Dialectics explained

[peaccenicked]

As a trained scientist,ie the empirical sciences in particular physics, it may seem that dialectics is useless. Well it does not do anything in that sense, it does not produce things or commodities or in itself ideas. It is best considered as an aid to discovering the truth about the real world.
Formal logic deals with fixed states but this is inadequate, but not useless, counting would be impossible otherwise.
Dialectics started formally for the early greeks with the idea that everything is in flux which contradicted the idea that everything stays the same.

Later with Plato and and Aristotle, it was more about finding the right question to obtain the truth of something. Here is a flavour of the myriad of questions
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~awalzer/rhet5775/Ar...equestions.html (http://www.tc.umn.edu/~awalzer/rhet5775/Aristotlequestions.html)
The simplest truth of philosophy is that life is out there and it needs questioned.
Although there may be brain dead people out there, let us assume that the sphere of philosophy dos not allow for that.
Dialectics is fundamentally about framing questions, aimed at strripping bare the nature of our world. Marx is even more eager, the problem is not just to inerpret the world but to change it.

Aristotle invented formal logic.
Here we have a basic syllogismhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/...dana/LOGIC.html (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students/Jordana/LOGIC.html)

If A is predicated of all B

and B is predicated of all C,

then A is predicated of all C.

So to give another definition of dialectics, it is the discussion of this syllogism as it applies to life and moreso how an entity of any sort develops. The entity Marx concerned himself was society, from primitive times to now to the possible future.

Hegel takes this discussion to dizzy heights.
He imagines life as the unfolding of an idea
Marx changes the subject matter to labour and brings that analysis to fruition in Das Kapital.
If you read study Hegel's Logic at the same time as Capital the parallels are undoubtedly there. At times Hegel even lapses ino materialism.

This is very useful if you want to study the history of the development of a particular entity in complex depth, but one cannot learn to swim by not jumping into the pool.
One has to deeply immerse onself in ones subject matter.

Nothing in dialectics is fixed in stone, it merely provides a framework or frameworks to comprehend a process, to see opposites at work and relations between them, to ultimately grasp the thing as an entirety ie bring about clarity.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peacenicked (I am sorry, but I thought you were going to ‘explain’ the dialectic; all you have done is repeat the same old mystical nostrums):


Formal logic deals with fixed states but this is inadequate, but not useless, counting would be impossible otherwise.
Dialectics started formally for the early greeks with the idea that everything is in flux which contradicted the idea that everything stays the same.

Well, formal logic does not do this, since it is not a science. It studies inference patterns and if those patterns are about changing things, then it will study them.

Tense logic, for example, specifically does this.


Aristotle invented formal logic.

But, even he believed things changed.

And formal logic has moved on since then; in fact 130 years ago it went through the kind of revolution that Physics went through in the 17th century. So, today. 95% of logic is less than 130 years old. Only antiquarians and those who do not know anything about logic bother with syllogisms.

You can find the details at my site:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2004.htm


Hegel takes this discussion to dizzy heights.

Well, he mystifies the garbled logic around in his day (itself a bowdlerised version of Aristotelicn logic) as he does thought in general, and ‘derives’ conclusions not justified by his premises (if he has any that are comprehensible, that is).

So the “dizzy” bit is correct.


If you read study Hegel's Logic at the same time as Capital the parallels are undoubtedly there.

So we are constantly told (that part of dialectics does not seem to have been hit by the universal flux you speak of), but Hegelian jargon only gets in the way of Marx’s clearly stated Historical Materialism; Capital does not need it, and neither do we.

Now all, this has been thrashed out on earlier threads; you must have missed it.

[Janus]

As a trained scientist,ie the empirical sciences in particular physics, it may seem that dialectics is useless
Are you a physicist?


it merely provides a framework or frameworks to comprehend a process, to see opposites at work and relations between them, to ultimately grasp the thing as an entirety ie bring about clarity.
I wouldn't say that dialectics brings about true clarity in understanding the material world. I can understand that dialectics could help you to analyze Marx's works and understand certain concepts but besides that, I don't see much use for it.


You can find the details at my site:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2004.htm
Rosa, you might as well just link to your website all the time like redstar as you're only wasting your time with some of the dialecticians here though I'm sure that they feel the same about you. :lol:

[peaccenicked]

Formal logic, not a science, since when? Since when was studying patterns not at the very core of science, As a physicist, comparing patterns, even abstract fixed patterns is away of intuiting the way things will develop.
Well i dont see much use for thinking if you dont want to think.
One way to think is to think historically and not dismiss the past that we have supposedly moved on from.
We have moved into is a reductionist postmodern environment that does everything to impoverish thought.
The fact that the bourgeios world is intent in destroying clear thinking does not mean we have to be part of it.
The use of syllogism cant just be overturned by pointing to the advances in modern thought.
And as Marx himself said Hegel has been kicked about like a dead dog. I do not dismiss formal logic just state it is inadequate. There is a problem between constancy and flux in nature, that is part of the dialectic.
There are all sorts of logic sure, but to argue that syllogisms are incomprehensible
is just plain unreasonable. Aristotle also explains some iregularities.
The reason Aristotle and Hegel are so important is partly aesthetical in that they prioritise the Universal, the Particular, and the Individual. However fuzzy, lateral or
specialised logic gets. There is absolutely no getting away from these terms as the medium which thinking is done and is the major framework, in all sociology.
Even some bourgeois minded scholars have to think in terms of groups, and categories of individuation to make any sense whatsoever.
The trick is to get to really know your subject.
Which also applies to Redstar, the trick is not to make assumptions about dialectics that are about reducing things to mere macarbre level of facts. :D

[ComradeRed]

Formal logic, not a science, since when? Since when was studying patterns not at the very core of science, As a physicist, comparing patterns, even abstract fixed patterns is away of intuiting the way things will develop.
Well i dont see much use for thinking if you dont want to think. Well, science usually deals with nature and empiricism formulated in a mathematical language.

Pattern recognition, etc., is a very important part of math since there is neither empiricism nor nature involved in it ;)

The point isn't to derive nature from math but the other way round, otherwise you're being Platonic (not to mention, a String theorist *shudder*).



The trick is to get to really know your subject. So...when will you explain dialectics? :huh:

[peaccenicked]

Science as a universal does not exclude maths nature or anything. The important thing is the historical approach. Something from the early childhod of human knowledge can become important today. The diameter of the earth was calculated 2000 yers before it was verified by modernity.

As to the explanation of dialectics, I have merely presented a foothold, if you want to go deeper feel free to go right to the belly. It is a subject i am very well researched on.
Dialectics is most concerned about the movement of knowledge,if you dont want to think why would you be concerned about that. Why not just stick with facts as immediate data that ought to be confronted.

[ComradeRed]

Science as a universal does not exclude maths nature or anything. No, it doesn't exclude it. What it does is it uses it.

However, math does not determine how nature works. If I deduced there were a gazillion dimensions, and through this I discovered how everything works, it would be irrelevant without empirical evidence.

Math is there to back science up, not as a replacement for science.


The diameter of the earth was calculated 2000 yers before it was verified by modernity. But that doesn't mean that the diameter of the Earth was determined by the calculation. It's only a guess (if there is no empiricism).

Math and empiricism go hand-in-hand, but as a rule empiricism trumps math.

But math trumps dialectics :P



As to the explanation of dialectics, I have merely presented a foothold, if you want to go deeper feel free to go right to the belly. It is a subject i am very well researched on.
Dialectics is most concerned about the movement of knowledge,if you dont want to think why would you be concerned about that. Why not just stick with facts as immediate data that ought to be confronted. OK, well first, how do you use dialectics?

[peaccenicked]

If I deduced there were a gazillion dimensions, and through this I discovered how everything works, it would be irrelevant without empirical evidence.


This is just pure philistine nonsense. The whole world would be brain dead if it stuck to mere empirical facts.
Not to say that facts are not improtant, but how do new facts arise, is the empirical evidence there already? Speculation is an absolute necessity for science to develop. Proofs are nice but ideas that need tested just dont grow on trees they come from studying the history of the process involved. String theory maybe a flash in the pan, it is a series of guesses and they are making bigger and better particle accellerators to explore these guesses. Knowledge does not move by just sticking to the facts, that only does the opposite, thats what makes your position reactionary.

The dialectical method is to look at the history of a problem, and its proposed solutions,to find ways forward not to wait about for evidence for unvalidated theories.

[ComradeRed]

This is just pure philistine nonsense. Coming from a dialectician, I'll take this as the negation of the negation of "philistine nonsense".


The whole world would be brain dead if it stuck to mere empirical facts. And yet here we are!

I suspect that you are a sympathizer with the String theorists who have "deduced" the "inner workings" of everything by "pure reason", then?



Not to say that facts are not improtant, but how do new facts arise, is the emperical evidence there already. Technically speaking, yes! That is, the empirical evidence is waiting to be empirically witnessed.

Or...what, do we make empirical evidence by pure whims? Our ideas determine empirical findings? Rather Platonic, don't you think?

"New facts" is a rather contradictory phrase...like saying "New old school" or "girly man". There aren't "new facts", but there are facts which are newly discovered.

It's not as though facts were "created" (unless dialecticians suddenly support the existence of "God" :o).


Proofs are nice but ideas that need tested just dont grow on trees they come from studying the history of the process involved. I'd hate to burst your bubble, but throughout history every time someone pulls some radically different hypothesis from thin air, it delays the course of science for years.

Copernicus' work was based on the empirical inconsistencies of Ptolemy's system; Newton's work was based on the empirical inconsistencies of Aristotle's system (as empirically predecessed by Galileo's relativistic transformation). The list goes on and on.

Einstein's work was based on the empirical inconsistencies of Maxwell's equations and Newtonian mechanics.

Ideas come from attempts to explain empirical phenomena...this is what is popularly known as "Science".


String theory maybe a flash in the pan, it is a series of guesses and they are making bigger and better particle accellerators to explore these guesses. The problem is that particle accelerators are for particles! Spacetime is not composed of particles ("gravitons" -- not that it's continuous either).

But based on the empirical inconsistencies of black hole mechanics inside the black hole there is a need to quantize gravity (so we can understand what happens inside a black hole).

String theory has mathematical inconsistencies, not to mention the scores of empirical inconsistencies. I think it's pretty safe, based on its logical contradictions, to say that it is wrong.


Knowledge does not move by just sticking to the facts, that only does the opposite, thats what makes your position reactionary. So by choosing spontaneity over facts I would become "revolutionary" in my epistemological position? :huh:

"Knowledge" is largely based on empiricism (bayesian inference, anyone?).

Try "inventing knowledge" and show me how, step by step.



The dialectical method is to look at the history of a problem, and its proposed solutions,to find ways forward not to wait about for evidence for unvalidated theories. So dialectics lacks materialism? That's good to know, but why isn't it moot yet if that's the case?

[peaccenicked]

1)the negation of the negation. Yes it is a negation of your nonsense.

2)we are here? Where certainly not on this.


3)empirical evidence waiting to be empirically tested,

Waiting where?

Evidence does not wait anywhere, you need to have a theory that has an historical basis, speculation does not arise out of thin air it arises out of surveying previous probings, tested or not.
This is how normal scientific practice operates,
then you go on in a Bacon like rant about how knowledge develops from the weakness of previous theories, it is true to an extent but life is not that mechanical,things can develop by bringing things from other fields or tangentally or even accidentally, very old theories untested might bring new light.
The obessession with facts is what marxists call empiricism.
The accountants approach to science and political economy. What empiricists cant
handle is qualitative change, it does not seem materialistic to them it cant be measured by mere numbers.

Lifes rich tapestry is not linear sequenced and there is no evidence waiting, only idealistically.
Theories can be bold even brazen, they might be useless in one area and useful in others. As to string theory, it is not yet proven, it has mathematical roots but that does not make it untrue. It is not yet unproven. if your case is strong apriora perhaps you should enter a paper on the subject to MIT or somewhere string theorists might listen.
However I think your position is reactionary,philistine, mechanical and fundamentaly obscurantist to the real nature of the development of knowledge.

[ComradeRed]

2)we are here? Where certainly not on this. We are where, what the hell are you referring to? :unsure:



3)empirical evidence waiting to be empirically tested,

Waiting where? Why, in my closet of course, with Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny :rolleyes:

You're arguing semantics; "waiting" is a "metaphor".




Evidence does not wait anywhere, you need to have a theory that has an historical basis, speculation does not arise out of thin air it arises out of surveying previous probings, tested or not.
This is normal scientific practice operates,
then you go on in a Bacon like rant about how knowledge develops from the weakness of previous theories, it is true to an extent but life is not that mechanical,things can develop by bringing things from other fields or tangentally or even accidentally, very old theories untested might bring new light. Soo...

1. One needs a theory with a historical basis...
2. But one doesn't find a new theory based on the weakness of other previous ("historical") theories....
3. And we can't look anywhere else for theoretical help...

Well, I can point to one blatant contradiction of this "theory" of yours: loop quantum gravity.

It took particle physics and applied it to geometry :o What blasphemy!

Or maybe another example is needed? Like the application of statistical mechanics in electrodynamics? Oh right, Einstein's work on quantum physics.

Or the galilean relativity applied to Maxwell's electrodynamics. Einstein again.

Or the application of Bio-informatics to Historical Materialism?

I can go on and on and list the large number of exceptions to your "theory", which is in effect a "counter-example" thus "disproving" what you propose.



The obessession with facts is what marxists call empiricism.
The accountants approach to science and political economy. What empiricists cant
handle is qualitative change, it does not seem materialistic to them it cant be measured by mere numbers. "Catastrophe Theory", "Cybernetics Theory", "Chaos Theory", "Control Theory", "Systems Theory", "Information Theory": all quantitative methods to handle (quite beautifully, I might add) "qualitative changes".

Look no further than the Santa Fe Institute for the resounding failure of "qualitative changes from quantitative changes" in science and social science.

Or UC Santa Cruz would be a better example?

They're all "empirical" methods; how "vulgar"! :o



Lifes rich tapestry is not linear sequenced and there is no evidence waiting, only idealistically. You're right, Platonism is *self evidently* the logical, empirical, and only theory that can ever be true.

