The Importance of Philosophy

[Raúl Duke]

Whats the importance of philosophy? Do we really need it? Can't science just replace philosophical methods (dialectics, etc) of logic/research/etc?

Also, what is the importance (or nonimportance) of philosophy to the leftist ideology/theory you subscribe to (if any)?

[rouchambeau]

Yes, we need philosophy. You cannot even base science on anything without using philosophy. You cannot justify the premises of science scientifically; you need philosophy to do that.

[Raúl Duke]

SO, according to you, science needs philosophy. Is this relation one-way or 2-way (as in, science needs philosophy and philosophy needs science?)

Why can't you justify the premise of science scientifically nor base science on anything without philosophy?

P.S. Another thing I forgot to add, if you think that a specific section of philosophy is very important or not necessary at all you can go ahead and give your opinion.

[rouchambeau]

Science needs philosophy, but philosophy does not need science.
Philosophy does not need science for a number of reasons. First, how can science tell us anything about ethics? Science can only tell us how things work, not what we should do with them. Secondly, science was actually born out of the work of philosophers and needed philosophers of science--like Popper and Bacon--to develop into what it is today.

Science needs philosophy because you cannot derive the foundations of science empirically, but only through reason. Bacon didn't come up with the scientific method by studying chemicals or marine animals. He established it by sitting down and using reason alone.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the second part. I'm not sure how to answer that. On one hand philosophy has taught me a lot about ethics and how others should relate to eachother. On the other hand, philosophy is about uncovering truth, and I don't think ideology and truth go hand in hand. Ideology is much more subjective and crafted by an individual rather than established as some truth.

[gilhyle]

Big question. Of course it depends what you think philosophy is and it depends who 'we' are.

Easy answer to the first question is philosophy is what philosophers do. Slightly better answer is philosophy is what philosophers do and/or have done. If you decide that the 'we' is capitalist society (and us as a part of it), we use philosophy to do a range of things from rationalise our behaviour (include the beahviour we call 'science') to rationalise dissent. THe rationalisation ranges from the systematic and foundational (rare today but common in the past) to the merely episodic and local. Does this society need philosophy......in my view it needs something to be there as philoosphy otherwise someone might fill the gap.You have to recall that capitalist society was, in a sense, founded as a philosophy before it came into existence as a social order (granted after it began to emerge as an economic reality). I am referring to the Enlightenment which articulated the key concepts and values which are still used today to articulate the public sphere - the modern concepts of morality, science, democracy, individuality, rights, religion, freedom etc date back to this period - of course each of those concepts has an older precursor, but that is the point of philosophy it nuanced human conceptions to fit capitalist society. This conceptual framework must be sustained, including via the articulation of tame dissent within its conceptual framework.

If I change the 'we' to Marxists, yes we need philosophy. We are aliens within an alien society, trying to think things which this society has constructed its concepts to make unthinkable. Our concepts and methods seem constantly contrary to common sense because the dominant ideology excludes them. Within our own movement people constantly appeal to us to return to more facile concepts and methods that will seem more at home as legitimate dissent within the capitalist society.

We also rely intrinsically on the best of the knowledge capitalist society can generate. As Marxists we are parasites on the knowledge of society and nature the bourgeoisie have developed. To use that knowledge, while freeing it (as much as possible) from the ideological baggage that inevitably encases it within this society, we nee a critical method. We cannot hope, without power, todevelop our own science, we can only hope to make our assimilation of the knowledge of the bourgeoisie critical. We do that by schematic and somewhat arbitrary methodological devices, dialectics and the materialist conception of history and the critical political economy of Marxism, which give us essential tools to use to criticise the science of the dominant class and thus to assimilate it in the most useful way. That critical work is essentially philosophical in character.

[CornetJoyce]

Science and philosophy overlap to put it mildly, which is why we have the term "natural philosophy" to describe the study of the natural world- and the British cling to that usage, last I hear. "Science" was simply orderly and rational investigation and so from the 16th century on, one spoke of "political science" based upon the study of what had happened in order to understand what might happen if we tried the same thing again, and Vico's New Science turned history into a pattern of "corsi and ricorsi"
In the Victorian era, with the Enlightenment in full bloom, "science" was applied to just about everything. Mill's Canons, constructed by a philosopher, promised to make everyone a scientist if they would only follow the prescribed methodology. Eventually, the flaw was discovered. Christian Science and Marx's Capital were introduced in the same year. Law and war were said to be sciences, and squabbles erupted over which was the True Science of Society.There was a science of pugilism, of baseball, football and their subdisciplines.
Some elements of philosophy became separated from this scientism, and there are many knucklewalkers in the world of science who can't tell a philosopher from a test tube. Nevertheless, those elements of philosphy that continued to be engaged with science continued to be important to scientists, as one may see in the writings of the great scientists.

[MarxSchmarx]

Johnny Darko,

Please define "philosophy" and "science". A popular operational definition is the research that is done in philosophy departments and biology, chemistry, physics or geoscience departments. But this is inadequate. what about research into "whether biology is 'reducible' to physics", or branches of theoretical physics that overlap with information theory and formalize epistemology?

So, what do you mean by "philosophy" as opposed to "science"?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

This has been argued many times here.

In 2500 years, philosophers have solved not one single problem. In fact, philosophers have yet to decide what a 'correct' answer would even look like.

So, if anything, the history of the subject is its own worse enemy, and is telling us in its own sweet way that the whole enterprise is as bogus as it is useless.

More details here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2012_01.htm

[gauchisme]

the point of philosophy isn't to solve problems, but to understand problems, to redefine the way we understand. most of today's philosophers don't ask, 'do we have free will?'. they've given up on the notion that such areas of study can be decided non-empirically. most of today's philosopher ask, 'when we say 'free will', what do we mean?'. thus does philosophy becomes, not a search for correct truths (solutions), but the interrogation of our presuppositions -- an investigation into how we think and perhaps an experiment in how to think differently. oscar wilde declared 'all art is quite useless'. maybe philosophy is too, in the precise sense wilde means. a poem, a painting, a song: do we judge these aesthetic forms by what problems they solve? would one be justified in saying, "you've been singing that song for years now; what has it solved?'?... we sing ourselves through ideas, and philosophy is an important way of making the song of ourself clearer, richer, and more beautiful.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Absolutely right, but I was attacking the traditional view of Philosophy.

What you have described is a Wittgensteinian approach, with which I fully agree.

But it is also much more than you say -- it is iconoclastic, in that it can be used to expose the bogus nature of the traditional picture of Philosophy.

