@nti-dialectics

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Whether or not one agrees with Rosa's work does not take away from the fact she has done a great deal of research. This thread, hopefully, can be a polite discussion of the works on the site. First, I will admit I know little about DM. Furthermore, I am awaiting the beginners' information, I will admit, because I am having difficulty understanding a lot of it. However, I would like to start the thread off by bringing up some quotes with my criticism. Perhaps someone can shed some light on what I am confused on - or maybe I am correct on some things.

“Clearly, the idea that the world is ultimately rational must be imposed on nature since nature is not Mind.”

If you happen to know, what logically fallacy involves giving an attribute to something that it doesn’t have? It must be one of them otherwise the sentence is a non sequitur, which it doesn’t seem to be as far as I can tell.

Straw man, perhaps:

Deterministic theories argue nature follows laws (gravity, laws of motion, et cetera), and, consequently, events are predictable because they do not stray from such patterns of law. Some DM theory may attribute the ability to reason to nature, but I imagine Marx though of nature within a scientifically deterministic framework. Or, at the very least, one could do so to dodge your above criticism.

“Nevertheless, it is far easier to justify the imposition of a hierarchical and grossly unequal class system on 'disorderly' workers if ruling-class ideologues can persuade one and all that the 'law-like' order of the natural world actually reflects, and is reflected in turn by, the social order from which their patrons just so happen to benefit -- one that is grounded in 'rationality', the fundamental aspects of which none may legitimately question.”

DM is supposed to be a deterministic theory. It argues that it is precisely action that causes events to happen. It includes humans in the deterministic structure of the universe in that it suggests people will eventually rise up against the bourgeoisie – because material conditions make them want to do so. DM is not necessarily (or I would argue supposed to be) fatalist.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga, this is very flattering, but the last time this was tried -- last week -- LSD shut the thread down.

So, it's not worth me even trying to reply to you.

I know you are all fixated on me, but, I can assure you, my work is worth it.

You are seeing something completely new in Marxist Philosophy, something not seen in over 130 years: an attempt to put our tradtion on a completely rational basis, one that does not rely on a shred of ruling-class thought. But to do that, I have to clear the ground. So the first half of my work is almost entirely negative; the second half (which I have not begun yet) will not be.

So I am not surprised most of you cannot get your heads around my work.

Anyway:

LSD has just told me its OK to leave this thread in place, so in that case....



If you happen to know, what logically fallacy involves giving an attribute to something that it doesn’t have?

The point is, Dooga, this predicate has to be imposed on nature (contrary to what dialecticians say they do); it cannot be discovered by experiment, nor supported by empirical evidence of any sort.

I am not against imposing some things on nature (scientists do it all the time), I just object to the inconsistency here.

So, I am not accusing dialecticians of a logical fallacy here, even if I do so elsewhere, and about other things.

In a later Essay, I attempt to support this claim (that Essay is well over 100,000 words long, so I hope you'll agree, I do not assert such things lightly), and show how it implies DM is an Idealist theory.

It will be published in stages over the next year or so.

The comment you quoted came from an Essay where this was just mentioned in passing -- to suggest in fact what was later to come in my work, and to set up the main topic of that particular Essay.


Deterministic theories argue nature follows laws (gravity, laws of motion, et cetera), and, consequently, events are predictable because they do not stray from such patterns of law. Some DM theory may attribute the ability to reason to nature, but I imagine Marx though of nature within a scientifically deterministic framework. Or, at the very least, one could do so to dodge your above criticism.

This is not a central idea to my work (I hardly mention this topic in any of my Essays); it only cropped up because others here posted threads on it, about which I commented.

[hoopla]

So much, for one woman to take on :rolleyes:

http://www.the-rocketman.com/images/rocketwoman/JODI-SUPER-WOMAN.jpgIs it a bird, is it a plane...

:D ;)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Hoopla, wrong type; I'm more like Sophia Loren, as she looked about 25 years ago, crossed with Demi Moore as she looks now.

That would be close.

[Epoche]

Are you a hottie, Rosa?

Don't be modest, go ahead, say it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Hotter and more clued-in than you'll ever know.

But then, I always was over-modest....

Comrades might like to know that I have just published an Essay on Wittgenstein and Marxism (an updated and much longer version of something I posted on an earlier thread here a month or so ago).

You can read it here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm

[The Sloth]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 11 2006, 07:50 PM
Comrades might like to know that I have just published an Essay on Wittgenstein and Marxism (an updated and much longer version of something I posted on an earlier thread here a month or so ago).

You can read it here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm
rosa,

i enjoy wittgenstein. indeed, from the moment i first read him i realized that his ideas were not only compatible, but absolutely complementary, to marxism. philosophy is a re-arrangement of all we already know. many philosophical problems are a result of conceptual confusions. and metaphysical matters, indeed, are things we cannot know, and must pass over in silence.

as for his alleged mysticism.. it may or may not be true. while i don't see much of it in his philosophy, a lot of his private remarks, remarks that, at bottom, were probably serious, may be construed as a legitimate kind of mysticism. for example, the fact that he always felt absolutely protected from all possible harm, the fact that he felt some kind of strange affinity with things he couldn't even understand, and et cetera. he often said that his ideas may only be understood by people that had such ideas before. very applicable to me, it seems.. i felt many of the experiences he describes in such excruciating detail (although i already forget most of them, hehe).

anyway, your article was excellent.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Brooklyn, thanks for that; I think that since he links the 'mystical' with what cannot be said (i.e., in the 'Tractatus'), then not much can be said of it.

I'd go further than him, though, and just call it nonsense, using ideas from his later work to do that..

[JimFar]

Rosa wrote:


I'd go further than him, though, and just call it nonsense, using ideas from his later work to do that..

Well, in that case, Rosa, your views seem closer to those Frank Ramsey and Otto Neurath.

Frank Ramsey once commented:

"What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either."


While Neurath wrote concerning the last proposition in the Tractatus:

"The conclusion of the Tractatus, 'whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,' is at least grammatically misleading. It sounds as if there were a 'something' of which we could not speak. We should rather say, 'If one really wishes to avoid the metaphysical attitude entirely, then one will "be silent," but not "about something."

(From his essay "Sociology and Physicalism". In Logical Positivism, edited by A. J. Ayer. Glencoe, IL).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Jim, my internet stalker, Farr:


Well, in that case, Rosa, your views seem closer to those Frank Ramsey and Otto Neurath.

Not really; they did not base their ideas on ordinary language.

Both Neurath and Ramsey got W wrong. A whole new generation of W scholars, at last (!!), are getting closer to what I think he was trying to do in the Tractatus (I am sure you know of these): Cora Diamond, Juliet Floyd, Rupert Read, James Conant, etc (following on from Stanley Cavell, Peter Winch, and Burton Dreben).

I do not know if you have taken a look at Rupert Read's website; it's well worth it:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j339/

Juliet also tells me she has a book coming out later this year, or next, on Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics.

[hoopla]

Sorry to bother you Rosa, but: what is the argument for nothing but woman can "move into presence"?

This is, if you think that only dasein can be.

Do, answer the question, Rosa! (if thats ok)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I would, if it were in comprehensible language.

[Have you slipped those boxing gloves on again, by any chance?]