And you were speaking of "materialism"? In what sense of the word "materialism" compatible with your Platonism? :huh:


Theories can be bold even brazen, they might be useless in one area and useful in others. As to string theory, it is not yet proven, it has mathematicl roots but that does not make it untrue. It is not yet unproven. if your case is strong apriora perhaps you should enter a paper on the subject to MIT or somewhere string theorists might listen. String theorists are a lot like Neoclassical economists: they don't listen.

The "Double Special" 'relativity' that's used by String theorists is (mathematically and empirically) nothing like real special relativity.

The introduction of an increasing number of dimensions is actually caused by the lack of a renormalization constant. When String theory is correct at an intuitive level, there will be an infinite number of dimensions; this is tragicomically absurd and the spatial dimensions (the infinity - 3 spatial dimensions) would be so tiny that it would be negligible (save at the sub-Planck scale).

It's a "beautiful" theory that "preserves" a classical symmetric view of nature; but its beauty does nothing to save it from being wrong.

For the last time: String theory is NOT science!

Besides MIT's an engineering school; they know nothing of theoretical physics. (No wonder they endorse String theory)



However I think your position is reactionary,philistine, mechanical and fundamentaly obscurantist to the real nature of the development of knowledge. What you think is irrelevant; as you have yet to even explain dialectics (remember?).

As "reactionary" or "mechanical" my "obscurantist" position is, I am not the Platonist here. I'm the materialist one.

Whatever happened to explaining dialectics? Gone the way of the Hegelian? :huh:

[peaccenicked]

This quite a rant.

1) we are here..........................you wrote it I suggest you find where you wrote it the beginning of your piece.

2) Waiting as a metaphor for not yet found, still I took it both ways. still is idealistic drivel


3) Nothing you said is at all relevant to what I said, you use known theories as examples of empiricism, that is cheating science. They are scientific theories evidated by empirical observations. you have no idea how they came into being.
They cerainly did not start off as facts but ideas that where based on historical insights.

I dont get where you get the platonism from is 'lifes rich tapestry' so near to holism to you that it cause you to vomit.

if anybody is not listening it is you.

you havent answered my points you have only created a diversion.
You have skill as a sophist and an obscurantist.

Not many scientists are empiricists but they all are empirical in their rigid devotion to accuracy, you clearly are not looking for a difference.
BTWDialectics can also be thought as the process of revealing obscurantism in human thinking.

[ComradeRed]

1) we are here..........................you wrote it I suggest you find where you wrote it the beginning of your piece. I suggest you use the [*quote] [*/quote] buttons so I can understand what in my response you are responding to directly.



2) Waiting as a metaphor for not yet found, still I took it both ways. still is idealistic drivel Yet dialectics is this wonder theory that is beyond explanation? So long as it doesn't examine reality, it should be "good".

And who would have thought looking at reality is "idealistic drivel"?!




3) Nothing you said is at all relevant to what I said, you use known theories as examples of empiricism, that is cheating science. They are scientific theories evidated by empirical observations. you have no idea how they came into being. You are telling me about cheating science? The fellow who tried to get rid of nature in science, the investigation of nature?!

If empiricism is "good enough" for science, I am willing to take the "vague" and "idealistic" methodology.

But your completely irrelevant point is...?

I don't know how theories come into being? As though you had some magical formula?

Oh right, dialectics - the inexplicable method that is "beyond words" :rolleyes:



I dont get where you get the platonism from is 'lifes rich tapestry' so near to holism to you that it cause you to vomit. You said: Lifes rich tapestry is not linear sequenced and there is no evidence waiting, only idealistically.

What this means in the Vernecular is that "Lifes rich tapestry" - whatever that may be - "is not linear sequenced and" there is no evidence waiting, only waiting idealistically.

That's Platonism, not to mention vague, obscure, and ambiguous.



if anybody is not listening it is you. You grammars is destroying my brains.



you havent answered my points you have only created a diversion.
You have skill as a sophist and an obscurantist. Hey, I'm no dialectician, don't credit me with "sophistry" and "obscurantism".

Whatever happened to explaining dialectics? Or is this only a "diversion"? :rolleyes:

What I have done was given you counter examples to your nonsensical and inconsistent assertions that ideas "fall from the sky" yet are "based on historical processes".

If you don't like that, then don't call it some philosophically esoteric term.



Not many scientists are empicists but they all are empirical in their rigid devotion to accuracy, you clearly are not looking for a difference. What are you maundering about?

I guess you must be right because of that, biologists obviously don't look at nature. Physicists, as I know from personal experience, don't look at nature. Neither do chemists!

Science is "beyond" nature. What a brilliant insight!

I assert this further, science works directly against nature ("negation of the negation" and whatnot).

Really, what scientist looks at data! Honestly!

A better question is what scientists care about accuracy? Obviously by your insight, none. Just ignore the work of every science since the dawn of time.



BTWDialectics can also be thought as the process of revealing obscurantism in human thinking. And it took how many posts to come to the subject of the thread? Only to be covered in one sentence!?

[peaccenicked]

You assert that dialectics is this
wonder theory. thats a cheap shot. It gives false credit and i am asked to defend it. Dialectics is not a theory.
It is a method of tackling processes from as many sides as possible. The demand
for all sidedness is a safeguard against mistakes.



Looking at reality is not the same as pressuposing a theory is empirically valid before it is even tested or in some way by necessity is empirically valid at all given moments. That would stifle thought and experiment.

Empiricism is a narrow focus on evidence. Dialectics is not a restrictive practice.
The basic idea is to plough deep into the qualities of a process so as to see how opposite tendencies interplay.It is a tool, a plug in, to analyses so to speak, that aims at clarity within an historical context.

Empiricism is not good enough for science. Empirical observation is a very good tool for testing. Dialectics is the art of posing the questions that are most relevant to development. people do it all the time when they are sizing up a situation.
The dialectial method is a sort of conscious sizing up. It may not be needed but it is designed to help.

As to life's rich tapestry not being sequentually linear, that is intuitive, and I think self evident. Poverty of thinking is more a one directional street.

Empiricism is a philosophical trend not a scientific method or theory, . It stays outside deduction, which is its real poverty, and rationalism: which tends to invite irrationalism or god through the back door.
Both deductive and inductive methods can achieve results.
You use this on string theory but you have no empirical evidence to say it is not a science. In this sense your argument is self defeating.


i hope that makes things clearer for you.

I

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


Formal logic, not a science, since when?

From the start.

Where in Aristotle do you find him suggesting you test a single syllogism with an experiment, an observation or doing a survey?

Logic is the formal study of inference. Sure scientists use it, but that does not make it a science.

You only have to compare it with your own subject to see the categorical difference.

Sure, all sorts of metaphysical theories attached themselves to logic, but so they do to science. And we learnt to ignore them there.


Since when was studying patterns not at the very core of science, As a physicist, comparing patterns,

Well, that cannot determine the nature of science or dressmaking would be a science. You are confusing logic with the psychology of thought. Now, there science can and does have a part to play. But, if logicians were scientists they’d do brain scans and psychometric testing.

Logic looks at the formal properties of language and studies valid inference. That is it.

If you want to call that a science, that’s OK, but then you will need a new word to distinguish it from say Physics, where experimentation is vitally important.

We do not do experiments in logic.

So calling it a science is not helpful at all.

I do not know what this has got to do with anything I said:


We have moved into is a reductionist postmodern environment that does everything to impoverish thought.

Much of modern philosophy is not post-modernist (sure those aspects influenced by continental thought are, but Analytic Philosophy (the dominant form in the USA, UK, northern Europe, and Australasia, etc), for example, is largely based around defending scientific realism, or some sort of realism or other).


The use of syllogism cant just be overturned by pointing to the advances in modern thought.

Well you are like someone who says that you cannot overturn the good old mathematics that was around before the calculus.

Would you argue this way? To be consistent with your stance on logic, you would have to.

Sorry comrade, the syllogism is dead. In fact, it is hard to believe that you, a physicist, are arguing for the retention an ancient logic that has passed its sell-by date by at least 1000 years -- you will be arguing for Ptolemaic cosmology next!

The syllogism cannot handle hypothetical reasoning, mathematical reasoning (where relations are involved), ones that use complex scope ambiguity, multiple generality, complex negation, higher order quantification, among a host of other things.

It is wedded to a grammatical form (subject-predicate) found only in Indo-European language, and it is not even an important grammatical form (it was adopted by Greek theorists because it meshed with their aristocratic view of reality).

Modern mathematics would be crippled without modern logic, and that would have held science up.

Hence, the revolution in logic was pioneered by mathematicians sick of the limitations of the old logic. Without this, there would have been no non-Euclidean geometry (and hence no Relativity), no advanced number theory (connected with continuity), and hence no advanced calculus (and so no Quantum mechanics).

Your own subject would still be stuck in the past without the break-through in logic in the 1850's-1890's.

Computers for example, are based on the propositional calculus (invented by the ancient Stoics a few hundred years after Aristotle, (ignored by Hegel) and now fully formalised way beyond this basic level) for which the syllogistic logic would be useless.

Cling on to syllogisms, and computing would die.


but to argue that syllogisms are incomprehensible
is just plain unreasonable.

Where did I say that?

They aren’t incomprehensible (I agree), they are just useless. Find me a scientist who has ever used an Aristotelian syllogism to discover anything, or test anything.


Even some bourgeois minded scholars have to think in terms of groups, and categories of individuation to make any sense whatsoever.

You are just advertising your lack of knowledge here, Peace. Quantification theory (the heart of modern logic) can do this far better than the old logic.

You can find the links to sites that will upgrade your medieval knowledge base at my site.


The trick is to get to really know your subject.

It is clear that this applies to your knowledge of logic, too.

From what you have so far said, you have based your ideas on material that is well out of date (and which material was very limited even when it was used -- which it wasn't in science since it is largely of philosophical significance, hence Hegel's fondness for it)

[peaccenicked]

Rosa
If you are trying to tell me that deduction is not scientific,I must insist you are expressing a falsehood. You are either blind to real life or just plain lying.

here from marxism.org.
Deduction

Deduction and Induction are terms denoting opposite methods of reasoning. Deduction is the method of inference which substantiates a conclusion on the basis of a number of previously established premises by means of the application of laws of logic, rather than by drawing on experience. Induction is begins from a number of given facts and arrives at the principles exhibited in these facts, opening the possibility for deducing new facts or hypotheses. However, it should be kept in mind that cognition is impossible without both deduction and induction. Neither induction nor deduction can go more than a single step without the help of the other. Criticising formal logic, which rigidly separate Deduction and Induction, Hegel asks: “Where do the laws of logic come from? And where do the premises come from?”. Deduction and induction are a unity of broadly the same nature as analysis and synthesis


I suggest that thought is not part of your philosophy , you see life as bundles of empirical data.

Your initial premise is reductionist and postmodern

You should try reading Lukacs "The Destruction of Reason" . To see how irrationalism arose in the imperialist epoch.
Reason is nothing to with specialised modern theories.

If you start from the wrong premise, then the rest of your thinking falls like a house of cards.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


If you are trying to tell me that deduction is not scientific, I must insist you are expressing a falsehood.

I did not say this; I acknowledged that scientists use logic, but the study of logic is not a science, since its results are not subject to experimental test.

If you want to claim it is a science, you most certainly can (who am I to stop you?), but then, as I said, you will need another word to distinguish logic from say Physics (where results have to be tested empirically).

How can you test these (taken from modern logic) empirically?

~[(P→Q)v(P→R)↔(P→(QvR))]
~[~(Ex)(Fx&~Gx)↔(x)(Fx→Gx)]

It would be about as crazy as trying to test commutativity in mathematics:

A+B= B+A

However, thanks for quoting from Marxism org, but from what they say there they do not know any modern logic either (so I suspect this might be affecting you), and what little ancient logic they allude to is clearly beyond them.

[I go through the egregious errors dialecticians make (including Woods and Grant) at my site; check out that link I posted earlier.]

You yourself need to look at books or sites that are at least up to date.

What would you think if I quoted flat earth scientists at you, or Ptolemaic cosmologists (there are those still around); you'd take me to task for not being up to date, at the very least.

Same here.


I suggest that thought is not part of your philosophy, you see life as bundles of empirical data.

Well you suggest wrong. I am Ok with scientific theory, but not philosophical theory, for the reasons I have stated at this board, many times.


Your initial premise is reductionist and postmodern

Why are you making stuff up?

I have no original premiss (except perhaps the truth of Historical Materialism).

Find one; I challenge you.


You should try reading Lukacs "The Destruction of Reason" . To see how irrationalism arose in the imperialist epoch.

Done it (in fact I have read several hundred books and articles on dialectics and Hegel, etc.).

Lukacs is a very confused 'thinker'.

You need to address the points I made if your views are to have any credibility.

And stop making stuff up.

[ComradeRed]

It gives false credit and i am asked to defend it. But you were going to "explain it"; and this hasn't been done yet!

How can you defend something you haven't explained?

What you have done is attacking the "idealism" of empiricism (which makes absolutely no sense); which is totally unrelated to explaining dialectics.


Dialectics is not a theory.
It is a method of tackling processes from as many sides as possible. Then explain this "method" of "tackling processes" and show an example, show your reasoning for what you do with this method, and show that it is reproducible (that you and I both using dialectics on an agreed upon subject come to the same conclusion).


[Looking at reality] is not the same as pressuposing a theory is [as?] empirically valid before it is even tested or in some way by necessity is empirically valid at all given moments. That would stifle thought and experiment. Yes! The point of empiricism is to look at reality so that one can verify a theory.

Are you suggesting otherwise?

By your vehement railing against empiricism, this leads me to suspect that you are a Platonist.



Empiricism is a narrow focus on evidence. Dialectics is not a restrictive practice.
The basic idea is to plough deep into the qualities of a process so as to see how opposite tendencies interplay.It is a tool, a plug in, to analyses so to speak, that aims at clarity within an historical context. Well, what is the point of focusing on a subject without evidence?

I have given you half a dozen or so examples from science where empiricism has played role as a catalyst for theoretical advancement.

I'm not talking about naive empiricism, I'm talking about scientific materialism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism) It's not a "check list" of "empirical phenomena".

What do you propose to do? Disregard reality totally?


Empiricism is not good enough for science. Empirical observation is a very good tool for testing. Dialectics is the art of posing the questions that are most relevant to development. people do it all the time when they are sizing up a situation.
The dialectial method is a sort of conscious sizing up. It may not be needed but it is designed to help. The "dialectical method" sounds like a bad method, largely from its inability to be reproducible.