[gauchisme]

here's how richard rorty puts ('philosophy and the mirror of nature', pages 365-372) -- SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY AND EDIFYING PHILOSOPHY :

The hermeneutic point of view, from which the acquisition of truth dwindles in importance, and is seen as a component of education, is possible only if we once stood at another point of view. Education has to start from acculturation. So the search for objectivity and the self-conscious awareness of the social practices in which objectivity consists are necessary first steps in becoming gebildet. We must first see ourselves as en-soi--as described by those statements which are objectively true in the judgment of our peers--before there is any point in seeing ourselves as pour-soi. Similarly, we cannot be educated without finding out a lot about the descriptions of the world offered by our culture (e.g., by learning the results of the natural sciences). Later perhaps, we may put less value on "being in touch with reality" but we can afford that only after having passed through stages of implicit, and then explicit and self-conscious, conformity to the norms of the discourses going on around us.

I raise this banal point that education--even the education of the revolutionary or the prophet--needs to begin with acculturation and conformity merely to provide a cautionary complement to the "existentialist" claim that normal participation in normal discourse is merely one project, one way of being in the world. The caution amounts to saying that abnormal and "existential" discourse is always parasitic upon normal discourse, that the possibility of hermeneutics is always parasitic upon the possibility (and perhaps upon the actuality) of epistemology, and that edification always employs materials provided by the culture of the day. To attempt abnormal discourse de novo, without being able to recognize our own abnormality, is madness in the most literal and terrible sense. To insist on being hermeneutic where epistemology would do--to make ourselves unable to view normal discourse in terms of its own motives, and able to view it only from within our own abnormal discourse--is not mad, but it does show a lack of education. To adopt the "existentialist" attitude toward objectivity and rationality common to Sartre, Heidegger, and Gadamer makes sense only if we do so in a conscious departure from a well-understood norm. "Existentialism" is an intrinsically reactive movement of thought, one which has point only in opposition to the tradition. I want now to generalize this contrast between philosophers whose work is essentially constructive and those whose work is essentially reactive. I shall thereby develop a contrast between philosophy which centers in epistemology and the sort of philosophy which takes its point of departure from suspicion about the pretensions of epistemology. This is the contrast between "systematic" and "edifying" philosophies.

In every sufficiently reflective culture, there are those who single out one area, one set of practices, and see it as the paradigm human activity. They then try to show how the rest of culture can profit from this example. In the mainstream of the Western philosophical tradition, this paradigm has been knowing--possessing justified true beliefs, or, better yet, beliefs so intrinsically persuasive as to make justification unnecessary. Successive philosophical revolutions within this mainstream have been produced by philosophers excited by new cognitive feats--e.g., the rediscovery of Aristotle, Galilean mechanics, the development of self-conscious historiography in the nineteenth century, Darwinian biology, mathematical logic. Thomas's use of Aristotle to conciliate the Fathers, Descartes's and Hobbes's criticisms of scholasticism, the Enlightenment's notion that reading Newton leads naturally to the downfall of tyrants, Spencer's evolutionism, Carnap's attempt to overcome metaphysics through logic, are so many attempts to refashion the rest of culture on the model of the latest cognitive achievements. A "mainstream" Western philosopher typically says: Now that such-and-such a line of inquiry has had such a stunning success, let us reshape all inquiry, and all of culture, on its model, thereby permitting objectivity and rationality to prevail in areas previously obscured by convention, superstition, and the lack of a proper epistemological understanding of man's ability accurately to represent nature.

On the periphery of the history of modern philosophy, one finds figures who, without forming a "tradition," resemble each other in their distrust of the notion that man's essence is to be a knower of essences. Goethe, Kierkegaard, Santayana, William James, Dewey, the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger, are figures of this sort. They are often accused of relativism or cynicism. They are often dubious about progress, and especially about the latest claim that such-and-such a discipline has at last made the nature of human knowledge so clear that reason will now spread throughout the rest of human activity. These writers have kept alive the suggestion that, even when we have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we may have no more than conformity to the norms of the day. They have kept alive the historicist sense that this century's "superstition" was the last century's triumph of reason, as well as the relativist sense that the latest vocabulary, borrowed from the latest scientific achievement, may not express privileged representations of essences, but be just another of the potential infinity of vocabularies in which the world can be described.

The mainstream philosophers are the philosophers I shall call "systematic," and the peripheral ones are those I shall call "edifying." These peripheral, pragmatic philosophers are skeptical primarily about systematic philosophy, about the whole project of universal commensuration. [12] In our time, Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger are the great edifying, peripheral, thinkers. All three make it as difficult as possible to take their thought as expressing views on traditional philosophical problems, or as making constructive proposals for philosophy as a cooperative and progressive discipline. [13] They make fun of the classic picture of man, the picture which contains systematic philosophy, the search for universal commensuration in a final vocabulary. They hammer away at the holistic point that words take their meanings from other words rather than by virtue of their representative character, and the corollary that vocabularies acquire their privileges from the men who use them rather than from their transparency to the real. [14]

The distinction between systematic and edifying philosophers is not the same as the distinction between normal philosophers and revolutionary philosophers. The latter distinction puts Husserl, Russell, the later Wittgenstein, and the later Heidegger all on the same ("revolutionary") side of a line. For my purposes, what matters is a distinction between two kinds of revolutionary philosophers. On the one hand, there are revolutionary philosophers--those who found new schools within which normal, professionalized philosophy can be practiced--who see the incommensurability of their new vocabulary with the old as a temporary inconvenience, to be blamed on the shortcomings of their predecessors and to be overcome by the institutionalization of their own vocabulary. On the other hand, there are great philosophers who dread the thought that their vocabulary should ever be institutionalized, or that their writing might be seen as commensurable with the tradition. Husserl and Russell (like Descartes and Kant) are of the former sort. The later Wittgenstein and the later Heidegger (like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) are of the latter sort. [15] Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments. Great edifying philosophers are reactive and offer satires, parodies, aphorisms. They know their work loses its point when the period they were reacting against is over. They are intentionally peripheral. Great systematic philosophers, like great scientists, build for eternity. Great edifying philosophers destroy for the sake of their own generation. Systematic philosophers want to put their subject on the secure path of a science. Edifying philosophers want to keep space open for the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause--wonder that there is something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation of what was already there, something which (at least for the moment) cannot be explained and can barely be described.

