma that everything in reality is interconnected.
The only way to avoid that dialectically unhelpful conclusion would be to argue that interconnection does not imply causation. However, to date, no dialectician has been able to explain how every atom in nature can be interconnected and yet be causally isolated from every other. Are they telepathically linked?
On the other hand, if external causation is to be permitted, as part of a 'dialectical' fudge of some sort, there would seem to be no point in appealing to "internal contradictions" and "self-development" to account for change.
In Essay Eight, several fall-back options are examined and all are shown either to collapse into CAR (i.e., Cartesian Reductionism), or inflate alarmingly into HEX (i.e., Hegelian Expansionism).
HEX itself implies that if the nature of each part is determined by the whole, and the interconnections enjoyed by whole and part are infinite (according to Engels and Lenin), then no part may be known as a part (indeed nothing could be known about anything) until everything was known about everything. Since that will never happen, the former cannot be known, therefore. And if that cannot be known, then the whole cannot either (since knowledge of the whole arises from knowledge of the parts).
In that case, on this view, human knowledge is going nowhere, having begun from nothing, using no known methods, and employing only guesswork along the way.
Of course, in Hegel's system this is all catered for with a few handy neologisms and some innovative 'reasoning'; but materialists cannot be so cavalier. We cannot 'intuit' the whole since, without complete knowledge of it, it might not be the whole, it could just be a large part. Indeed, it might be the wrong whole, or there could be thousands of these beggars out there. But, until we know that 'whole' (absolutely), we can know nothing for sure about anything -- and that includes the nature of any part. Since we will never know that whole (or even anything remotely close to it), we will never know anything for sure -- not even this!
Furthermore, since the nature of any part is dependent on an infinite number of interconnections, no part could have a nature (whether we knew what that was or not), since infinite totalities are uncompletable (by definition).
In addition, one of the widely touted advantages of DM-inspired internalist explanations of change is that they undercut appeals to supernatural external causes to account for origins -- as indeed TAR [The Algebra of Revolution] points out with respect to other theorists who adopt various forms of externalism, they:
"…often find themselves courting semi-mystical explanations of original cause." [Rees (1998), p.78.]
Thus is because externalists hold that:
"…the cause of change [lies] within the system…and it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect…. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself."
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]
But, if change is now to be regarded as the result of a 'dialectical' interplay between internal and external causes (which Bukharin, for one, believed; indeed, more recent STD's seem to be fond of this cop-out, too), that would surely allow room once more for an external (hence supernatural) cause of the universe, and dialecticians would not only have to ignore Lenin's "absolute" dialectical caveat, recorded above, they would have to join the externalists and admit to their own "bad infinity", which, according to Rees:
"…postulates an endless series of causes and effects regressing to 'who knows where?'" [Ibid., p.7.]
Thus, the motivating point of DM-Holism would disappear, for change neither to system nor individual would be explicable solely internally -- nor by an appeal to merely natural causes.
In the event, I show (in Essay Eight) that "internal contradictions" (if they exist) cannot account for change anyway; at best, they merely re-describe it. Exactly why anything would change into its opposite, or how an opposite can make anything change, is left entirely mysterious in DM. Dialecticians leave this verbal tangle to explain itself, assuming that just because we can depict things turning into "what they are not", this "what they are not" must have caused it. [This example of dialectical licence is picked apart in Essay Seven.]
Of course, not only do things turn into "what they are not" they also turn into "what they are" (hence, whatever a cat turns into, it is what it is; anyone who does not agree this verbal trick should now appreciate why us [i]genuine materialists eschew all such linguistic chicanery, not just the bits we do not like). Why the one is given precedence over the other is left for the bemused reader to work out for herself. And why a verbal formula can so easily be turned into yet more a priori science is passed over in silence. And no wonder, it would reveal the Idealism implicit in DM a little too starkly.
With that, the alleged superiority of DM over its rivals disappears. Of these, Rees concludes that:
"...[they offer a] mere description, not explanation; the what, but not the how or the why."