Very much like a psychic claiming only s/he may speak to "the beyond" and no one else can duplicate it.

What garbage is that?!


As to life's rich tapestry not being sequentually linear, that is intuitive, and I think self evident. Poverty of thinking is more a one directional street. Well, if you think it's self evident, why bother asking for any proof or examples?

The "poverty" is with your nonlinear nonsense; it's been over fifty years, and nothing has come from nonlinear calculus, algebra, or any other field of nonlinearity.

Do I have to do the math here to demonstrate it to you?


Empiricism is a philosophical trend not a scientific method or theory, . It stays outside deduction, which is its real poverty, and rationalism: which tends to invite irrationalism or god through the back door.
Both deductive and inductive methods can achieve results. Deduction or induction...of what?

What are you deducing from? You must use induction prior to using deduction, otherwise you end up with tautologies.

Where do you use induction?

Egads, that dreaded thing! Empirical reality!



You use this on string theory but you have no empirical evidence to say it is not a science. In this sense your argument is self defeating. Well, I'm going on the mathematical and empirical inconsistencies of String theory.

As I pointed out earlier, which you so gleefully disregarded, the number of dimensions will approach infinity because of a lack of a renormalization constant.

That is to say, String theory uses an infinite number of dimensions. If you can't see the absurdity of this, you are no scientist.

That's based on empirical verification that there is a finite number of dimensions, and the mathematical verification from the lack of a renormalization constant.

[peaccenicked]

Rosa and ComradeRed,

To take the entirety of both your positions(ie the land of propagating brain death),
let us start from nothing. What do induce I from nothing. The theory that there is something more than nothing.

Empirical data,but I cannot find how you measure that data. Imagine me cutting through the necessity of evidence to come up with such an idea. Is this an empty deduction to conclude I exist and why would I even want to look for evidence.


Both of you are trapped in empty syllogisms, data starvation and are profoundly ignorant of the history of philosophy.
ComradeRed

What are you deducing from? You must use induction prior to using deduction, otherwise you end up with tautologies.

Where did you deduce that from?


Rosa

What would you think if I quoted flat earth scientists at you, or Ptolemaic cosmologists (there are those still around); you'd take me to task for not being up to date, at the very least.

I would ask you and what grounds did these thinkers come to these conclusions?

How up to-date can an answer to that question be.

What objective standards do you use to prove that something from the past is false?

btw, both you have said nothing on any of my definitions of dialectics.


These can be found by sentences that start with the word 'Dialectics'

[ComradeRed]

As a trained scientist,ie the empirical sciences in particular physics, it may seem that dialectics is useless.



To take the entirety of both your positions(ie the land of propagating brain death),
let us start from nothing. What do induce I from nothing. The theory that there is something more than nothing.

Selective consistency, eh? <_<


Empirical data,but I cannot find how you measure that data. Imagine me cutting through the necessity of evidence to come up with such an idea. Is this an empty deduction to conclude I exist and why would I even want to look for evidence. So you pull ideas from thin air?



Where did you deduce that from? P1. One deduces from premises.
P2. Tautologies can only be deduced to form tautologies.
P3. Tautologies are "always" "true" because they are all the same (via Church&#39;s alpha congruence).
P4. Without empiricism (induction, whatever), there are only tautologies. (How else can a premise be formed without relying on reality?)
C. From pure deduction, one deduces nothing from a given tautology.

P4 is largely pioneered by Hume&#39;s point "When one asks you to think of the a priori concept of a &#39;gold mountain&#39; you take the a postereori concepts of &#39;gold&#39; and &#39;mountain&#39; and combine the two."

"But but but he was some zombie brain land man from some nether-world of epistemology&#33;"

Irrelevant, all your maundering about the "brain dead" methodologies, or the "poverty" methods or whatever, turns out to be nothing more than non-sequiturs and fallacies. I&#39;m "possessed" like that.


By the by, when are you going to explain dialectics? Or is this thread simply a negation of reason?

[peaccenicked]

There is more to deduction than tautology, and I have already said it involves induction. I ve already said that they both go hand in hand.

You are simply being intellectually dishonest.

No idea comes from thin air, Every idea has a history, a context, an availability to reason. You are simply living in the empiricists narrow channel.

I have used subject predicates and verbs, you have simply ignored my explanations by saying they are not explanations. This is an intellectual fraud.


The basic idea is to plough deep into the qualities of a process so as to see how opposite tendencies interplay.It is a tool, a plug in, to analyses so to speak, that aims at clarity within an historical context.
This is just one of the attributes I have given to dialectics.

I do however think it is easier to debate with people of integrity.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


Both of you are trapped in empty syllogisms

Why are you still making stuff up? Not only did I not use a single syllogism, I specifically said they were of no use at all.


both you have said nothing on any of my definitions of dialectics.

Well, just like you have not been reading any of my Essays, I have not read any of your responses to Red, but a quick look tells me you did not define anything.

This does not surprise me, and it is a good job too, since to define dialectics (the supposed philosophy of change) would be to ossifiy it, hence to nullify it.

I am surprised that a dialectician of your undoubted stature did not know this.

However I note that you have ignored my points (all but one that is, and even then you misconstrued its point -- I merely metioned Ptolemaic cosmology to highlight the fact that you are relying on an ancient form of logic that did not serve any practical purpose (except provide material for indolent philosophers like Hegel), and is already 1000 years out of date. As a physicist, why are you relying on such ancient &#39;science&#39; as you call it?)

[peaccenicked]

Just because you dont at least consciously make verbal with
syllogism, it does not mean that you do not use them.


This me not making stuff up, it is an assertion.

The syllogism not of your saying but in your thinking is,

All proposition require evidence

All deductions require evidence


All deductions without evidence are empty



This is simply not true,.


A definition of dialectics is a variable entity, like all variable entitities they can be nullified and reconstructed for different purposes at any given time.




I am not relying on ancient forms of logic, I am relying on the History of logic which includes ancient forms.

What I have said is that the Universal, the Particular and the Individual and their mediation is at the very core of Reason, modern logic cannot negate this.
Modern logic is largley pattern recognition and comparison. It is not useless but a step down from the fundamentals of Thought.

I have had a look at your peice. This thread is not a criticism of your work. I can do that if you are interested, you can point me to a thread you have started.
Here I am trying my best to make things as clear as possible.

[peaccenicked]

Here is an essay of mine that I have not promoted on this site,yet

http://www.geocities.com/paulanderson9/ess...ir/Marxism.html (http://www.geocities.com/paulanderson9/essaysdir/Marxism.html)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


Just because you don’t at least consciously make verbal with
syllogism, it does not mean that you do not use them.

Since I nowhere use a syllogism, and inform you of all their weaknesses, and that they are useless, I think we need a little more evidence than your inventive eyesight to support this latest falsehood of yours.

Why do you have to makes stuff up to support your case (and why do you deny it when caught out)?


The syllogism not of your saying but in your thinking is

I am sorry, but that sentence seems to make no sense.

Ah, I see your argument:


All proposition require evidence

All deductions require evidence

All deductions without evidence are empty

But I asserted none of these things.

If you think otherwise, perhaps you can find somewhere where I say these erroneous things.

That you think I said this shows you cannot grasp a simple argument.

Clearly your commitment to a garbled version of ancient logic (a tactic you would not use in modern Physics -- otherwise you would use Ptolemaic ideas) is seriously affecting your capacity to argue (or to follow an argument).

So, I suggest you either enrol (as a matter of some urgency) on a modern logic course, or you stop trying to debate a topic that is clearly out of your depth.


I am not relying on ancient forms of logic, I am relying on the History of logic which includes ancient forms.

But, you are ignoring the most recent and most significant part of that history, that which post-dates 1850.

As I noted earlier (but you failed to grasp that point too), you would not be impressed with me if I tried to counter modern Physics with ancient Physics, or if I ignored anything in Physics post-1850.

But that is precisely what you are doing.


What I have said is that the Universal, the Particular and the Individual and their mediation is at the very core of Reason, modern logic cannot negate this.

Well, you say this, but with no proof.

And if your philosophy is indeed the philosophy of change, and everything in reality (including what you just posted) is subject to change, then this idea too must change.

Well, that idea has (modern logic quite rightly ignores this ancient confusion), so what you say about these obscure terms should be &#39;negated&#39;, even according to your theory.

Of course, you can abandon your belief in universal change to save this home-spun ditty (about universals etc); I do not mind. Just so long as another DM-doctrine bites the material dust, I can live with that.

But I&#39;d like to see you try to hold onto both.


Modern logic is largely pattern recognition and comparison. It is not useless but a step down from the fundamentals of Thought.

You see, every time you say such things (without any evidence) you just advert to your own ignorance.

You are clearly confusing logic with psychology (or dressmaking, or something). I told you this earlier.


I can do that if you are interested, you can point me to a thread you have started.

Well scroll down onto page two, three..., you will see many such, or visit my site (the link to the page devoted to logic I posted on my first response to you).


Here I am trying my best to make things as clear as possible.

Forgive me saying this, but you will never do this using obscure terms like &#39;universal&#39; and &#39;mediate&#39;, and you definitely won&#39;t be able to do it if you remain logically illiterate.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that; I&#39;ll read your essay, and let you know what I think.

[ComradeRed]

There is more to deduction than tautology, and I have already said it involves induction. I ve already said that they both go hand in hand. You challenged me when I said it; you are simply being intellectually dishonest. :angry:


You are simply being intellectually dishonest. No, you simply don&#39;t have any reading comprehension.


No idea comes from thin air, Every idea has a history, a context, an availability to reason. You are simply living in the empiricists narrow channel. What in the hell are you talking about, man?&#33;

You seem to be limiting empiricism to some obscure philosophical term. I&#39;m too lazy, poor, handsome, and patient to be taking philosophy courses.

This is nothing more than historical materialism that you are offering. Yes, I agree with that...but I am getting more specific than that.

Yet a subset of a set is not part of the superset, no no no. An extension of historical materialism, regardless of how logical it is, is not historical materialism.


I have used subject predicates and verbs, you have simply ignored my explanations by saying they are not explanations. This is an intellectual fraud. No, your "subject predicate and verbs" are beautiful.

What&#39;s ugly is your humor, your temper (how quickly you go to terms like "poverty thinker" or whatnot), and how defensive you get ("no you&#39;re wrong, you&#39;re intellectually dishonest, you&#39;re ..."). This isn&#39;t life or death&#33; (Yet&#33; :lol:)

Further, there have been no explanations of dialectics; we&#39;ve been discussing something else entirely (granted I have seen the website you linked).



The basic idea is to plough deep into the qualities of a process so as to see how opposite tendencies interplay.It is a tool, a plug in, to analyses so to speak, that aims at clarity within an historical context.

This is just one of the attributes I have given to dialectics.So dialectics is the interplay between a thing and an opposite thing?

OK, how do you determine what is an opposite thing? :huh:


I do however think it is easier to debate with people of integrity. Really? So I suppose beginning a thread and not touching upon its subject is "integrity". Damn, how I wish I could have such integrity&#33;

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace, I have read that essay of yours, and find I can agree with 90% of it; I think you make some very astute points about a number of issues.

My main worry is that, as good an essay as it undoubtedly is, you do not actually answer your own question; at the end I am no clearer about why you think Marxism is a science than I was at the beginning (even though I have my own reasons for thinking Historcal Materialism is a genuine science).

Now, if you ditch all that Hegelian mysticism, you would, I think, be able to answer your own question far more easily, and convincingly.

You also repeat this wild exaggeration of Lenin&#39;s:


Lenin coined the aphorism that Marx&#39;s "Capital" could not be comprehended without understanding the whole of Hegel&#39;s "Logic".

This is what I will be saying about this passage in Essay Nine Part One when it is published at my site later this year (as part of a long argument showing that not only does no one understand dialectics, no one possibly could, and that, for instance, workers have to have their materialist good sense ruined by having incomprehensible Hegel-speak substituted into their heads -- since dialectics is based on a set of mystical ruling-class notions that cannot be expressed in materialist terms).

[The small numbers refer to notes at the end.]


"...The alarming facts upon which this query supervenes are thrown into even greater relief by Lenin’s surprising and oft-quoted revelation that not a single Marxist up until his day -- which must have included Engels, Dietzgen, Kautsky and Plekhanov -- actually understood Marx’s Capital, since none of them had fully mastered Hegel’s Logic&#33;

&#39;It is impossible to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx&#33;&#33;&#39; [Lenin (1961), p.180. Bold emphases added.]7

Clearly, Lenin’s aside raises serious questions of its own. If professional revolutionaries find Hegel’s work impossibly difficult to comprehend (few, in my experience, bother to consult much of what Hegel wrote, let alone attempt to study the entire Logic), is it credible that workers themselves can understand the whole of his Logic fully? In which case -- if Lenin is correct --, what chance is there for anyone (revolutionary or worker) to make head or tail of Marx’s Capital?8

Even worse, this comment suggests that only a tiny fraction (if that) of revolutionaries have ever fully understood Marxism (or, at least Capital). Lenin is quite clear: only those Marxists who have “thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic” (emphasis added) can claim to comprehend Capital; short of that they may not. Again, how many revolutionaries have thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic (let alone read it) since Lenin’s day? Even professional philosophers find Hegel’s Logic daunting, and of those who claim to understand it, the presumption must be that this is an empty boast until they succeed in explaining it clearly to the rest of us.9

Nevertheless, a more serious question is this: How is it possible to decide if anyone has ever actually understood all of Hegel’s Logic? Plainly, we can’t enquire of Hegel what the correct interpretation of his work is. Even Lenin himself failed to provide us with a comprehensive (or comprehensible) account of all of Hegel’s Logic. And, as we know with regard to the interpretation of that other (but less) obscure book -- The Bible --, it is always open for someone to claim that their interpretation of it is the correct one, while all the rest aren’t, with no empirically viable way of deciding between them. Of course, as we shall see, this feature is precisely what allows sectarians to impose their own brand orthodoxy on their corner of the militant market.10

Buried in here somewhere is one of the reasons for the ideological sectarianism endemic in revolutionary Marxism; Hegel&#39;s Logic is to dialectics as The Bible is to Theology. In both of the latter a ‘correct’ interpretation functions as a test of orthodoxy; their use is a source of mystification and a guarantor of sectarian righteousness. Moreover, as is easy to demonstrate, this fact helps DM-adepts find whatever post hoc justifications they require to ‘justify’ inconsistent, undemocratic tactical manoeuvring -- or counter-revolutionary activity -- as the need arises. Furthermore, as is the case with other sacred texts -- where priests, theologians and assorted holy men also claim exclusive interpretive rights --, only a few self-selected DM-epigones can ‘rightly’ claim to ‘understand’ the Logic (or “dialectics”), even if they find it impossible to prove this to the rest of us by explaining it clearly to a mortal soul. This being so, few among the rank-and-file will ever feel confident (or foolish) enough to question the theoretical deliverances made on their behalf by Stalin, Mao, Mandel, Healy, Pablo, Grant, Avakian -- or whoever.11

DM = Dialectical Materialism.