The notion of an edifying philosopher is, however, a paradox. For Plato defined the philosopher by opposition to the poet. The philosopher could give reasons, argue for his views, justify himself. So argumentative systematic philosophers say of Nietzsche and Heidegger that, whatever else they may be, they are not philosophers. This "not really a philosopher" ploy is also used, of course, by normal philosophers against revolutionary philosophers. It was used by pragmatists against logical positivists, by positivists against "ordinary language philosophers," and will be used whenever cozy professionalism is in danger. But in that usage it is just a rhetorical gambit which tells one nothing more than that an incommensurable discourse is being proposed. When it is used against edifying philosophers, on the other hand, the accusation has a real bite. The problem for an edifying philosopher is that qua philosopher he is in the business of offering arguments, whereas he would like simply to offer another set of terms, without saying that these terms are the new-found accurate representations of essences (e.g., of the essence of "philosophy" itself). He is, so to speak, violating not just the rules of normal philosophy (the philosophy of the schools of his day) but a sort of meta-rule: the rule that one may suggest changing the rules only because one has noticed that the old ones do not fit the subject matter, that they are not adequate to reality, that they impede the solution of the eternal problems. Edifying philosophers, unlike revolutionary systematic philosophers, are those who are abnormal at this meta-level. They refuse to present themselves as having found out any objective truth (about, say, what philosophy is). They present themselves as doing something different from, and more important than, offering accurate representations of how things are. It is more important because, they say, the notion of "accurate representation" itself is not the proper way to think about what philosophy does. But, they then go on to say, this is not because "a search for accurate representations of . . . (e.g., 'the most general traits of reality' or 'the nature of man')" is an inaccurate representation of philosophy.

Whereas less pretentious revolutionaries can afford to have views on lots of things which their predecessors had views on, edifying philosophers have to decry the very notion of having a view, while avoiding having a view about having views. [16] This is an awkward, but not impossible, position. Wittgenstein and Heidegger manage it fairly well. One reason they manage it as well as they do is that they do not think that when we say something we must necessarily be expressing a view about a subject. We might just be saying something--participating in a conversation rather than contributing to an inquiry. Perhaps saying things is not always saying how things are. Perhaps saying that is itself not a case of saying how things are. Both men suggest we see people as saying things, better or worse things, without seeing them as externalizing inner representations of reality. But this is only their entering wedge, for then we must cease to see ourselves as seeing this, without beginning to see ourselves as seeing something else. We must get the visual, and in particular the mirroring, metaphors out of our speech altogether. [17] To do that we have to understand speech not only as not the externalizing of inner representations, but as not a representation at all. We have to drop the notion of correspondence for sentences as well as for thoughts, and see sentences as connected with other sentences rather than with the world. We have to see the term "corresponds to how things are" as an automatic compliment paid to successful normal discourse rather than as a relation to be studied and aspired to throughout the rest of discourse. To attempt to extend this compliment to feats of abnormal discourse is like complimenting a judge on his wise decision by leaving him a fat tip: it shows a lack of tact. To think of Wittgenstein and Heidegger as having views about how things are is not to be wrong about how things are, exactly; it is just poor taste. It puts them in a position which they do not want to be in, and in which they look ridiculous.

But perhaps they should look ridiculous. How, then, do we know when to adapt a tactful attitude and when to insist on someone's moral obligation to hold a view? This is like asking how we know when someone's refusal to adapt our norms (of, for example, social organization, sexual practices, or conversational manners) is morally outragous and when it is something which we must (at least provisionally) respect. We do not know such things by reference to general principles. We do not, for instance, know in advance that if a given sentence is uttered, or a given act performed, we shall break off a conversation or a personal relationship, for everything depends on what leads up to it. To see edifying philosophers as conversational partners is an alternative to seeing them as holding views on subjects of common concern. One way of thinking of wisdom as something of which the love is not the same as that of argument, and of which the achievement does not consist in finding the correct vocabulary for representing essence, is to think of it as the practical wisdom necessary to participate in a conversation. One way to see edifying philosophy as the love of wisdom is to see it as the attempt to prevent conversation from degenerating into inquiry, into a research program. Edifying philosophers can never end philosophy, but they can help prevent it from attaining the secure path of a science.

_

Footnotes : [12] Consider the passage from Anatole France's "Garden of Epicurus" which Jacques Derrida cites at the beginning of his "La Mythologie Blanche" (in Marges de la Philosophie [Paris, 1972], p. 250):

... the metaphysicians, when they make up a new language, are like knife-grinders who grind coins and medals against their stone instead of knives and scissors. They rub out the relief, the inscriptions, the portraits, and when one can no longer see on the coins Victoria, or Wilhelm, or the French Republic, they explain: these coins now have nothing specifically English or German or French about them, for we have taken them out of time and space; they now are no longer worth, say, five francs, but rather have an inestimable value, and the area in which they are a medium of exchange has been infinitely extended.

[13] See Karl-Otto Apel's comparison of Wittgenstein and Heidegger as having both "called into question Western metaphysics as a theoretical discipline" (Transformation der Philosophie [Frankfurt, 1973], vol. 1, p. 228). I have not offered interpretations of Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger in support of what I have been saying about them, but I have tried to do so in a piece on Wittgenstein called "Keeping Philosophy Pure" (Yale Review [Spring 1976], pp. 336-356), in "Overcoming the Tradition: Heidegger and Dewey" (Review of Metaphysics 30 [1976], 280-305), and in "Dewey's Metaphysics" in New Studies in the Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. Steven M. Cahn (Hanover, N.H., 1977).

[14] This Heideggerean point about language is spelled out at length and didactically by Derrida in La Voix et Ie Phenomene, translated as Speech and Phenomenon by David Allison (Evanston, 1973). See Newton Garver's comparison of Derrida and Wittgenstein in his "Introduction" to this translation.

[15] The permanent fascination of the man who dreamed up the whole idea of Western philosophy--Plato--is that we still do not know which sort of philosopher he was. Even if the Seventh Letter is set aside as spurious, the fact that after millenniums of commentary nobody knows which passages in the dialogues are jokes keeps the puzzle fresh.

[16] Heidegger's "Die Zeit des Weltbildes" (translated as "The Age of the World-View" by Marjorie Grene in Boundary II [1976]) is the best discussion
of this difficulty I have come across.

[17] Derrida's recent writings are meditations on how to avoid these metaphors. Like Heidegger in "Aus einem Gesprach von der Sprache zwischen einem Japaner und einem Fragenden" (in Unterwegs zur Sprache [Pfullingen, 1959]), Derrida occasionally toys with the notion of the superiority of Oriental languages and of ideographic writing.
_

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that, but Rorty has unfortunately fallen into the trap he warned about: a priori matahysics.

I suspect he needs to re-read Wittgenstein, and throw Heidegger in the trash.

[JimFar]

Rosa wrote:


I suspect he needs to re-read Wittgenstein, and throw Heidegger in the trash.

Do you think his becoming recently deceased would preclude Rorty from being able to do that?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Jim Far:


Do you think his becoming recently deceased would preclude Rorty from being able to do that?

OMG, I did not know he had died!! :o

In that case, I will have to amend my earlier indictment:


I think he should have re-read Wittgenstein more carefully, and thrown Heidegger in the trash.