Well, it now seems that DM cannot do this either.
[The claim that forces are the physical correlate of contradictions, and hence cause change, is examined in the second half of this summary -- posted at my site.]
In conclusion, it is pertinent to ask: how could DM-theorists possibly know that change is always and only the result of "internal contradictions"? Clearly, unless they are semi-divine beings, they could not possibly know this. The dogma itself certainly cannot have been derived from experience since it is not possible to observe or confirm the existence of real contradictions (the claim that these are physically "real" (or have real correlates) is examined in detail in Essays Four, Five, Seven, Eight and Eleven), which means that they cannot have been obtained by 'abstraction' from experience. In that case, this DM-thesis (like all the others) must have been imposed on nature.
The thesis that change is the result of "internal contradictions" is thus revealed for what it is: another piece of [i]a priori Superscience, only this time one based on a series of dubious metaphysical 'thought experiments', a set of anthropomorphic concepts, and no evidence at all.
Again, from mere words we get SuperFacts."
More details:
http:www.anti-dialectics.org
"Dialectical mystics ofen appeal to 'internal contradictions' to account for change.
Lenin depicted things this way:
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….
"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58.]
This is a rather odd passage since it suggests that things can move themselves. If so, much of modern mechanics will need to be re-written. Presumably, then, on this view, when someone throws a ball, the action of throwing does not actually move the ball. On the contrary, the ball moves itself, and it knows exactly where it is going and how to get there. Intelligent balls like this, it seems, need no guidance systems -- they happily 'self-develop' from A to B like unerring homing pigeons. It is to be wondered, therefore, why the US military do not invest in such smart projectiles, and save themselves billions of dollars.
Thank goodness those at the Pentagon do not 'understand' dialectics!
Unfortunately, Lenin failed to note the origin of these ideas. Hermetic Philosophy is based on the belief that the universe is alive; indeed it is a cosmic egg -- later transmogrified by Hegel into a Cosmic Ego. Since eggs appear to develop all of their own (that is, they appear to do so to those who know nothing of heat and oxygen (etc.) fed externally into eggs), and just as Hegel's immaterial cosmic Ego self-develops too, it clearly seemed natural for Lenin to think this of nature.
Nevertheless, not even eggs develop of their own; in fact, it is hard to think of a single thing in the entire universe (of which we have knowledge) that develops of its own, or moves itself. Not even Capitalism does. Switch off the Sun and watch American Imperialism fold a whole lot quicker than Enron.
Nevertheless, based on the bird-brained ideas of ancient mystics, and no evidence at all, we find Lenin yet again propounding cosmic laws that do not make sense even in DM-terms -- and ones that not even chickens observe.
But, if Lenin were correct, no object in the universe could interact with any other (since that would amount to external causation, and objects would not be self-motivated). On this view, self-motivated beings must be causally isolated from their surroundings. Clearly that would mean that, despite appearances to the contrary, nothing in reality could interact. This would, of course, make a mockery of the other dialectical dogma that everything in reality is interconnected.
The only way to avoid that dialectically unhelpful conclusion would be to argue that interconnection does not imply causation. However, to date, no dialectician has been able to explain how every atom in nature can be interconnected and yet be causally isolated from every other. Are they telepathically linked?
On the other hand, if external causation is to be permitted, as part of a 'dialectical' fudge of some sort, there would seem to be no point in appealing to "internal contradictions" and "self-development" to account for change.
In Essay Eight, several fall-back options are examined and all are shown either to collapse into CAR (i.e., Cartesian Reductionism), or inflate alarmingly into HEX (i.e., Hegelian Expansionism).
HEX itself implies that if the nature of each part is determined by the whole, and the interconnections enjoyed by whole and part are infinite (according to Engels and Lenin), then no part may be known as a part (indeed nothing could be known about anything) until everything was known about everything. Since that will never happen, the former cannot be known, therefore. And if that cannot be known, then the whole cannot either (since knowledge of the whole arises from knowledge of the parts).