NOTES

7. Fifty years would, of course, take us back to Engels himself&#33; It would also take out Dietzgen, Kautsky and Plekhanov. Of course, it could be that Lenin was merely commenting on contemporaneous Marxists, thus absolving Engels. However, what he does say fails to support this interpretation:

“It is impossible to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx&#33;&#33;” [Lenin (1961), p.180. Bold emphases added.]

This looks pretty clear that in the last fifty years: “none of the Marxists understood Marx&#33;&#33;” In The Algebra of Revolution [TAR] John Rees notes that this sort of comment was directed against Plekhanov. Does it say this? It seems it must since no one over that period appears to have studied and fully understood Hegel. Nevertheless, as Rees also says:

“In these fragmentary notes, Lenin formulates some of the most precise definitions of key concepts in Marxist philosophy available anywhere. The dialectic itself, for instance, has never been better explained….” [TAR, p.185.]

High praise like this must mean that Engels’s account was deficient in some way. What way could this be? Answer: Engels’s version of DM was not aligned closely enough to Hegel’s Logic. That can only mean that Engels did not understand Capital&#33; On the other hand, if the dialectic has never been better explained, and Lenin’s book is full of incomprehensible sentences, what does this say about the dialectic? Can anyone explain it in comprehensible terms? Has anyone?

In order to counter ridiculous consequences such as these, two comrades -- Woods and Grant (in Woods and Grant (1995)) -- have argued that Lenin was deliberately exaggerating here. This is, of course, entirely possible, but it is certainly not the way Lenin has been interpreted by subsequent Marxists. [On this, note Andy Blunden’s comments recorded in Empson (2005), p.166: “Hegel is the philosophical predecessor of Marx, and we have Lenin’s word for it that Marx cannot be understood without first understanding Hegel.”] Naturally, this passage helps account for something that would otherwise be inexplicable: the fascination that Hegel’s Logic has exercised on most revolutionaries -- and all STD’s [Stalinist Dialecticians] and OT’s [Orthodox Trotskyists] -- since. If Lenin was exaggerating, that would not have happened.

For example, not only do we find a Trotskyist of the stature of Raya Dunayevskaya devoting several books to the futile attempt to comprehend Hegel’s Logic, we find her reiterating this famous claim:

“Here, specifically, we see the case of Lenin, who had gone back to Hegel, and had stressed that it was impossible to understand Capital, especially its first chapter, without reading the whole of the Science….” [Dunayevskaya (2002), p.328.]

Nevertheless, if this is the only way that these remarks of Lenin’s can be defused by Woods and Grant (i.e., by claiming that Lenin was indulging in hyperbole), the question would naturally arise as to why they took other (even more absurd) comments in his Philosophical Notebooks literally.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that Lenin himself admitted that he found certain parts of Hegel’s Logic impossibly obscure, or just plain nonsense. [Cf., Lenin (1961), pp.103, 108, 117, 229.] Hence, if correct, this would mean that even Lenin did not understand Capital&#33;

“It is impossible to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx&#33;&#33;” [Lenin (1961), p.180; bold emphasis added.]

Is this another &#39;internal contradiction&#39; that forces us to change our view of Hegel? Surely it must if Lenin is correct in insisting that “everything existing” (including the existing passage above) is a Unity of Opposites.

“[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:]…Internally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]… as the sum and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is connected with every other…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other….

“In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics….

“The splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the essence (one of the ‘essentials’, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristic features) of dialectics….

“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….” [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-60.]

Or is this just another “exaggeration”?

Finally, there is no evidence that Marx himself made this claim about his own work -- nor is there any that he had ever thoroughly studied and thoroughly understood Hegel’s Logic. This either means that the Logic is largely irrelevant to any student of Capital, or Marx did not understand his own book&#33;

8. This does not, of course, mean that workers cannot understand Capital, but if Lenin were right it would be remarkable if anyone on earth could&#33;

9. I, for one, will not be holding my breath.

10. Again, this is not to suggest that the roots of sectarianism are merely ideological, just that it helps considerably (i.e., in fostering a need for ‘orthodoxy’ -– note the religious connotations) if the faithful have an obscure book (or set of books) on which to base their ideas. And the more obscure the better; without doubt Hegel’s Logic gets the gold medal in all events in this regard. As Kojak once said, “It sure beats the hell out of whatever’s in second place&#33;”

11. Lest this comment appears to associate the present author with well-known anti-Marxists, it is worth noting that the points in the text were aimed at the ideological use of mystification, whoever indulges in it (including such critics themselves). As will be agued later, if Lenin was guilty of doing this he did so unwittingly; he was clearly unaware of the significance of the ideas that Engels had imported into the movement. The same goes for other great revolutionaries (including Engels himself). My argument is not with their sincerity -- nor yet with their revolutionary fervour -- but with their philosophical judgement and emotional susceptibilities."


REFERENCES

Dunayevskaya, R. (2002), The Power Of Negativity. Selected Writings On The Dialectic In Hegel And Marx (Lexington Books).

Empson, M. (2005), ‘Marxism On The Web’, International Socialism Journal 105, pp.164-68.

Lenin, V. (1961), Collected Works. Vol. 38 (Progress Publishers).

Rees, J. (1998), The Algebra Of Revolution (Routledge).

Woods, A., and Grant, T. (1995), Reason In Revolt. Marxism And Modern Science (Wellred Publications).

Added upon edit -- this has been updated and re-written since, and can now be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_01.htm

[peaccenicked]

Lenin&#39;s aphorism ie truisim is reflective on the many parrallel between both books, this is more evident in the Grundisse.


How do I prove this?

That would requre extensive regurgitation which is not really what I fancy doing right now.

If you have studied the Logic, kapital and the bridge Grundisse, you will realise that that could take a whole book, perhaps two.


What makes it difficult for me is that Kapital, Chapter one has some tricky or perhaps even dodgy formulations, that I am still pondering.

The question of degrees of understanding is also tricky. It is hard to measure understanding, that is largely an intuitive matter that requires absorption of the output of many writers. Another thing that,would require large amounts of A4 to prove.


Writing without proof is to give guides not to set something in stone,


You seem to be quite confused, it comes from pendantry.

There is a point when the pedantic need for accurate expression nulliffies the meaning an original expression.

The best solution is to look at these works, and if nothing comes at you as similar then say so. Then you may have a counter claim.

Id dont like dancing words with a pedant it is torturous.


If you think, &#39;universal&#39; is an obscure term then you clearly lost to thought. Your brain is atomised.

If life is just provable bundles of empirical data, then you dont have a life,and you seem to want to strangle yourself when it comes to hypothesis(from your essay)

I am unwilling compromise clarity of thought for jargon.


Here we have it to think, I need proof, that I can think, to someone who is out to destroy thinking. All thinking requires statements. The structure of a statement is subject predicate verb. Subject (universal) (to be qualified).Predicate and verb (particular and individual judgement). This is at the root of all thinking.


All you are doing is mental gymnastics and falling off the bottom bar.

This is the post modern way, you are not alone.

The reading of Marx without Hegel is simply bananas.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm

[peaccenicked]

ComradeRed, finally you are coming out the mystical shell of empiricism.


OK, how do you determine what is an opposite thing?


You mean you dont know how to do that.

[peaccenicked]

"The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of “Das Kapital,” it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre ‘Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. "



Finally, there is no evidence that Marx himself made this claim about his own work -- nor is there any that he had ever thoroughly studied and thoroughly understood Hegel’s Logic. This either means that the Logic is largely irrelevant to any student of Capital, or Marx did not understand his own book&#33;

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


You seem to be quite confused, it comes from pedantry

You mean that the sloppy use of language and logic allows you DM-fans to &#39;derive&#39; all sorts of things that more careful thinkers would not.


I don’t like dancing words with a pedant it is torturous.

You mean that I will not let you get away with sloppy thought. And you do not like being pulled up for it, or for being well out-of-date.


If you think, &#39;universal&#39; is an obscure term then you clearly lost to thought. Your brain is atomised.

I am Ok with the word in question when used in ordinary material language; I merely point out that in philosophy the word has no meaning at all.

Unless you know different.

But, I suspect you cannot say, since it is a term of art you clearly have not thought much about (you just like using it since it makes your sentences seem profound).

I expose the problems associated with this word in Essay Three at my site. Please do not read it, it will expose your own sloppy use of language even more.


If life is just provable bundles of empirical data, then you don’t have a life, and you seem to want to strangle yourself when it comes to hypothesis(from your essay)

This sentence seems to have been randomly typed (I only say this because it does not relate to anything I have said, nor to anything that can be inferred from what I have said, and it seems to be unrelated to anything in this thread); either that or you are back to making stuff up.

I suspect the latter.


I am unwilling compromise clarity of thought for jargon.

Good, then that means you are going to abandon all that empty jargon Hegel bequeathed to dialectical materialism.

It certainly made a mess of most of your posts.


The structure of a statement is subject predicate verb.

Not so.

You are still stuck in ancient grammar.

You need to leave the Fourth Century BC behind, comrade.

There are many thoughts not expressible in subject predicate form. You already know this since you rarely use that form yourself in these posts.

Here is one example off the top of my head: "Engels sent Marx some money."

Here is another: "Lenin knew more than Kerensky."

And another "Woods and Grant wrote a rather poor book."

And another: "That comrade over there gave the leaflets to the strikers on the bus, who handed them out to the pickets, who read them and passed them on."

No verb "is" here.

No predicate here either:

"I brought something good to read on the train, but it most of the time I just slept."

Or here:

"Anything you can organise under most circumstances, someone with twice your experience should be able organise much better in the same conditions."

Or:

“Any non-prime number has at least two prime factors.”

Or: "All complex conjugates multiply to give real numbers."

In fact, most of what you say each day is not in the subject-predicate form (and that form does not appear in non-Indo-European languages).

So your ‘logic’ is not only seriously out-of-date, it is based on a grammatical form that has little use, and one that does not appear in many languages.

That is why I recommended that you upgrade your knowledge of logic and grammar.

[You can begin by following the links in Essay Four at my site.]

It is impossible to take you seriously if you keep asserting things from your present state of self-inflicted ignorance.

But, true to form, yet more fantasies:


This is the post modern way, you are not alone.

I am not a postmodernist, never have been, and never will be. Why do you think that everyone is a postmdernist? Did you read that in Woods and Grant and just swallow the idea?

You need to start to think for yourself.

Postmodernism is a philosophical theory, and I claim all philosophical theories are nonsensical.

In fact, all we need are good scientific theories.

Once more, stop making things up. You are impressing no one but yourself.


The reading of Marx without Hegel is simply bananas.

So you say; I say different.

You are the sort of person who would have attacked Galileo because he contradicted Aristotle.

With that attitude, science would grind to a halt.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace, as to that quote from Marx about Hegel, where does he say that you can only understand his work if you have read and fully understood all of Hegel&#39;s Logic?

He merely says he is a pupil of Hegel.

The best he says is this:


in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him

So, no instruction to anyone that in order to comprehend Kapital they have to read and thoroughly undersatnd all of Hegel&#39;s Logic; merely that Marx stole some jargon from Hegel.

Big deal.

So Lenin claimed things of Kapital that Marx did not.

Get over it....

[peaccenicked]

This is a thread on a website not place for philosophical papers of any real length.
Already you have shown you are pure pedant and thought policeman. I am going to use what ever words I choose to be appropiate, the word "Universal&#39; has a meaning. It is not missing from any dictionary I know of.

Your treatise on words is laughable as such. Policing words is completely bananas.

You said there was no evidence for Lenin&#39;s assertion from Marx but this is just churlish and very childish just because he does not use the exact same sentence.


I have not said sentence structure was rigid, what I am trying to indicate is
the use of everyday logic has within it a play between the universal, the particular and the individual in real life.

You are trying to deny this, you say I need evidence to show this. Really,

A universal is the standard item of all things,

the particular, is the moment of that thing
the individual is the special individuated thing.


It is hard to make sentences without these things being involved.

This is obvious to most people.

Again asking for proof when there is literally millions of examples close to hand is both childish and disingenious.

Your philosophy has no meaning, it is an attack on meaning.
a first form philosophy student would understand what a bundle of empirical data is.
Empiricists have nothing else and derive nothing from the principle save the principle that nothing can be derived from first principles.
which strangely enough is a first principle.
What you do is mystify the process by which ideas arise by putting demands and constraints on it.

But you cant handcuff ideas. Speculation on any matter is fine, guessing is fine,
noone needs your antidialectical nonsense, the prime instrument of thought is questioning itself. All tools are available to human beings

[peaccenicked]

from the same paragraph from Marx.


him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner

This can be construed with strong grounds that Marx did use Hegel&#39;s logic, as his method.

The question of understanding the method is dependent on whether you consume Marx like a piece of meat or if you wish to understand the ingredients.

It might be possible to gain a lot from Capital without understanding the making of it, but to understand capital in its depth is another matter.

[peaccenicked]

Here is a website of particular interesthttp://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/...s/ot/uchida.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/uchida.htm)

[peaccenicked]

To make it clear Marx made extensive use of Hegels method. He changed most of all the subject matter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


This is a thread on a website not place for philosophical papers of any real length.

Yes, so?


Already you have shown you are pure pedant and thought policeman.

Well, if you are going to name call, I could call you a logical illiterate, an empty windbag, and blusterer extraordinaire, but I am far too nice to do that.


It is not missing from any dictionary I know of

And neither is the word &#39;trinity&#39;; does that make you a believer?