[gauchisme]

martin heidegger was the most important philosopher of the past century. doesn't mean you have to agree with him, but his books can't simply be thrown away... or burned, for that matter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I am afraid I have to agree with Hume on this one: into the flames with it.

Metaphysical drivel.

Sorry! :(

Naturally, that does not mean you can't discuss his work here -- only I won't be contributing to it.

[JimFar]

Rosa, some obits for Rorty include:

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obitu...icle2646294.ece (http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2646294.ece)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/obituari...igg&exprod=digg (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/obituaries/11rorty.html?ex=1339300800&en=b307dcc7de05dc59&ei=5124&partner=digg&exprod=digg)

http://newhumanist.org.uk/1440

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1386.html

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Jim.

I must have missed it since I stopped reading the capitalist press a couple of years ago.

[praxicoide]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 17, 2007 09:28 am





But it is also much more than you say -- it is iconoclastic, in that it can be used to expose the bogus nature of the traditional picture of Philosophy.

And science, let's not forget positive science.

[black magick hustla]

the only useful philosophy is the one that relates to your everyday life.

nietzche, stirner (if he would cut the mystical language), camus, vaneigem, and sartre if he would cut the mysticism and obscure language, are life-affirming philosophers. they affect your personality, make you understand better your desires and dreams--they are philosophers of freedom. while epistemology and much of metaphysics are just gimmicks and games that won't affect you much outside of some amusing musings, some philosophers do affect your actions and overall, the way you live. this kind of philosophy doesnt deserves to be thrown to the bonfire.

[More Fire for the People]

Speaking of Rorty and Heidegger, anyone know where I can find their works online?

[gauchisme]

rosa, it's odd how a philosopher can spend his entire later career critiquing something only to have it attributed to him; Heidegger called to account our calculative and technological ways of thinking as fundamentally metaphysical and metaphysics as fundamentally nihilistic. (http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/heidegge.htm#H5 - see, 'overcoming metaphysics'.)

below i include an example of what today's heideggereans are up to, exemplified best in the work of William V. Spanos (Heidegger and Criticism, page p138-9)...

[T]o do ... as so many contemporary worldly critics, whether neo-Marxists, feminists, or genealogists, or new historicists tend to, without recognition or acknowledgment of the ideological relay that saturates all the sites on the continuum, is to WEAKEN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CRITIQUE. Understood in the context of this destructive reading of history, then, the temporal 'progress' of Western civilization, including the cultural and political narrative paradigms it has elaborated to legitimate its particular allotropes, has in a general, however uneven, way involved the eventual recognition and exploitation of the indissoluble relationship between visual (spatial) perception of things-as-they-are and cultural, economic, and sociopolitical power. What from the beginning of Western tradition was a tentative, discontinuous, and unevenly developed intuition of this relationship coalesced in the episteme variously called the Enlightenment, the age of reason, or bourgeois capitalism, (and, not incidentally, the Augustan Age). According to Heidegger, this is the historical conjuncture that bore witness to the triumph of 're-presentation,' the thinking of being as 'world picture': the hardening of metaphysical speculation into a calculative technology of 'enframing', in which being (including Dasein [being-in-the-world]) has been reduced to 'standing reserve.' According to Foucault's remarkably analogous, if more decisively concrete diagnosis, it is the episteme that bore witness to the emergence of the 'panoptic' schema, the microphysics of power that constitutes the subject (the sovereign individual) to facilitate the achievement of sociopolitical consesus (identity) in the volatile social context precipitated by a rapidly changing demography. ... [T]his progress has involved the eventual recognition and exploitation of the integral relationship between the perennially and increasingly privileged figure of the centered circle as the image of beauty and perfection and the centered circle as the ideal instrument of a totalized sociopolitical domination.

Post-Renaissance Man intuited the inherent 'strength' (which from a destructive perspective discloses the essential weakness) of metaphysical epistemology: its ability to see or re-present the differential temporal process as integral and inclusive picture (table, blueprint, grid, design, strategic map) or, negatively, to lose sight of and forget difference, in the pursuit of certainty (distance) of logocentric order. This intuition, in turn, enabled the transformation of the over-sight of the metaphysical overview (survey) into a pervasive methodological or disciplinary instrument for the DISCREET COERCION of difference into identity all through the field of forces that constitute being, from the ontological and epistemological sites through language and culture to economics and sociopolitics (gender, race, family, state, etc.).

In the 'age of the world picture,' more accurately, metaphysical speculation was transformed into a DISCIPLINARY INSTRUMENT positively capable of COLONIZING THE 'OTHER,' of HARNESSING DIFFERENCE (the individual entity) in behalf of NORMALIZATION and UTILITY: that is, EXPLOITATION. This centered 'speculative instrument,' which has inscribed its recollective/visual interpretive imperatives into ALL PHASES OF WESTERN CULTURE, was and continues to be defined by that dominant social formation that benefits most from the circumscription and colonization of the earth. It therefore also serves, however inadvertently, to LEGITIMATE THE DOMINANT POLITICAL/ECONOMIC POWER STRUCTURE (and its HEGEMONIC purposes)- now become the computerized late capitalist establishment - that has largely determined the societies of Europe (including, until recently, the Soviet bloc) and America and their extraterritorial (COLONIAL) ends since the Enlightenment.

The difference between past and present is not ontologically substantive: whereas before the Enlightenment the center or eye that dominated was visible, in the age of the world picture or, alternatively, of panoptics, it has become 'a center elsewhere ... beyond the reach of [free] play': in Gramsci's term, 'hegemonic.'

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

G:


rosa, it's odd how a philosopher can spend his entire later career critiquing something only to have it attributed to him; Heidegger called to account our calculative and technological ways of thinking as fundamentally metaphysical and metaphysics as fundamentally nihilistic. (http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/heidegge.htm#H5 - see, 'overcoming metaphysics'.)

Yes, and there have been Popes who condemned 'sin' all their lives, who kept 'mistresses'.

And I think George W Bush thinks, no he actually says he is in favour of 'freedom and democracy', and is against 'men of violence'.

Practically every sentence this charlatan (Heidegger) ever wrote was metaphysical (as well as being incomprehensible).

Exhibit A for the presecution of his 'disciples':


According to Heidegger, this is the historical conjuncture that bore witness to the triumph of 're-presentation,' the thinking of being as 'world picture': the hardening of metaphysical speculation into a calculative technology of 'enframing', in which being (including Dasein [being-in-the-world]) has been reduced to 'standing reserve.'

Apart from the minor fact that it is complete b*llocks, is this a scientific claim?

No

Does it claim to provide a priori knowledge of the world?

Yes.

As I said: metaphysical.

Into the flames with it.