In that case, on this view, human knowledge is going nowhere, having begun from nothing, using no known methods, and employing only guesswork along the way.
Of course, in Hegel's system this is all catered for with a few handy neologisms and some innovative 'reasoning'; but materialists cannot be so cavalier. We cannot 'intuit' the whole since, without complete knowledge of it, it might not be the whole, it could just be a large part. Indeed, it might be the wrong whole, or there could be thousands of these beggars out there. But, until we know that 'whole' (absolutely), we can know nothing for sure about anything -- and that includes the nature of any part. Since we will never know that whole (or even anything remotely close to it), we will never know anything for sure -- not even this!
Furthermore, since the nature of any part is dependent on an infinite number of interconnections, no part could have a nature (whether we knew what that was or not), since infinite totalities are uncompletable (by definition).
In addition, one of the widely touted advantages of DM-inspired internalist explanations of change is that they undercut appeals to supernatural external causes to account for origins -- as indeed TAR [The Algebra of Revolution] points out with respect to other theorists who adopt various forms of externalism, they:
"…often find themselves courting semi-mystical explanations of original cause." [Rees (1998), p.78.]
Thus is because externalists hold that:
"…the cause of change [lies] within the system…and it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect…. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself."
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]
But, if change is now to be regarded as the result of a 'dialectical' interplay between internal and external causes (which Bukharin, for one, believed; indeed, more recent STD's seem to be fond of this cop-out, too), that would surely allow room once more for an external (hence supernatural) cause of the universe, and dialecticians would not only have to ignore Lenin's "absolute" dialectical caveat, recorded above, they would have to join the externalists and admit to their own "bad infinity", which, according to Rees:
"…postulates an endless series of causes and effects regressing to 'who knows where?'" [Ibid., p.7.]
Thus, the motivating point of DM-Holism would disappear, for change neither to system nor individual would be explicable solely internally -- nor by an appeal to merely natural causes.
In the event, I show (in Essay Eight) that "internal contradictions" (if they exist) cannot account for change anyway; at best, they merely re-describe it. Exactly why anything would change into its opposite, or how an opposite can make anything change, is left entirely mysterious in DM. Dialecticians leave this verbal tangle to explain itself, assuming that just because we can depict things turning into "what they are not", this "what they are not" must have caused it. [This example of dialectical licence is picked apart in Essay Seven.]
Of course, not only do things turn into "what they are not" they also turn into "what they are" (hence, whatever a cat turns into, it is what it is; anyone who does not agree this verbal trick should now appreciate why us [i]genuine materialists eschew all such linguistic chicanery, not just the bits we do not like). Why the one is given precedence over the other is left for the bemused reader to work out for herself. And why a verbal formula can so easily be turned into yet more a priori science is passed over in silence. And no wonder, it would reveal the Idealism implicit in DM a little too starkly.
With that, the alleged superiority of DM over its rivals disappears. Of these, Rees concludes that:
"...[they offer a] mere description, not explanation; the what, but not the how or the why."
Well, it now seems that DM cannot do this either.
[The claim that forces are the physical correlate of contradictions, and hence cause change, is examined in the second half of this summary -- posted at my site.]
In conclusion, it is pertinent to ask: how could DM-theorists possibly know that change is always and only the result of "internal contradictions"? Clearly, unless they are semi-divine beings, they could not possibly know this. The dogma itself certainly cannot have been derived from experience since it is not possible to observe or confirm the existence of real contradictions (the claim that these are physically "real" (or have real correlates) is examined in detail in Essays Four, Five, Seven, Eight and Eleven), which means that they cannot have been obtained by 'abstraction' from experience. In that case, this DM-thesis (like all the others) must have been imposed on nature.
The thesis that change is the result of "internal contradictions" is thus revealed for what it is: another piece of [i]a priori Superscience, only this time one based on a series of dubious metaphysical 'thought experiments', a set of anthropomorphic concepts, and no evidence at all.
Again, from mere words we get SuperFacts."
More details:
http:www.anti-dialectics.org