Your treatise on words is laughable as such. Policing words is completely bananas.

What a profound response&#33;

You DM-fans are push-overs. You have no arguments, so you bluster.

you[/i] who wants to police my use of &#39;universal&#39;. So, if it&#39;s Ok for you to do this, why not me?]

This is how a &#39;scientist&#39; deals with lack of evidence supporting his claims:


[b]You said there was no evidence for Lenin&#39;s assertion from Marx but this is just churlish and very childish just because he does not use the exact same sentence.

He produces no evidence....

I said Marx never claimed for his work what Lenin did, and you produce no evidence to the contrary, so you name call again to disguise that fact.

And you say I am being childish....


I have not said sentence structure was rigid, what I am trying to indicate is
the use of everyday logic has within it a play between the universal, the particular and the individual in real life.

Who said you did say it was rigid?

Unlike you, I offered evidence (i.e., several ordinary sentences which cannot be squeezed into your a priori and ancient &#39;logical&#39; mould, and there are many many more (look at your own use of language; you rarely use the subject-predicate form); in stark contrast you just assert things, seemingly randomly (and as if to make your case deliberately weaker, you do so in ignorance of grammar and of logic).

I hope you do not do this in Physics. You might be a danger to yourself....



A universal is the standard item of all things,

What does that mean, for goodness sake?

I thought you were trying to make things clear.

A &#39;standard item of all things&#39;.... so all things have &#39;items&#39; do they? And who set the standard?

And if it is the &#39;standard item&#39; it must be an abstract particular, and hence not universal.

You are no better at philosophy than you are at logic.

More opaque jargon:


the particular, is the moment of that thing
the individual is the special individuated thing.

What thing? What moment? How long is that moment? How is the &#39;thing&#39; individuated, and by whom?

Do we all do it the same way? And how could you tell?

You need to start thinking a little more critically about the mystical ideas you have unthinkingly swallowed.


It is hard to make sentences without these things being involved.

I managed, so did you.

In fact, I can think of no sentences where these occur outside of this Hermetic mish mash.


This is obvious to most people.

Again asking for proof when there is literally millions of examples close to hand is both childish and disingenuous.

Not so, and millions can (and do) say the same about other mystical ideas, such as belief in god.

Your tactic is the same as other DM-fans; when pressed to justify the sorts of things you regularly pontificate about, you go all coy and blame the one who asking for justification. [Are you a scientist? I thought scientists relied on evidence? I merely asked for some. That is a crime now is it?]

But, if there is so much of this evidence about the place, why do DM-fans never produce any?

[And I have stopped asking DM-addicts like you for proof of your &#39;theory&#39;, since not only do you lot never give any, I honestly think you are incapable of recognising when something counts as a proof (that is how logically-challenged you lot are). So these days I just ask for perhaps a vague sign even that dialectics is any use at all, means anything and is any more believable than theology -- just a hint will do, so you do not need to bust a gut over this --; why do I expect yet more bluster?).

Again, I hope you do your science a lot better than this.

However, I regret saying nice things about your essay after this:


Your philosophy has no meaning, it is an attack on meaning.

Well, the reverse of this is true, which, of course, you would know if you bothered to check (I read your essay before I passed comment –- you should try to return the same simple courtesy).


a first form philosophy student would understand what a bundle of empirical data is.

And this irrelevant comment is in response to what?

Oh, I see, nothing at all that I said; you make stuff up and then answer that just for fun (??).

However, and once again, it is I who provides what little evidence there is in this entire thread in support of what is said; you merely pontificate about things you clearly know nothing about (like logic, grammar and philosophy).

So, perhaps becoming a novice philosophy student would be a promotion for you.

I have to say, in the next comment, you really excel yourself; WTF is this all about:


Empiricists have nothing else and derive nothing from the principle save the principle that nothing can be derived from first principles.
which strangely enough is a first principle.

What you do is mystify the process by which ideas arise by putting demands and constraints on it.

Have you got your mental threads crossed or something? I only say this since this bears no relation to anything I have said.

However, I fear that it could be used by those less sympathetic than I am to question your sanity, and I would be the first in line to defend you, if they did this. But with this sort of material for the defence, I think even I would not be up to the task.

[Stop shooting the case for the defence in the foot&#33;]

But here you go into waffle overdrive (I suspect this might be because even you can see how weak your ‘defence’ of dialectics has been, and how out of your depth you are):


noone needs your antidialectical nonsense, the prime instrument of thought is questioning itself. All tools are available to human beings

From the odd things you have been saying recently (and they seem to be getting more desperate and odder by the minute), I think you could do without dialectics.

It’s screwed with your capacity to reason.

Here, you seem to be unable to put words/ideas together.

Are you alright?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace, you are getting more desperate still; trying to squeeze an ounce of support by forcing the text to say what you want it to (which is odd since you branded this tactic &#39;childish&#39; earlier):


This can be construed with strong grounds that Marx did use Hegel&#39;s logic, as his method.

He &#39;coquetted&#39; his phraseology; that is what Marx said.

Get over it.


Here is a website of particular interesthttp://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/...s/ot/uchida.htm

Thanks, but I have read Uchida; mystical waffle.

You are welcome to it.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2006, 02:28 AM
ComradeRed, finally you are coming out the mystical shell of empiricism.


OK, how do you determine what is an opposite thing?


You mean you dont know how to do that.
No, I don&#39;t. There are too many degrees of freedom that you can take the opposite of.

For example, someone (forgive me, whoever posted it, I have bad memories for names&#33;) argued that the opposite actions must be taken in math to solve algebraic equations.

He gave the example along the lines of 3x+5=20. Well, you add the opposite of 5 to both sides.

Now, that&#39;s straightforward, but I know too much; the opposite of 5 in Clifford algebra? Minkowski algebra? Grasmann algebra? :huh:

What determines the opposite of 5? Why? What criteria is being used?

Let us take another example. What is the opposite of "Fire"? Show the reasoning why it must be what you propose and nothing else.

It must be reproducible too (so anyone can do it and get the same results).

[peaccenicked]

This getting stupider and stupider. The idea that the Trinity and the Universal are in some way part of the same paradigm is just a matter of word play. you can call me all you like but I am confident that any rational person reading this will see where the deficences lie.

The logic you have is just puerile and largely fantasy. I dont believe in anything, and saying that is such a belief in a universal is just avoiding the objectiviy of such.

The universal is an objective entity albiet abstract, it can only be described in relation to particularities and individualities. You ask who decides the standard item.
Who says what table is the standard table, and you dare claim to be living in the real word.

In my youth I fought against stalinism and bureaucracy in the labour movement, I knew their tricks and their games. Call that bluster but I call it learning the fraudulent nature of censors.

I accuse you point blank of trying to distort dialectics.

The bastardisation of the use of the word &#39;universal&#39; is akin to a censorship style.
Call this bluster all you will, call me anything you want but you cannot fool me at all.



You obviously havent read Hegels logic or understood to it any degree.
Mystical it maybe, but Marx&#39;s does claim to be very much influenced by it. He was a Left Hegelian at one point.

It is also part of your stalinised method to cut of history when you want to. I daresay this is of no importance to you.

All your writing points to a very sinister control freak philosophising.

Controlling the use of words is particularly reminiscent of Stalinist rule.
However, there is no way you can manipulate a word like universal out of the language usage.



The fact you said somethings positive(perhaps I should say thankyou but i suspect your motives about my eassay) will not put me off pointing out your pretty inhuman position which I wish to distance myself completely.





QUOTE
A universal is the standard item of all things,



What does that mean, for goodness sake?

I thought you were trying to make things clear.

A &#39;standard item of all things&#39;.... so all things have &#39;items&#39; do they? And who set the standard?

And if it is the &#39;standard item&#39; it must be an abstract particular, and hence not universal.

You are no better at philosophy than you are at logic

Here we go again with your mystical premised question:

Who set the standard banana?


Basically, you are about is protecting the mystical shell of empiricism, and all the bluster and indeed fraud is coming from you.

Trying to strip Marx from the Hegelian is an utter non starter.
Proof is in your sophistry which I dont think impresses anybody.


ComradeRed.

It seems that empiricists are completely without an imagination.

If you want to talk about the nature of opposites, maybe you should ask what are you trying to find out the nature of?
Opposites have very little point in independent existence.

If we look at a proccess, any process, there are opposite tendencies inherent to that process.
See if we can get by this place first. Are opposites inherent to any process?

[peaccenicked]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls...nition&ct=title (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=SUNA,SUNA:2006-18,SUNA:en&defl=en&q=define:universal&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title)

To try to be clearer, I use this sense of the word universal.
a behavioral convention or pattern characteristic of all members of a particular culture or of all human beings In other words a standard form.

No ammount of intelectual bullying can change the real world.
The Universal has no subjectivity, in the sense of "who?" it is an objective standard form.


How can someone criticising dialectics miss out on such basic criterion?



please study dialectics with a little care.

I bet your only recourse is yet again feign no understanding of my position,you are only fooling yourself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


The idea that the Trinity and the Universal are in some way part of the same paradigm is just a matter of word play. you can call me all you like but I am confident that any rational person reading this will see where the deficiencies lie.

Well, the Trinity arose (as you would know if you knew your history of philosophy) out of Greek attempts to analyse universal terms, and how these related to Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines of &#39;substance&#39; (mediated via NeoPlatonic ideas of emanation invented by Plotinus (which are oddly similar to Hegelian ideas of mediation), notions Hegel adapted for his own mystical use.

So, since all metaphysical terms are inexplicable (including the opaque ones DM-fans inherited from Hegel -- I challenge you to try to explicate a single one in material language; you have signally failed with ‘universal’, so your effort so far is not looking too good), my analogy is apt, and unanswerable.

Unless you can show otherwise.

So you need to stop advertising your own ignorance.

And now we encounter yet move avoidance tactics:


The logic you have is just puerile and largely fantasy. I don’t believe in anything, and saying that is such a belief in a universal is just avoiding the objectivity of such.

In what way is it a fantasy if I provide links, evidence and argument, and you provide bluster, name-calling and empty assertion?


The universal is an objective entity albeit abstract, it can only be described in relation to particularities and individualities.

How do you know?

Can they be detected by any physical means? Do you have any material evidence to support this claim?

So in what does their objectivity consist, other than in the objective fact that they were invented by ancient Greek Idealists?

If I were to claim that a certain entity was objective, I think you, as a physicist, would want some evidence.

If all I could produce was two thousand years of verbal spaghetti, and no physical evidence, you would be right to question my claim.

Same here.

Now, you sound like a confused Platonist:


Who says what table is the standard table, and you dare claim to be living in the real word.

I wasn&#39;t sure what you were saying here.

You see why I worry about your capacity to think clearly.


I accuse you point blank of trying to distort dialectics.

And I return the accusation, and claim that you know no logic, precious little philosophy, and are incapable of defending your ideas without becoming abusive.

Once more, since I present argument, evidence and links, and you bluster, I suspect neutral observers will be able to make their own minds up as to who is prevaricating/revealing his ignorance.

And now you give up:


The bastardisation of the use of the word &#39;universal&#39; is akin to a censorship style.
Call this bluster all you will, call me anything you want but you cannot fool me at all.

Or is it that you now see you have nothing more to offer beyond the mystical ideas you have uncritically accepted? I suspect so.

Fine, stick your head back in the sand.

See if I care -- but please stop linking the workers&#39; movement with this Idealist rubbish (and stop pontificating in the absence of evidence).

More invention:


You obviously haven’t read Hegel’s logic or understood to it any degree.

Read it many times, hated every sentence (not least because Hegel is a piss poor logician, but an excellent mystic).

But, you haven&#39;t read any other logic, and yet you are happy to assert things about it.

So, once again, who is advertising his ignorance here?

More invention, coupled with a nasty slur:


It is also part of your stalinised method to cut of history when you want to.

1) I am a Trotskyist (and proud of it).

2) Where do I &#39;cut of (sic) history&#39;?

3) You are the one who is ignorant of the history of logic and philosophy; so for every grimy finger you point at me, there are ten pointing back at you.



Are we reaching the bottom of the abuse barrel now? You clearly have no reasoned response to make, so you thrash about for randomly negative things to say, based on no evidence at all:


All your writing points to a very sinister control freak philosophising.

Eh?

I&#39;d suggest you sought treatment at this point, but I do not want to descend to your level, so I won&#39;t.


Controlling the use of words is particularly reminiscent of Stalinist rule.

Where do I try to control the use of words? I merely ask you to explicate the obscure words you use, and you fail miserably.

You can continue to use any words you like; you can go about the place uttering the most ridiculous things imaginable, for all I care. You can even go one step worse than that and preach dialectics till the cows evolve.

All I ask of someone who originally claimed to be making dialectics clear, is that you use clear words, or you explain the obscure terms you employ -- failing that, you need to stop claming to have made things clear.



No &#39;Stalinism&#39; there, just a simple minimal requirement that you try to make sense, so we can see if what you say is correct or not.

Think you are up to the task?

The evidence so far shows that while you are grade A in the obscurity, abuse and bluster category, but you are F minus for clarity.


[b]However, there is no way you can manipulate a word like universal out of the language usage.

Well you need to read what I say with a little more care; I said I was OK with the use of this word in material language (check my earlier posts), I merely objected to the obscure use of the word in question (‘universal’) in metaphysics, and I explained why.

If you have a problem with my reasons, you need to address them and stop making stuff up.


Basically, you are about is protecting the mystical shell of empiricism, and all the bluster and indeed fraud is coming from you.

This is your considered response to my questions, asking you to make your opaque ideas clear, is it?

And once again: I post evidence, answer your questions (mostly directly, with reasons attached), you avoid what I say, make stuff up, post irrelevant meanderings, and [i]you accuse me of bluster?

And where is your evidence that I am defending empiricism (I note you have dropped your earlier slur that I was a postmodernist -- perhaps you failed to note that you cannot be an empiricist and a postmodernist all at once -- another flag up here adverting to your self-inflicted ignorance, comrade, I think, only now it is inconsistent ignorance)?


Trying to strip Marx from the Hegelian is an utter non starter.
Proof is in your sophistry which I don’t think impresses anybody.

Well Marx did the job for me; he said he &#39;coquetted&#39; with Hegel’s terminology. Now if his word is not good enough for you, I am not sure what to suggest.