Please do not post any more of this sub-standard tripe; I want to hang on to my breakfast a bit longer.

[syndicat]

The thing about Heidegger is that he is incredibly obscure. What is the justification for all his neologisms? It just makes his writing more obscure, so only grad students who sit at the feet of some "expert" have any hope to get the "proper" interpretation, and of course there will be endless wrangles over what that "proper" interpretation might be. Do you see the elitism in this? All this sort of crap is useless.

I think it's hard to specify exactly where the dividing line between "philosophy" and "science" is. I also think it is a mistake to worship "science". For one thing, scientists also have material interests, and this can sometimes distort what they say and do. Scientific communities have a kind of control mechanism for this that works sometimes, which is open debate and the ability of independent researchers to try to replicate results and challenge theories. Thru this sort of interactive process consensus can emerge on what is the most plausible current view on certain things.

Philosophy also has this, and as a result there sometimes is a kind of progress of sorts in philoophy in that views that were junk often get left by the way side, and the problems get clarified or maybe become more complex.

Sometimes "scientists" find it necessary to try to deal with "philosophical issues" related to their field, and some times scientific results have implications for philosophical "theories."

To take an example, sciences generally assume there is a distinction between the various particular things in their domain -- such as various animals that are part of the area to be understood by zoologists -- and the traits or features these particular things have. but what is it to be a feature rather than a particular thing that has that feature? Well, that is a philosophical question in the sense that it is so general that it isn't relevant to any particular "science" but applies to all areas of human endeavor, whether a "science" or not (e.g. engineering).

we can think of a "theory" as just a set of hypotheses or ideas that we come up with to explain the things that we observe, the things in our experience. there is no reason that a "philosophical" theory has to be based on an appeal to some apriori source of knowledge, altho philosophers did traditionally make that assumption for many of their theorizings.

i'm not sure how important it is to develop an indepth answer to "philosophical questions." on the other hand, i don't think it is entirely useless. if done right, philosophy can help in clarifying issues and distinctions and these skills can be of help in our theorizing about things other than "philosophical questions."

[syndicat]

me:
Philosophy also has this, and as a result there sometimes is a kind of progress of sorts in philoophy in that views that were junk often get left by the way side, and the problems get clarified or maybe become more complex.

what i meant by this is that "philosophical problems" don't usually get "solved." What happens is that the competing potential "solutions" continue to be improved and clarified. implausible solutions get junked, and the remaining solutions become more sophisticated and more plausible. that's what "progress" is in philosophy.

but even this form of "progress" can be threatened by the tendency in philosophy to intellectual fads. from the time of Descartes til the 1960s, Western philosophy was obsessed with Descartes' search for "foundations of certainty" -- a "problem" that many "philosophers" nowadays regard as misguided. this particular Cartesian fad led to things like idealism. This Cartesian obsession has been called "the epistemological turn" in philosophy. then in the 20th century came the "linguistic turn". these "turns" left behind some insights but brought some junk of their own along the way. a more recent trend is the "naturalistic turn" which is sort of a revival of the interest in a closer working relationship with science, which was also a feature of early analytic philosophy in the early 20th century, and also putting philosophy on a materialistic basis. to its credit, the "naturalistic turn" tends to junk the claims of apriori forms of knowledge (tho not all philosophers claiming adherence to "naturalism" reject apriori knowledge).

[Vinny Rafarino]

Whats the importance of philosophy?

What would all the coffee house geeks pretend to read and comprehend while working up the nerve to ask out the waitress if we had no philosophy?

I find philosophy a great alternative to Valium and Wild Turkey if you're one of them "clean livin' types".

[gilhyle]

I find the pre-occupation with the theorization of meaning the most effectively ineffectual form of philosophising.

From Socrates to Hume and Hume to Wittgenstein, it is a game of one-upmanship that is utterly idealistic and naive.

You can practice it all your life and assure yourself that certain people make no sense. That others understand them (at some level/to some degree) will disturb you no more than the cardinals were disturbed by what the telescope revealed to Galileo - because your are a ideologue. You base your perspective on denying a simple anthropological fact - that even persons who speak-in-tongues communicate a certain 'meaning'.

You can of course deny that fact by differentiating between meaning and significance and defining languages etc.....all crap.

Truth is, the socratic method was always unnecessary, you dont need to define a term to be able to use it and you cant delegitimise a linguistic practice by an exclusionary philosophy. It takes a more substantive procedure to achieve that.

Wittgenstein - as Wittgenstein suspected - is pointless.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


I find the pre-occupation with the theorization of meaning the most effectively ineffectual form of philosophising.

From Socrates to Hume and Hume to Wittgenstein, it is a game of one-upmanship that is utterly idealistic and naive.

Not if it exposes the bogus nature of all philosophical theories.


Wittgenstein - as Wittgenstein suspected - is pointless.

And where did he express this 'suspicion'?


you dont need to define a term to be able to use it

Which is, oddly enough, a Wittgensteinian point.

[syndicat]

I find the pre-occupation with the theorization of meaning the most effectively ineffectual form of philosophising.

i think part of the reason for this becoming so dominant in the 20th century is that it was a kind of last ditch effort to define some separate intellectual turf that "philosophers" could claim some special expertise over and which they could see as providing a basis for apriori knowledge, through the intellectual grasp of "meanings".

[Vinny Rafarino]

i think part of the reason for this becoming so dominant in the 20th century is that it was a kind of last ditch effort to define some separate intellectual turf that "philosophers" could claim some special expertise over and which they could see as providing a basis for apriori knowledge, through the intellectual grasp of "meanings".

I think perhaps you give these folks more credit than their worth. Chances are the reasons behind spouting their philosophical mumbo-jumbo were less than philanthopic.

Considering the alternative entertainment at the time, the majority of garbage is what passed as entertainment among the ascot-donned "upper crust" of society.

The modern day equivalent to these circles would be something like a coke party hosted by Paris Hilton for Hollywood's "A-listers" and other senseless whores.

Modern entertainment has saved us from this breed only to replace them with whores.

Go figure.

For this great blessing I would like to give a shout out to tiny Japanese businessmen everywhere:

What up dogs.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 20, 2007 07:32 pm


Not if it exposes the bogus nature of all philosophical theories.


THe Philsophers Stone

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


THe Philsophers Stone

Nearly right: the philosophers should be stoned.

Get behind me in the queue...

[JimFar]

Rosa wrote:


I must have missed it since I stopped reading the capitalist press a couple of years ago.

So how do you get your news then? In the US, most of the radical press, such as it is, is reliant upon such capitalist standard bearers, as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, along with, yes, British publications like the Economist, the Guardian, and the Financial Times, for most of their information about the world. The radical press can directly report on such things as strikes and demos, but is lacking the resources to do the sorts of large scale reporting that the big capitalist news outlets routinely do.