Er, except, that you stop making stuff up.

Unless you have any evidence that supports your claim (that you have kept mysteriously to yourself all this time)?

Share it with us, if you can….

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Paece&#39;s attempt to do some sub-standard metaphysics (raid a dictionary&#33;):


a behavioral convention or pattern characteristic of all members of a particular culture or of all human beings

As I said, I have no problem with the ordinary use of this word, so why you posted this I cannot imagine.

But, you dialectical mystics wish to turn this into an abstract particular, thus destroying its universality.

I do have a problem with that since it would undermine science.


How can someone criticising dialectics miss out on such basic criterion?

How can you, a dialectician, fail to understand your own basic terms?

Or if you do understand them, how can you fail so miserably in explicating them (although, to be fair to you, you have failed no worse than the other comrades here have, and no worse than every DM-fan I have &#39;debated&#39; with over the last 25 years, and no worse than the hundreds of books and articles I have read on this mystical doctrine -- so you are in &#39;good&#39; company).


please study dialectics with a little care.

Please upgrade your knowledge of logic, everyday argumentation, philoosphy, and comradely courtesy (i.e., stop making stuff up).

It is, in fact, not possible to study dialectics with care (although I have been trying to do this for nigh on 25 years); indeed, it is about as easy to do this as it is to study the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation with care (dialectics and this miserable doctrine doctrine both result from a quirky application of mystical Greek ideas -- nice company to be in).


I bet your only recourse is yet again feign no understanding of my position,you are only fooling yourself.

Well, it would help considerably if you could convince me you understand your own ideas.

Up to now we have seen very little to suggest you do.

So what chance have I got?

[peaccenicked]

The universal is an objective entity albeit abstract, it can only be described in relation to particularities and individualities.



How do you know?

Can they be detected by any physical means? Do you have any material evidence to support this claim?

This your empiricist fetish with evidence coming to bear. But, No you are contradicting me you prove me wrong. Have you any physical evidence to prove me wrong. How do you know that your evidence can be verified. Who will check that your proof is correct and how can they back it up.?

This silly game can go on for ever. My statment is simply open to reason. Tell me where I am wrong&#33;

For the life of me I know when someone is rather craftily playing with words.

The term universal is ok in ordinary speech but not in logic then it is archaic.


This is drowning the meaning of the term for any use in logic, and Trotsky a dialectitian of some note woud see how you are trying to remove it out of the picture of the history of logic.

Socialism is now an &#39;archiac&#39; word in many quarters, but it does not change its definition.
If you are going to proclaim an anti-dialectical position, proclaiming one its fundamental elements as archaic is really a preemptive strike that avoids looking
at the meaning of the word.

But, you dialectical mystics wish to turn this into an abstract particular, thus destroying its universality.

The univesral in common speech is no different from its ordinary dialectical meaning.


Turning the universal into an abstract particular, just robs it of it meaning which only you are attempting to do. Only you is trying to rob it of its objectivity. It is only a particular abstract the sense that it is a category derived from first principles in the very first grouping of all things.


I think that this particular dishonesty, destroying universality by refusing to recognise its proper role with the subject which wish to destroy ammounts to cheating. The method of setting up straw dogs to knock down is notorious.

Your own concern for the destruction of universality is pretty lame, you have not proven to me it is at all part of your thinking.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


This your empiricist fetish with evidence coming to bear.

So, whenever anyone asks for some evidence that what you say is correct, you automatically assume that this is a result of that person&#39;s commitment to empiricism?

In that case, if I made up a tall story about say Lenin (that he murdered babies, say) and you asked for the evidence supporting such a wild tale, it would be OK for me to brush such pedantic formalities aside by accusing you of being an empiricist?

On that basis, I wonder you don&#39;t just make stuff up in Physics, and then when anyone asks for the data supporting your &#39;theory&#39; you brush that aside with similar avoiding tactics.

Now, you might have had a case, if I had been asking for empirical data, but I did not specify, and for good reason: I do not mind what evidence you come up with (empirical, logical, theoretical); any will do. Do you have any?

The fact that you continue to prevaricate suggests that you haven&#39;t got any. In that case, we have only your word for it (or rather only Hegel&#39;s word for it) and that is good enough for you.

So, whatever Hegel says is fine with you.

As I said, you gave up thinking for yourself some time ago….

So, now the critic of empiricism turns into its most fervent prophet:


Have you any physical evidence to prove me wrong.

But, if what you said above was correct, it will be OK for me to ignore this and accuse you of an over-fondness for empiricism; will it?

I suspect not. So why accuse me then?

However, the good news is that I have already given you evidence. And as physical as one could wish for; in your own physical use of the concept you contradicted yourself: one minute a universal is a general term, the next it is the name of (or it is a singular designating expression for) an abstract particular.

Hence, your own use of this notion is radically confused, and thus impossible to assess until you tell us clearly what you mean by this word.

In that case, my production of evidence against your idea will kick in just as soon as you tell us what the **** you are referring to here.

So far you have given us a few garbled descriptions, and ones that fall apart on examination.

Just as soon as you tell us what you are referring to, I will respond.

Now, you notice how we approach this differently: you prevaricate, bleat on about empiricism, and then capitulate to it demanding of me what you refuse to provide yourself, thus branding yourself an ‘empiricist’ (if your reasoning above is correct).

[Recall you were the one who said you wanted to make dialectics clear; not providing any evidence to back up your wild claims is not the right way to go about it. You clearly do not like to be taken to task for not doing what you yourself said you would do.]

In contrast, I try to make sense of your opaque statements, and at least make some attempt to produce argument and evidence (logical, theoretical, grammatical, linguistic, or material).


My statement is simply open to reason. Tell me where I am wrong&#33;

What statement? You have made several badly-typed and meandering claims; I need to know which pile of confusion you are talking about, so I can rough it up again.

Like this one:


For the life of me I know when someone is rather craftily playing with words.

The term universal is ok in ordinary speech but not in logic then it is archaic.

Are you saying anything, a) useful, b) comprehensible, c) relevant here?

I cannot respond to it until you translate it into something a little more focussed and/or meaningful.

[Are you by any chance typing with boxing gloves on?

That would explain the random, badly-worded things you keep posting.]

And now we get more invention:


This is drowning the meaning of the term for any use in logic, and Trotsky a dialectician of some note would see how you are trying to remove it out of the picture of the history of logic.

Where do I try to ‘remove’ it from the history of logic? The term ‘universal’ has a long and sordid history in traditional logic; how could I hide that fact (you attribute to me powers I do not possess, and would not use even if I did).

I merely noted that the concept is an empty one when deployed in traditional logic. I gave you my reasons for saying this; you need to learn to address those, and not make stuff up.

And WTF has this go to do with anything:


Socialism is now an &#39;archiac&#39; word in many quarters, but it does not change its definition.

My criticism is not based on the archaic nature of this term (it would be same if it had been invented yesterday); when used today or 2500 years ago, it is an empty notion.

That is not so with the word &#39;socialism&#39;.

[At this point, and since you like to use dictionaries, I suggest you look up the meaning of the word &#39;relevant&#39;.]

Now, I do take you to task for relying on archaic logic, but if you do not like that, will you then revert to using Aristotelian Physics on the grounds that it is archaic too?

Will you?

No you won’t; well then, why are you relying on archaic logic, and on ancient terms dreamt up by mystics and idealists, terms that make no sense, and which you cannot explicate to us? Your position gets more untenable the more you wriggle.


If you are going to proclaim an anti-dialectical position, proclaiming one its fundamental elements as archaic is really a preemptive strike that avoids looking
at the meaning of the word.

Well, what does this word mean?

So far, you have produced a woolly &#39;definition&#39; that fell apart alarmingly rapidly, then you prevaricated, and under pressure reached for the dictionary and quoted one of its ordinary language meanings (not noticing that I did not object to that sense, nor noticing that it helped you define its philosophical meaning not one bit).

Now you talk about its meaning again.

Well, what the dickens does it mean?

If all of this is so crystal clear to you, why can&#39;t you tell us?


The univesral in common speech is no different from its ordinary dialectical meaning.

Well, now you are struggling, and badly – a fall back position, whereby you just assert stuff (with nothing to back it up).

The ordinary meaning of the word universal (as in ‘universal solvent’, or ‘universal solution’, or ‘universal joint’) is absolutely un-connected to the philosophical use you refer to (try to bend the examples I have given here of its ordinary use into the philosophical sense you require; go on, have a go). The traditional use of this word pulls it out of its usual context, and makes it into the name of an abstract particular (I gave an example earlier).

Now I suspect you cannot see this since you clearly know very little philosophy.

In traditional philosophy, which tended to turn everything into names, general terms were reduced from being general to being particular. They became the names of Forms, or abstract objects, or sets/classes.

In this way traditional logic undermined the ordinary use of general terms, which are not names in the vernacular; and in doing this it undermines science.

Now, there are my reasons (albeit heavily edited down; you can read the full version in Essay Three at my site) for denying what you say; have you any reasons (other than the bald assertion above) to support your claim?

I suggest not.


Turning the universal into an abstract particular, just robs it of it meaning which only you are attempting to do.

But it is not me who does this, you do it by the way you defined it earlier (and you do it again below), and traditional philosophers do it all the time.

If you do not like this transformation, I suggest you abandon dialectics since it is a fundamental premiss of the piss-poor logic Hegel used (it lies behind the medieval &#39;identity theory of predication&#39;, for example, that Hegel also put to no good – I give the details in Essay Three at my site).

It is a core idea in the term logic that descended from Aristotle, which Hegel used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_logic

http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philoso...predication.php (http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/identity-theory-of-predication.php)

http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/klima/BEAQ.HTM

http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/klima/FIL...ssentialism.pdf (http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/klima/FILES/BuridansEssentialism.pdf)

Were you aware of the long and sordid history of this theory?

No, I thought not.


Only you is trying to rob it of its objectivity. It is only a particular abstract the sense that it is a category derived from first principles in the very first grouping of all things.

Well, I am quite happy for this word to be as objective as you like, only it has to mean something first.

So far you have not been able to say what that is.

And you notice you have to turn it into a ‘category’ in order to try to to make this obscure notion comprehensible, and in doing that you particularise it, and thus empty it of its generality and its objectivity.

So, you my friend, are the one doing to this word what you accuse me of doing, turning it into the name of an abstract particular (or I think that is what you are doing, since the quoted sentence above is rather garbled -- I did tell you to take those boxing gloves off&#33;).


I think that this particular dishonesty, destroying universality by refusing to recognise its proper role with the subject which wish to destroy ammounts to cheating.

Well you can think all you like, mate; but can you back up a single thing you &#39;think&#39;?

So far, the verdict is no, you can&#39;t.

In that case, comrade, the accusing finger points back at you: you are the ‘cheat’.


Your own concern for the destruction of universality is pretty lame, you have not proven to me it is at all part of your thinking.

[Is there a &#39;not&#39; missing here?]

However, you were the one who said the demand for proof was &#39;childish&#39;.

So, is this latest claim of yours an admission on your part that the normal canons of reasoning (i.e., where proof is needed) are not childish after all?

If so, I can resume my earlier demand in the safe knowledge that you cannot now accuse me of being childish (since mature old you also demand it): can you prove a single thing you have said?

Remember, this thread was begun by you, to try to make dialectics clear.

So, the ball started in your court, and it hasn&#39;t really moved far from it.

In that case, let&#39;s see your non-childish proof that dialectics makes an ounce of sense.

If you cannot rise to this challenge, I suggest this thread should be closed.

[peaccenicked]

This your empiricist fetish with evidence coming to bear.



So, whenever anyone asks for some evidence that what you say is correct, you automatically assume that this is a result of that person&#39;s commitment to empiricism?

In that case, if I made up a tall story about say Lenin (that he murdered babies, say) and you asked for the evidence supporting such a wild tale, it would be OK for me to brush such pedantic formalities aside by accusing you of being an empiricist?

On that basis, I wonder you don&#39;t just make stuff up in Physics, and then when anyone asks for the data supporting your &#39;theory&#39; you brush that aside with similar avoiding tactics.

Now, you might have had a case, if I had been asking for empirical data, but I did not specify, and for good reason: I do not mind what evidence you come up with (empirical, logical, theoretical); any will do. Do you have any?

The fact that you continue to prevaricate suggests that you haven&#39;t got any. In that case, we have only your word for it (or rather only Hegel&#39;s word for it) and that is good enough for you.

So, whatever Hegel says is fine with you.

As I said, you gave up thinking for yourself some time ago….

So, now the critic of empiricism turns into its most fervent prophet:


I am not quite wih you here, I say something you ask me for proof, of a sentence


The universal is an objective entity albeit abstract, it can only be described in relation to particularities and individualities.



It is a sentence that describes the nature of a Universal, take tables, these are objective entities, particular tables have individual qualities. The abstract nature of this is in that is initself deduced from a pool of examples.

This is far as I am going wih you on this it is absolutely explicit in what I say and unecessary to expand upon. I really just think you are taking the piss.

The demand for proof is absolutely superflous to the meaning of the sentence which is probably outwith your grasp if you need explanation, which is good a proof you are going to get.

I suggest you are just harrassing me.

I did not look at Hegel on this, if you can find a reference I might find it useful.

.
If you have a specific criticism of Hegel on empiricism, it might be a useful to give him a public flogging, instead of implying his comments are sacrosanct to me.




Have you any physical evidence to prove me wrong.



But, if what you said above was correct, it will be OK for me to ignore this and accuse you of an over-fondness for empiricism; will it?

I suspect not. So why accuse me then?

However, the good news is that I have already given you evidence. And as physical as one could wish for; in your own physical use of the concept you contradicted yourself: one minute a universal is a general term, the next it is the name of (or it is a singular designating expression for) an abstract particular.

Hence, your own use of this notion is radically confused, and thus impossible to assess until you tell us clearly what you mean by this word.

In that case, my production of evidence against your idea will kick in just as soon as you tell us what the **** you are referring to here.

So far you have given us a few garbled descriptions, and ones that fall apart on examination.

Just as soon as you tell us what you are referring to, I will respond.

Now, you notice how we approach this differently: you prevaricate, bleat on about empiricism, and then capitulate to it demanding of me what you refuse to provide yourself, thus branding yourself an ‘empiricist’ (if your reasoning above is correct).