[JimFar]

For a summary of Rudolf Carnap on Heideger and Nietzsche, see:

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=57453

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JimFar:


So how do you get your news then?

Internet, Socialist Worker (UK), International Socialist Review (US), etc etc.

I agree with the other things you say, and when I am active again in the UK-SWP, I will read the Financial Times etc. once more.
And thanks for that reminder; I can only repeat what I said then:


Thanks for those comments Jim; I have to say that I was prejudiced against Nietzsche because of the way that he had been appropriated by certain Nazis, and by nihilists, among others, until I began to read him.

And I can only agree with Carnap, and W, that he is certainly one of the most important thinkers of the 19th century (second perhaps behind Frege) -- I exclude Marx, since he was not a Philosopher.

Except, I might add I agree with Carnap in his comments about Heidegger -- with one small criticism: he was far to nice to that Nazi. :angry:

All I ask is for a time machine and an AK47...

[Hegemonicretribution]

I am inclined to simplify my views on this matter seeing as how frequently it comes up...

I see philosophy as thinking on a meta level. That is all. This is an invaluable activity, and I doubt that anyone would sugest we stop thinking "about" things.

I agree in part with Rosa that a lot of the last 2000+ years has sucked, but according to contemporary thinking "science" from these periods now sucks as well. Only now of course it is considered pseudo-science (thank philosophy for the distinction).

Personally I find philosophy valuable insofar as it encourages the individual to truly engage with an idea (even if bogus) before dismissing it as so. Simply learning to immitate the latest correct answer does little for ones understanding. If you have struggled through a reasonable amount of philosophy before, and not been sucked into theology or "god" knows what...then there is a good chance you will be less likely to fall to today's "pseudo-science" or other bogus arguments. Some people start with a premise that they are right, and therefore beliefs contradicting them are wrong, the extent to which this occurs varries, but alas it is not uncommon (at least 1/2 of the Bsc's I know are of this pattern of thought). Being able to truly entertain an idea without believing it is a great skill, for it allows you not only to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the idea from the outside, but to see how these relate to an individual who is taken by such a view.

In a world where we are outsiders and in support of (often) minority oppinions. How can anyone suggest that not entertaining bogus ideas (those held by the status quo) is a good idea? Understanding the capitalist as a Marxist is not enough....those of you that think it is I suggest start a debate with their parents/teacher/employer/parole officer....etc

My short answer appears to be growing, but it is one of the last chances I will get to be on here for a while...

Anyway; although many people thinking of old greeks when they hear "philosophy" does not make this the case. Even in a reasonably old institution I have covered philosophy of sex and feminist philosophy over the last year. I doubt anyone here could argue the relevance of the material covered. Science is underpinned by philosophy (and always has been), as is language.

To reject philosophy in favour of pure science leaves us with a problem. How do we check science with science, what is science, when/how do we change methodological approaches, have we established a perfect method for establishing truth...etc

I think it is a shame that it has become trendy for "materialists" and "Marxists" to shit on philosophy...but this is no more accurate than trendy liberals shitting on feminism. Radical feminism gets the biggest press, just as stuffy old philosophy does. "I believe in equality, so I hate feminism" = "I believe in progress, so I hate philosophy" Both views are incomplete, and destructive.

[gauchisme]

-- on being against book-burning --

Heidegger is not incomprehensible; to prove that claim, i will happily try my best to explain whatever quotations you put in front of me. you may not agree with his ideas, but they are coherent, despite all the difficulties that accompany translation (see my response below). and if the accolades of philosophers whom you respect (Rorty, for example) are insufficient to demonstrate that he's no charlatan, then please look to the many clear-headed dissertations on his work; here's one of Hubert Dreyfus's for an example: http://www.focusing.org/apm_papers/dreyfus.html.

Rosa writes: "Exhibit A for the persecution of his 'disciples': 'According to Heidegger, this is the historical conjuncture that bore witness to the triumph of 're-presentation,' the thinking of being as 'world picture': the hardening of metaphysical speculation into a calculative technology of 'enframing', in which being (including Dasein [being-in-the-world]) has been reduced to 'standing reserve'.'

Apart from the minor fact that it is complete b*llocks, is this a scientific claim? No.
Does it claim to provide a priori knowledge of the world? Yes. As I said: metaphysical. Into the flames with it."

it's a historical claim. we've entered a specific era that's different from preceding eras - 'the age of the world picture' as Heidegger terms it. for example, in the Parmenides lectures, Heidegger engages in an etymological study of how a Greek notion of truth as aletheia (discovery, un-concealment) became a Roman notion of truth as veritas (the true versus the false). this, he suggests, was necessary to the very order of the Roman empire. in his own day, Heidegger saw an analogous shift occurring; with all the mass production, with global information networks (newspapers and radio), etc., a new imperialism was developing, what Adorno was to call 'the administered world'. Heidegger sees this not as an 'ontic' problem of especially dangerous kinds of new technology, but as an 'ontological' one of a technological understanding of being itself -- to be as concrete as possible here, let's take an iPod: this portable tool for storing music does exactly what Heidegger accuses all technology of doing, leveling being (in this instance, musical experience) to 'standing reserve', or a database of retrievable, collectible songs. yet even if you destroyed every iPod, this wouldn't solve the more essential concern, because the damage has been done in how we relate to music, in how we've already 'enframed' it (to put a Marxist twist on this again, we've already commodified music). so instead of experiencing music primordially, we re-present it, and by doing so, suck life from it.

now, is this life-sucking frame 'metaphysical'? yes. is Heidegger endorsing it? no, of course not; he's criticizing it as severely as he can. but does he think we can simply reject this frame? no. often times when we THINK we've left metaphysics behind, it comes back to bite us in the ass, that is, we find metaphysical assumptions underlie what we thought were our metaphysically-free actions. hence the necessity of what Heidegger calls a destructive critique (or what Derrida might call deconstruction) to overcome and resist metaphysics.