[Recall you were the one who said you wanted to make dialectics clear; not providing any evidence to back up your wild claims is not the right way to go about it. You clearly do not like to be taken to task for not doing what you yourself said you would do.]

In contrast, I try to make sense of your opaque statements, and at least make some attempt to produce argument and evidence (logical, theoretical, grammatical, linguistic, or material).

If you are consistent in your demand for proofs, for just about every single sentence in a post then I thought it might be your forte to practice what you preach but obviously I am wrong. Just because I gave two definitions of the one word does not mean I am contradicting myself. The apparent contradiction is there but if you even tried to follow the context . I have used the word in their different senses. I assumed rather wrongly that you had enough wits to grasp this.
The notion of the universal is primarily an objective entity but the secondary is how the word is deduced in the abstract. I dont know if it is in your capacity to handle different levels of meaning.
It read this way to me. it is probably some form you cant accept but i am not here to pander to your taste in pedantic exactness. I realise you use that to avoid the obvious meaning of a statement.


Just going through this is like being with an annoying awkward child who wants everthing spelt out in long hand who refuse to look at the text as a stream of meaning. &#39;Garbled formulation&#39; indeed.

This contrived style of debate makes merely for small point scoring.

I would like to cut to the chase, which you dance around.


You are trying to deny that you were trying to pull a fast one in the meaning of the word &#39;universal&#39;, bringing its normal usage outside that of dialectics by seizing on my secondary sense of the word.

If you think i am not seeing through this cover up then you are mistaken.

You are using a timeframe for the history of logic that does not pan with me.
Russell for instance was disproved by Godel.

Attacking dalectics by bringing to the fore other forms of independent logic is merely avoiding dialectics.

The history of the word logic through its many castrations does not present in anyway an arquement against dialectics.

The subject matter here is dialectics, and you have refused to read my other posts on this thread as a matter of your famous cortesy.

It seems very much you are just fooling around with me, and not wanting to delve into the subject.

You seem to want to impose a bar on the use of the words "universal" and the word "mediation". these are common parlance within the framework of dialectical logic. This restriction just is not on. The history of logic is not the same as the history of dialectics.

This seems to involve a refusal to register their meaning and the context of their usage. You refer to them as entities in the history of logic.


You dont want to explore the Universal, Particular and the Indiviual as they appear in dialectical history. You want to take me outside dialectics and hamper the conversation aimed at the development of the explanation dialectics.
You have comletely ignored what I have said on opposites.


You are not doing anything to get at the core of an explanation.

Your approach can be characterised as obstruction, and blowing out of proportion
pendantic irrelavances that seem to have to do with a commitment to empiricism than anything.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


I am not quite wih you here, I say something you ask me for proof, of a sentence

It has been obvious from the start that you have not been quite with it.

I allege you are out of your depth here; perhaps you are beginning to agree?


It is a sentence that describes the nature of a Universal, take tables, these are objective entities, particular tables have individual qualities. The abstract nature of this is in that is initself deduced from a pool of examles.

Which you and countless thousand traditional thinkers before you have then turned into an abstract particular called ‘the universal’, undermining the capacity language has for expressing generality.


I really just think you are taking the piss.

I accept your surrender....


The demand for proof is absolutely superflous to the meaning of the sentence which is probably outwith your grasp if you need explanation, which is good a proof you are going to get.

Translated, this means you cannot defend your ideas.


I suggest you are just harrassing me.

Poor you...

I counter-suggest you cannot cope with a subject you know little about, or with my withering attacks.


The notion of the universal is primarily an objective entity but the secondary is how the word is deduced in the abstract. I dont know if it is in your capacity to handle different levels of meaning.

Once more you turn it into the name of an abstract particular.

And, as to different levels of meaning, you have yet to show that there is even one level of meaning here, in the way you use this word.


It read this way to me. it is probably some form you cant accept but i am not here to pander to your taste in pedantic exactness.

Translated, once more, this means you are happy with your sloppy use of language and the imprecise ancient logic you have uncritically swallowed.

On this basis you should criticise Marx for pedantry in trying to be precise about the nature of capitalism.

When I do the same, you call me names.

I trust your Physics is more precise than your philosophy.

And now we have the &#39;childish&#39; slur again:


Just going through this is like being with an annoying awkward child who wants everthing spelt out

I pull you up for not living up to your open claim to make the dialectic clear, and you accuse me of being childish.

The fault is in you comrade. It’s your thread, you began it with one aim in mind. I merely underlined the fact that you failed badly.

You are still, even now, incapable of making a single one of your ideas clear. I point this out, you name call.


If you think i am not seeing through this cover up then you are mistaken.

I allege even more: I think you are out of your depth, hence all your thrashing about.

And what has this got to do with anything I said:


Russell for instance was disproved by Godel.

Even if this were correct (which I dispute) Gödel used modern logic to do it.

So, what is your point?

[Note the continued thrashing about -- anything to divert attention from your parlous state.]

And it looks like you still haven&#39;t taken those boxing gloves off, another odd Peace-sentence:


Attacking dalectics by bring to the fore other forms of independent logic is merely avoiding dialectics.

What does that prize specimen mean? This from the man who said he wanted to make dialectics clear&#33;&#33;


The subject matter here is dialectics, and you have refused to read my other posts on this thread as a matter of your famous cortesy.

Another irrelevant brick thrown in, just for good measure.

Your dispute with Red is none of my affair; from what little I have read of your posts against him, they seem about as rational as those against me.

If you have anything worthwhile to say against me, say it. If anything you have posted against Red is relevant, copy it out and re-post it; I do that on other threads for other comrades.

And, you have clearly not read much of what I have posted against you, or if you have, you just ignored it.

I try to respond to every one (or the vast bulk) of your sentences. You skim read and ignore what I say, then make up stuff that is the exact opposite of what I say.

As to ‘courtesy’, you would know, of course: you name call and invent things to put in my mouth. So I can do without lectures on that score from a comrade who cannot be bothered to be civil.


It seems very much you are just fooling around with me, and not wanting to delve into the subject.

I think I have delved far deeper than you: you just parrot a few nostrums borrowed from idealist thinkers, based on antiquated logic and Hermetic Philosophy. I bring up points from modern logic and grammar, the history of philosophy (stuff you clearly know nothing about) and you now accuse me of not wanting to delve. You are priceless.

What you mean is that you do not like it when someone exposes your theory as a sham.

So you throw random punches at me.

Again, more invention:


You seem to want to impose a bar on the use of the words "universal" and the word "mediation".

Just read what I said above: you can use any mystical word you like; but when you claim to be trying to make dialectics clear, you must try to avoid throwing a tantrum when you are pulled up for using obscure terms, which you still cannot explain.

And, stop making stuff up; how many more times do I have to ask you?


You refer to them as entities in the history of logic.

More invention; where do I do this?


You dont want to explore the Universal, Particular and the Indiviual as they appear in dialectical history.

Ah, but I have done this, that is why I can speak from knowledge, whereas you are still mired in ignorance (you only know a smattering of ancient logic, of which you seem to have a tenuous grasp anyway, and very little philosophy, but still you pontificate).


You want to take me outside dialectics and hamper the conversation aimed at the development of the explanation dialectics.

Not so, you are welcome to it; just stop trying to start threads where you say one thing, but fail to do it: i.e., make dialectics clear.


You have completely ignored what I have said on opposites.

I do not recall you saying anything on this, but if it is the usual stuff that DM-fans say about &#39;opposites&#39; I was probably wise to avoid it.

But, I could complain in like manner that you ignore most of what I have posted, but I won&#39;t; you are no different from other dialecticians who prefer to keep their heads in the sand.

More random words:


You are not doing anything to get at the core of an explanation.

Of what, for goodness sake?

This is like debating with a random sentence-generating machine.

But, since you can&#39;t explain anything yourself (save you invent stuff, and name call), this latest random pearl of wisdom from you is a bit rich.

Go on, show me how it is done, if you are the expert.


Your approach can be characterised as obstruction, and blowing out of proportion
pendantic irrelavances that seem to have to do with a commitment to empiricism than anything.

Instead of responding to me, you just do this sort of thing all the time. If you spent your time thinking about what you are going to post, and about your own ideas more deeply, you would at least have something worthwhile to say.

And get it into your dialectically-deadened head, I am not an empiricist of any shape or form.

[Cue more bluster, diversionary tactics, invention and name-calling, from Peace....]

[peaccenicked]

I think I would not to deal with you at all, you clearly have your own agenda on this thread it has nothing to do with what I am trying to achieve here.

The dialectical method looks at opposite trends in any process, for an example I will look first at a very simple process. Picking up a glass. At face value this of course is unproblematic. Nothing could be simpler.
The movement of the hand, grasping the glass, and moving it to ones lips is the basic function.
Although one could pick up a glass for more than one function, depending on what one uses it for. It could be used as part of a primitive musical instrument along with other glasses of various sizes or one could use it take out for begging purpose or use it to balance something on like a support. There are a very few qualities of measurement involved. The most important is that of grip, another is the volume of the glass, the substance it is made of and if we take it that it is for drinking purposes, the temperature of the liquid and the taste. Other things could be important, llike who owns the glass but lets stick with these elements.

If we look first at the grip, if we grip it too hard we may break the glass, if we grip it too gently we may drop it.
If we look at the volume of glass. If there is too much in the glass we may spill it and if there is too little we may spill it.
If we look at the temperature.If it is too hot we might get burned, if it is too cold the taste might be putrid.
The substance of the glass may effect both the grip and heat
These oppositions are intrinsic to the lifting the glass operation.

This is the way dialectics brings itself to a process. Merely to observe opposite tendencies.
There are negations going on the volume of the glass is reducing, thirst is being reduced and energy is being expended and the calories being gained are recovering the loss of energy and body as a whole is replinishing lost nutrients.
in this process there are also a quantitive to qualitive change. An emptying glass to refreshment of the body and mind.
Energy out is becoming energy in thus something is changing to its opposite.

This simple example is of course inane but what I am try to achieve is a simple understanding of to lifting a glass would be approached by dialectics.


Dialectics can be used to examine any process. Hegel and Marx , took highly complicated processes. Hegel&#39;s subject was the (unfolding of the) Idea which he associated with god.
Marx choose Capital as his subject matter. The birth rise and death.
A concept which reoccurs in both is the movement of lower forms to higher forms.

In the simple example this woud be the movement of thirst to thirst satisfaction.

The simple process could be deepened and physiology could be brought in, subjective taste, the manafacture of glasses and their marketing. The drinking habits of various populations.


The question arises, what use is a dialectical analyisis. As it can be applied to any process, it brings into play the posing of questions that reveal the true nature of a process. This is at the root of the history of dialectics. Looking at the movement of opposite tendencies within a process lays bare the rational essence of a process.

The historical analyses of the movement of an entity, the consideration of the data each generation has collected is the way all knowledge develops.
As Hegel says one cannot learn to swim without entering the pool.

The trick in any field is to absorb all the information available with an eye to the historical direction it is taking.

[LoneRed]

I find it funny that all the "dialectics explained" threads and so forth are dominated by Anti-Dialecticians, who knows best about dialictics if not them :lol:

[ComradeRed]

ComradeRed.

It seems that empiricists are completely without an imagination.

If you want to talk about the nature of opposites, maybe you should ask what are you trying to find out the nature of?
Opposites have very little point in independent existence.

If we look at a proccess, any process, there are opposite tendencies inherent to that process.
See if we can get by this place first. Are opposites inherent to any process?
You seem to have missed the boat completely as my point is that there is no reproducible way to generate opposites.

This takes the idea of dialectics and places it as unscientific.

How do you identify opposites? You haven&#39;t answered my question, but you have offered ad hominems ta boot&#33;

"Well...maybe if you had imagingation&#33;" What relevance does that have to do with anything? Why don&#39;t you just go onto add "Your mom&#33;" somewhere in the post. :rolleyes:

Look, if you can&#39;t demonstrate any method of getting an opposite of a thing that&#39;s also reproducible (i.e. reproduces the same results regardless of the observer), then you just screwed dialectics worse than any anti-dialectician could ever aspire to do&#33;

Why? Because you demonstrated (first hand) that dialectics are unscientific.


Originally posted by LoneRed
I find it funny that all the "dialectics explained" threads and so forth are dominated by Anti-Dialecticians, who knows best about dialictics if not them You wanna know what&#39;s funnier?&#33; Dialecticians can&#39;t even explain dialectics in a thread titled "Dialectics Explained"&#33; :lol:

[LoneRed]

last time I remember the thread wasnt made by a "dialectician", as well as those with a good grounding in dialectics, dont have as much Free time writing long ass posts on it, we are usually to busy with school and work

[ComradeRed]

last time I remember the thread wasnt made by a "dialectician", as well as those with a good grounding in dialectics, dont have as much Free time writing long ass posts on it, we are usually to busy with school and work You&#39;re right, peacenicked isn&#39;t a dialectician.

And how blind could I be that being a good worker is far more important than anything else?&#33;

So much so that it apparently affects one&#39;s ability to type :o

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


I think I would not to deal with you at all, you clearly have your own agenda on this thread it has nothing to do with what I am trying to achieve here.

Your stated aim was to make dialectics clear, or to explain it. I point out that you failed and you moan.

Now all that stuff about picking up a glass is all very easy to explain in ordinary language (you even manage to do it yourself); Hegelian gobbledygook just gets in the way.

Check out this Hermetic site, you will find they &#39;explain&#39; things the same way (using alleged &#39;opposites&#39;):

http://www.gnostic.org/kybalionhtm/kybalion10.htm

You can see the mysticisim in your wording emerge here:


There are negations going on the volume of the glass is reducing,

Negation is a linguistic category; projecting it onto nature suggests it is mind.

Now, in Hegel&#39;s system that sort of fits; but no materialist should talk this way.

Sure we have to use the negative particle to speak about change, but that no more suggests that negations exist in the world than it suggests that there are any "ands" in the world if one talks about "Marx and Engels".

There is or was a person corresponding to Marx, and one to Engels, but there is nothing in reality corresponding to "and".

Same with "not".


Energy out is becoming energy in thus something is changing to its opposite.

But it doesn&#39;t; it does not change into not-energy.