_


syndicate writes: "The thing about Heidegger is that he is incredibly obscure. What is the justification for all his neologisms?"

ironically, these are commonplace words in German that he's using in new ways. take 'das Man'. in the ordinary German of his day, you'd use this like you would 'the one' in English, e.g. 'the one who commented on the revleft boards'. it's the anonymous yet public individual-figure; it could be any particular one, but it also fits the bill of a general 'one' or everybody. in the context of being and time, Heidegger argues that even in our most private moments (sitting alone in our room thinking), our very idea of ourselves is inherently public; we define ourselves as a 'one' - an individual sitting alone in our room. now, in the translations i've read, 'das Man' becomes 'the They' (which in Lacanian terms, sounds something like 'the Big Other', the observer we unconsciously posit as watching us at all times). this gives it a sort of paranoid sense i very much disapprove of ('who is behind the conspiracy?' / 'they are' / 'who is they?' / 'it's *the* they!' / 'ahhhh!'). Heidegger's point is that we can't escape our being-in-the-world; it's ground into the fabric of our self-experience. it doesn't matter if you imagine a god watching you; when you're thinking alone in your room, chances are, you'll use words, as if you're addressing someone (even though no one is present except you). (see also what Wittgenstein says about the impossibility of a 'private language'.) it'd almost be better if 'das Man' was translated as 'the Man' -- we often use this term to refer to 'the police' or 'the system', and this seems closer to the way Heidegger uses the term. so when Heidegger writes of 'they-self', it'd be 'the Man inside you', or in Foucault's words, "the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us" (see his introduction to anti-oedipus, or click here: http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic...st&p=1292362819 (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=69824&view=findpost&p=1292362819)). ... in any case, Heidegger's obscurity was NOT intentional. he's trying to accurately describe certain phenomenon in his native language, and since we're not all speaking German (no thanks to Heidegger!), it's led to intractable problems of translation.

_

"Leftist organizations will not be the last to secrete microfascisms. It's too easy to be antifascist on the molar level, and not even see the fascist inside you, the fascist you yourself sustain and nourish and cherish with molecules both personal and collective." - Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, a thousand plateaus, page 215.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gauchism, thanks for that offer. I appreciate it. No offence, but I'd rather watch my toenails grow, if you don't mind. I'd learn more.

I had to study this b*llocks when I was an undergraduate.

Now, only a loaded shotgun pointed at me stands any chance of changing my mind -- and even then, I'd have to think about it.

You are welcome to waste you time on this trype, but count me out.


now, is this life-sucking frame 'metaphysical'? yes. is Heidegger endorsing it? no, of course not; he's criticizing it as severely as he can. but does he think we can simply reject this frame? no. often times when we THINK we've left metaphysics behind, it comes back to bite us in the ass, that is, we find metaphysical assumptions underlie what we thought were our metaphysically-free actions. hence the necessity of what Heidegger calls a destructive critique (or what Derrida might call deconstruction) to overcome and resist metaphysics.

A priori, dogmatic guff I am afraid, from that Nazi charlatan.

On the other hand -- perhaps I was wrong about burning it all.

Yes, on second thoughts, burning is far too good for it...

[Hegemonicretribution]

Rosa, I know what it feels like being an undergrad studying absolute crap in core modules...however did you know a-priori that it was crap?

If not then I would claim value, at least insofar as your ability to criticise often "difficult" works comes only from practice. Without quiet there is no loud, without tall there is no short, and without crap philosophy (or any academic work) there can be nothing of substance and value.

Yes a lot of people get bogged down in metaphysical nonsense, never emerging from it...however, once you are practiced in refuting arguments, and seeing the links and inherent problems with various paradigms you have gained a transferable skill, as well as the ability to push others out of the rut. The ones that stay "faithful" to a particular idea (post-refutation) are probably lost causes.

Even then I still maintain that philosophical debate of even flawed concepts hones ones ability to discuss any given matter with others. Debate teams do not always get to represent the view that they hold true, and I think such a practice (in the case of philosophy) is also valuable.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Heg:


Rosa, I know what it feels like being an undergrad studying absolute crap in core modules...however did you know a-priori that it was crap?

A posteriori --, and now, inured to this stuff, I refuse to poison my brain with any more of it -- that is, this side of an intimate relation with the wrong end of a shotgun.


Even then I still maintain that philosophical debate of even flawed concepts hones ones ability to discuss any given matter with others. Debate teams do not always get to represent the view that they hold true, and I think such a practice (in the case of philosophy) is also valuable.

Yes, just as I am sure that wolfing down 50 burgers, and then vomitting them up, trains one's system to win crap-eating competitions.

Other than a liking for self-inflicted pain (or having a course to pass, or in the grip of an attention-seeking personality disorder), why else would you want to do it?

That, it seems to me, is the only real 'value' of traditional philosophy.

[redflagfires]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 07:14 am
the point of philosophy isn't to solve problems, but to understand problems, to redefine the way we understand. most of today's philosophers don't ask, 'do we have free will?'. they've given up on the notion that such areas of study can be decided non-empirically. most of today's philosopher ask, 'when we say 'free will', what do we mean?'. thus does philosophy becomes, not a search for correct truths (solutions), but the interrogation of our presuppositions -- an investigation into how we think and perhaps an experiment in how to think differently. oscar wilde declared 'all art is quite useless'. maybe philosophy is too, in the precise sense wilde means. a poem, a painting, a song: do we judge these aesthetic forms by what problems they solve? would one be justified in saying, "you've been singing that song for years now; what has it solved?'?... we sing ourselves through ideas, and philosophy is an important way of making the song of ourself clearer, richer, and more beautiful.
wonderfully spoken

[gauchisme]

i'm not going to talk about X because X is dumb.

X is so dumb that it's like (insert vulgar, disgusting metaphor).

that's why i'm not going to think about X or argue against X or even acknowledge that X is making a coherent point that could be argued against. because X is evil. and wrong.

hitler and X kissed each other under the bleachers multiple times.

don't get me wrong: i thought about X a long time ago when i thought about things like X and it was (slap another metaphor here) but now i think about things that are so much better than X i have no time for X. or even to argue against X. or think about X.

so if you want to waste time with X go right ahead. but i'd rather (insert another vulgar, disgusting metaphor). writers who write about X shouldn't. and if they do, should (insert another vulgar, disgusting metaphor). oh and nazis were dickheads, and i'm not afraid to say it.

(repeat post five times, then sit and stare at the wall not thinking about X.)

(...then title the thread, the importance of philosophy.)

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by Gauchie
(...then title the thread, the importance of philosophy.)

And then swiftly come to the same conclusion as before:

Philosophy is nonsensical crap.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

G:


repeat post five times, then sit and stare at the wall not thinking about X.)

Now, why did I not think about that earlier?!

I take it that this means you have given up thinking about Heidegger, then?

Smart move.

[gauchisme]

"I take it that this means you have given up thinking about Heidegger, then?"

nope. the essence of X is the X-ing of X's essence itself.

mwahahahahaah.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

G:


nope. the essence of X is the X-ing of X's essence itself.

You really have a handle on this a priori dogmatic metaphysics don't you?

[Raúl Duke]

Is there any philosophy school (i.e. analytical, continental, etc) that deals with post-piori stuff instead of a priori?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

There is an entire branch of analytic philosophy that sought to 'naturalise' it (following on from the work of WVO Qiine -- but he would have denied being an 'analytic' philosopher, anyway!), making it as a posteriori as possible:

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

You will find Syndicat's post above (on page one) is representative of this trend.