I deal with all this at my site and show that these &#39;laws&#39; you appeal to do not work:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm

I give many examples of things that change in quality without any alleged &#39;leap&#39; (such as metals changing from solid to liquid slowly; plastic and glass are other examples), and things that change qualitatively with no quantitiative change (such as optical isomers -- other things can change if you just alter their ordering, such as words: so &#39;dialectics&#39; changes qualitatelively into &#39;csdialctei&#39; if you alter its letter ordering, and processes in nature alter qualitatively if you alter their ordering, in an energy neutral environment: change in quality, no change in quantity); I also show that the vast majority of things do not change into their &#39;opposites&#39; (males do not change not females, electrons do not change into protons), and that the &#39;negation of the negation&#39; is too confused a notion to make any sense of.


This simple example is of course inane but what I am try to achieve is a simple understanding of to lifting a glass would be approached by dialectics.

Dialectics can be used to examine any process. Hegel and Marx ,

Well, you have shown how, not only do we not need this mystical farago to account for change (science does a pretty good job already, as does ordinary language), it cannot account for it since it uses obscure words that even you cannot explain.

Hegel comes out with such banalities:


As Hegel says one cannot learn to swim without entering the pool.

and you go all weak at the knees.

It reminds me of the time I saw an Indian guru on TV uttering all sorts of banalities to his &#39;flock&#39; (Baghwan Sri Rashneesh, I think it was) and his followers were all nodding sagely at the tripe he was mouthing; you mystics are all the same.

Do we need a Hegel to tell us such things?

If you do, I think you might be in need of care.


The trick in any field is to absorb all the information available with an eye to the historical direction it is taking.

I could not agree more, so I suggest you ditch this mytical rubbish, and your eyesight will improve.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Lone:


I find it funny that all the "dialectics explained" threads and so forth are dominated by Anti-Dialecticians, who knows best about dialictics if not them

Well, you DM-fans seem pretty incapable of explaining this mystical doctrine; us materialists simply point it out.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

ComradeRed, have you noticed how our mystical friends adopt avoiding tactics every time we nail them?

Don&#39;t expect straight answers to your questions (in some cases, any answers at all), or any attempt to engage with your arguments -- but I suspect you knew that already.

They just ignore anything that does not fit in with their naive/cosy view of reality

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In fact, Peace, since I suspect you do not follow any of my links, here are the opening paragraphs of the Hermetic page I mentioned:


CHAPTER X

POLARITY

"Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled." -The Kybalion.

The great Fourth Hermetic Principle-the Principle of Polarity-embodies the truth that all manifested things have "two sides"; "two aspects"; "two poles"; a "pair of opposites," with manifold degrees between the two extremes. The old paradoxes, which have ever perplexed the mind of men, are explained by an understanding of this Principle. Man has always recognized something akin to this Principle, and has endeavored to express it by such sayings, maxims and aphorisms as the following: "Everything is and isn&#39;t, at the same time"; "all truths are but half-truths"; "every truth is half-false"; "there are two sides to everything"; "there is a reverse side to every shield," etc., etc. The Hermetic Teachings are to the effect that the difference between things seemingly diametrically opposed to each is merely a matter of degree. It teaches that "the pairs of opposites may be reconciled," and that "thesis and antithesis are identical in nature, but different in degree&#39;&#39;; and that the &#39;&#39;universal reconciliation of opposites" is effected by a recognition of this Principle of Polarity. The teachers claim that illustrations of this Principle may be had on every hand, and from an examination into the real nature of anything. They begin by showing that Spirit and Matter are but the two poles of the same thing, the intermediate planes being merely degrees of vibration. They then show that THE ALL and The Many are the same, the difference being merely a matter of degree of Mental Manifestation. Thus the LAW and Laws are the two opposite poles of one thing. Likewise, PRINCIPLE and Principles. Infinite Mind and finite minds.

Then passing on to the Physical Plane, they illustrate the Principle by showing that Heat and Cold are identical in nature, the differences being merely a matter of degrees. The thermometer shows many degrees of temperature, the lowest pole being called "cold," and the highest "heat." Between these two poles are many degrees of "heat" or "cold," call them either and you are equally correct. The higher of two degrees is always "warmer," while the lower is always "colder." There is no absolute standard-all is a matter of degree. There is no place on the thermometer where heat ceases and cold begins. It is all a matter of higher or lower vibrations. The very terms "high" and "low," which we are compelled to use, are but poles of the same thing-the terms are relative. So with "East and West"-travel around the world in an eastward direction, and you reach a point which is called west at your starting point, and you return from that westward point. Travel far enough North, and you will find yourself traveling South, or vice versa.

Light and Darkness are poles of the same thing, with many degrees between them. The musical scale is the same-starting with "C" you moved upward until you reach another "C," and so on, the differences between the two ends of the board being the same, with many degrees between the two extremes. The scale of color is the same-higher and lower vibrations being the only difference between high violet and low red. Large and Small are relative. So are Noise and Quiet; Hard and Soft follow the rule. Likewise Sharp and Dull. Positive and Negative are two poles of the same thing, with countless degrees between them.

Good and Bad are not absolute-we call one end of the scale Good and the other Bad, or one end Good and the other Evil, according to the use of the terms. A thing is "less good" than the thing higher in the scale; but that "less good" thing, in turn, is "more good" than the thing next below it-and so on, the "more or less" being regulated by the position on the scale.

Sound familiar?

No, I did not copy it from Plekhanov, nor from Lenin, nor yet from Woods and Grant, but from here:

http://www.gnostic.org/kybalionhtm/kybalion10.htm

Here is some more:


CHAPTER IX

VIBRATION

"Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates." - The Kybalion

The great Third Hermetic Principle-the Principle of Vibration-embodies the truth that Motion is manifest in everything in the Universe-that nothing is at rest-that everything moves, vibrates, and circles. This Hermetic Principle was recognized by some of the early Greek philosophers who embodied it in their systems. But, then, for centuries it was lost sight of by the thinkers outside of the Hermetic ranks. But in the Nineteenth Century physical science re-discovered the truth and the Twentieth Century scientific discoveries have added additional proof of the correctness and truth of this centuries-old Hermetic doctrine.

The Hermetic Teachings are that not only is everything in constant movement and vibration, but that the "differences" between the various manifestations of the universal power are due entirely to the varying rate and mode of vibrations. Not only this, but that even THE ALL, in itself, manifests a constant vibration of such an infinite degree of intensity and rapid motion that it may be practically considered as at rest, the teachers directing the attention of the students to the fact that even on the physical plane a rapidly moving object (such as a revolving wheel) seems to be at rest. The Teachings are to the effect that Spirit is at one end of the Pole of Vibration, the other Pole being certain extremely gross forms of Matter. Between these two poles are millions upon millions of different rates and modes of vibration.

Modern Science has proven that all that we call Matter and Energy are but "modes of vibratory motion," and some of the more advanced scientists are rapidly moving toward the positions of the occultists who hold that the phenomena of Mind are likewise modes of vibration or motion. Let us see what science has to say regarding the question of vibrations in matter and energy.

http://www.gnostic.org/kybalionhtm/kybalion9.htm

These guys use their own version of mystical dialectics, and worded almost exactly like Peacenicked, to &#39;explain&#39; things.

In fact, since these mystics use plain English most of the time, their &#39;science&#39; is superior to that of Hegel, and the equal of Peacemicked.

You can read more at:

http://www.gnostic.org/kybalionhtm/kybalion.htm

And at:

http://www.kybalion.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kybalion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism

And why comrades dote on this mysticism is explained here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-9.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-12.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-7-14.htm

[On the last page, scroll down to the bottom quarter of the page.]

These are introductory Essays, the full versions will be posted at a later date.

[LoneRed]

Firstly Like i said before, Workers dont have the time to journey through the enormous amounts of information, to be adequatley able to defend dialectics. Its not that dialectics is a hard concept, its that some "dialeticians" and especially anti-dialecticians make it a hard concept. I doubt the first thing workers want to do after an 8 hr shift is to sift through dialectical books, and websites and provide an adequate answer to your claims. At least to RS and Rosa, you both have plenty time on your hands and dont have to worry about work "interferring" with the enormous amounts of studying that encompasses such philosophical endeavors.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Lone, it&#39;s always the same excuse: "no time...." (fluffed up sometimes with "you do not understand...."):


At least to RS and Rosa, you both have plenty time on your hands and dont have to worry about work "interferring" with the enormous amounts of studying that encompasses such philosophical endeavors.

I have a full-time job; I make time to expose this philosophical fraud.

[LoneRed]

A full time job? and still have time to write tons and tons of things on dialectics. which i would assume requires a lot of source hunting. This would be very interesting, as everyone i know that works full time, doesnt have, nor can make the time to pursue such things.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Lone:


A full time job? and still have time to write tons and tons of things on dialectics.

I have been studying this topic for well over twenty years, but intensely since July 1998, when I began to put my ideas onto a computer.

What you see at my site was not written over a couple of days.

I have been hunting libraries, bookshops and now internet &#39;bookshops&#39; for decades. I have read practically everything available on dialectics in languages I can read, and much else that few others have read. Coupled with my thorough grounding in mathematical logic, traditional and analytic philosophy, this allows me to put posts together relatively quickly.

[As a working class person, I took advantage of new government schemes to get myself a thorough education so that I could use this against the system, and help the workers&#39; movement in some small way -- not initially as an anti-dialectician, that came later; but the greatest hostility I have found has come from those who call themselves &#39;Marxists&#39; (who have forgotten that science can only advance if it throws off old ways of thinking) -- especially Trotskyists and Stalinists. My horror at discovering how unsuccessful Marxism was set me off on this trail -- I had to try to account for it; the usual &#39;explanations&#39; (while not wrong) seemed to leave important details out. I think I know what these are....]

In addition, I have been &#39;debating&#39; with DM-fans for over twenty years too, and since they all make the same points (incredibly, almost word for word -- I can&#39;t tell you the number of times I have read the sort of stuff Peacnicked posted, which he appears to think is novel (Axel/Volkov is another classic example) -- there is a reason why all DM-fans sound the same, all read from the same script almost, it is connected with the quasi-religious nature of DM: novelty is frowned upon (you can see how aggressive the response to me is, it is the same with any ‘revisionist’, so no one learns to think for themselves); all adepts have to learn the same lines, a bit like a catechism), so it is easy to cut and paste stuff from earlier &#39;debates&#39;.

[Incidentally, the word "debate" is in &#39;scare&#39; quotes, since in all my years of &#39;debating&#39; with DM-fans, not once has anyone actually debated it; they all descend into personal attacks from the get go -- hence my abrasive entry into this forum a few months ago -- which I now regret. As you will appreciate, after two decades or more of the very same slurs, personal attacks, evasive tactics, invention, and down-right falsification, one does tend to get a little tetchy.

Why do DM-fans do this? Guess what, I have an Essay devoted to that topic too (&#33;&#33;); a summary of which can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-9.htm ]

The full Essay is now here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_02.htm

[peaccenicked]

I m not a dialectical materialist fan. Most of it is stodgy and dogmatic.
Dialectics that is akin to freethinking and not cooked up definitions that are just designed to through mud in your eye: is really just looking at something historically,
pannning out its development. Finding questions that help that development.


Did I say DM explained?

[peaccenicked]

I think the the anti dialecticians have got their head in the clouds.

This thread was not meant as a debate with them, just to bring sanity to dialectics.

Here I ve given an outline that has been only given shallow blows by obscurantists.

so I m leaving this thread to the lame wolves whose arrogance astounds me.


there is no reproducible way to generate opposites.


Who needs this sort of brain dead garbage. Be empirical look at the process find the opposites.

The ADs cant listen and are cynically dismissive without comprehension.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace, forgive me if I assumed you are a DM-fan, but all you have said suggested you were.


Here I ve given an outline that has been only given shallow blows by obscurantists.

Still, you have no answers, just more name-calling.


so I m leaving this thread to the lame wolves whose arrogance astounds me.

Just as your ignorance amazes me: if you are going to pontificate about logic, at least learn some first.

More names:


Who needs this sort of brain dead garbage. Be empirical look at the process find the opposites.

I hope you enjoy the fact that you and the mystics I quoted above see eye to eye on opposites (and a whole lot more...).


The ADs cant listen and are cynically dismissive without comprehension.

You mean: we dared to disagree with you, and since you are so important, any attempt to argue against you is automatically seen as arrogance.

There is no other way to interpret this sulk of yours....

[pandora]

Don&#39;t forget the influence of Kant on the realm of ideas and materialism

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Pandora, thankyou for the reminder.

Don&#39;t worry, Kant&#39;s baleful influence on philosophy has not been forgotten....

[pandora]

Not at all baleful, Kant took the idea of consciousness back to the idea of what is experience? What is perspective?

Ultimately experience is relative, he was looking to an objective reality. By getting to this basis one can reconstitute the way one looks at the world and change one;s perspective, getting even beyond the body into consciousness itself.

By going back to the place beyond reaction allows us to redevelop our reason in more constructive ways apart from reactionism.

As many oppressed groups are overcoming deep suffering and pain, disconnecting from that pain temporarily to be able to regain one&#39;s reason absent from reaction is a useful tool in Revolutionary practice.

It allows one to take a step away from one&#39;s historical reality and create objectivity to form a new reality, and base one&#39;s actions upon this imagination

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Pandora, as I said: baleful.

Nothing but empty jargon, all thanks to Kant....

[ComradeRed]

I think the the anti dialecticians have got their head in the clouds.

This thread was not meant as a debate with them, just to bring sanity to dialectics.

Here I ve given an outline that has been only given shallow blows by obscurantists.

so I m leaving this thread to the lame wolves whose arrogance astounds me. What in the hell are you talking about? You haven&#39;t even explained dialectics in this whole thread&#33;

What "wolves", "obscurantism", blah blah blah are you maundering on about? Are you even paying attention?



there is no reproducible way to generate opposites.


Who needs this sort of brain dead garbage. Be empirical look at the process find the opposites.

The ADs cant listen and are cynically dismissive without comprehension. Congratulations, you just buried dialectics worse than any "AD" could ever hope to do.

Not to mention your blatant hypocrisy in blasting empiricism, then immediately saying "Empiricism is good&#33;"

By your very reply that sums to "Oh yeah, your wrong&#33;" proves that dialectics cannot be presented scientifically.

I&#39;m sorry, but your arguments are akin to those of a three year old without any patience to explain what the hell you are trying to say.