Although I disagree with this way of doing philosophy, it is a major step in the right direction.

Some of its weaknesses are outlined in this pdf:

http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/Q...0cul-de-sac.pdf (http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/Quine's%20cul-de-sac.pdf)

For some reason that link does not work.

You can click on it here:

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

Bottom of the page, click on: 'Passing by the Naturalistic Turn: on Quine's cul-de-sac'.

[Herman]

A quote by Marx is significant to this thread, I think:

"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking in practice."

[praxicoide]

Wonderful. Where is that from?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

It's from his Theses on Feuerbach, and it is completely wrong.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...eses/theses.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm)

A much better quote is this:


"One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.

"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added.]

In this, Marx anticipated my own approach to philosophy -- only I push it much, much further.

Incidentally, this is from the German Ideology.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...ology/ch03p.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03p.htm)

[praxicoide]

I've read both but I couldn't remember the first, maybe it¡s the language thing (I've read them in Spanish). The second I really like, and have used.

They are both great and I don't see why his II thesis is wrong.

[Herman]

Theses on Feuerbach

[gauchisme]

"You really have a handle on this a priori dogmatic metaphysics don't you?" -- why is it dogmatic? and if it is, what's the best way to avoid such dogmatism? (Heidegger thought that his project in being and time was too totalizing, so perhaps he'd agree.) also, a nice Heideggerean named Jacques Derrida basically did for structuralism what Quine did for the analytic tradition: two dogmas of empiricism and those chapters of object and word dealing with the rabbit-stage argument are very Derridean moves... i think you're more into Feyerabend than Feuerbach. after all, what does it mean to be a being-in-the-world? it means that neither soul nor thought nor language are transcendent entities -- they are inextricably tied to a particular history, our experience in 'the real world'. dasein is not some Cartesian cogito that exists in a vacuum. it's the earthy stuff of life.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

G:


They are both great and I don't see why his II thesis is wrong.

Since incorrect theories can give correct results (in practice) and correct theories can give incorrect results (in practice), practice cannot discriminate truth from error.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

G:


why is it dogmatic?

It is asserted as if it were a truth from 'god'.


and if it is, what's the best way to avoid such dogmatism?

Throw all of traditional philosophy onto the bonfire, beginning with Heidegger. That will do for starters.


also, a nice Heideggerean named Jacques Derrida basically did for structuralism what Quine did for the analytic tradition: two dogmas of empiricism and those chapters of object and word dealing with the rabbit-stage argument are very Derridean moves... i think you're more into Feyerabend than Feuerbach. after all, what does it mean to be a being-in-the-world? it means that neither soul nor thought nor language are transcendent entities -- they are inextricably tied to a particular history, our experience in 'the real world'. dasein is not some Cartesian cogito that exists in a vacuum. it's the earthy stuff of life.

Leaving aside the fact that I do not accept Quine's approach, I fail to see how the incomprehensible ramblings of that other charlatan, Derrida, are in any way comparable to Quine's work.

I am not into Feyerabend (except some of his ideas that expose dogmatism in the history of science, and the origins of metaphysics), so I do not know what made you think I was (but I still prefer Feuerbach), and I do not recognise this obscure term-of-art:

"Being-in-the-world"

What on earth can we learn from the present participle of the verb 'to be'?


it means that neither soul nor thought nor language are transcendent entities -- they are inextricably tied to a particular history, our experience in 'the real world'. dasein is not some Cartesian cogito that exists in a vacuum. it's the earthy stuff of life

I give not one hoot what it means, it is still a priori dogma.

You might as well quote the New Testament at me for all the good it will do.

In fact, in comparison to some of the stuff you have posted, the New Testament makes a lot more sense.

Now, if you like this stuff, fine. But if you think that quoting this rubbish at me will change my mind, then you are sadly mistaken.

As I have told you several times, I had to endure this bo**ocks as an undergraduate, so unless you have a gun, and know where I live, and come round here and threaten me, there is no way I want to damage my brain with any more of it.

[syndicat]

A little book i highly recommend for those interested in philosophy is John Post, "Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction." Despite its title, a lot of it deals with the theory of language. He does a very good job of explaining the materialist theory of language of Ruth Garrett Millikan, which I tend to agree with. Post and Millikan reject the traditional aprioristic approach to philosophy.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Syndicat -- I will look it up!

[praxicoide]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 24, 2007 10:55 am


They are both great and I don't see why his II thesis is wrong.

Since incorrect theories can give correct results (in practice) and correct theories can give incorrect results (in practice), practice cannot discriminate truth from error.

Could you elaborate on this, please?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

P:


Could you elaborate on this, please?

This is from Essay Ten Part One (references and links ommitted; the numbers refer to end notes, accessible at my site):


Despite this, if these relatively minor quibbles are put to one side, it is worth noting that practice is not a guarantor of truth anyway. Incorrect theories often make successful (practical and theoretical) predictions -- as, for example, Ptolemy's system did for many centuries. In fact, the allegedly superior Copernican system was no more accurate than the older theory.6 Indeed, Ptolemy's system had been refined in line with observation for over a thousand years, and it became more accurate as a result. Despite that, it was no nearer to what we might now regard as the 'truth'.7

And, correct theories can sometimes fail, and they can do so for many years. For instance, Copernican Astronomy predicted stellar parallax, which was not observed until the 1838, with the work of Friedrich Bessel, three hundred years after Copernicus's book was published.

Similarly, Darwin's theory of descent made predictions that were at variance with patently obvious facts: the persistence of inherited variations. The latter were inconsistent with Darwin's own "blending"* theory of transmission. Given Darwin's account, new and advantageous variations should be blended out of a breeding population, not preserved or enhanced. It was not until the advent of genetically-based* theories of inheritance forty or so years later that Darwin's theory became more viable.

Moreover, this new synthetic theory did not achieve success by preserving anything from the old blending theory (and, because of that fact, this defunct theory cannot be seen as an approximation to the 'truth' that later developments inched this theory closer toward). Indeed, because of the difficulties his ideas faced, Darwin incorporated Lamarckian* concepts into later editions his classic book in order to rescue his theory. Hence, in the period between, say, 1865 and 1900, there were good reasons to reject Darwinism (as many serious biologists did). This means that the development of the most successful theory of the 19th century (and one of the most successful ever) actually contradicts the DM-account of truth, by making incorrect predictions.8 [*Links below.]

Moreover, the elements that early Darwinists edited into or out of their theory did not move what was left of his theory closer to the 'truth', either. In fact, these changes achieved the opposite, since they relied on Lamarckian principles. Even worse, as Darwin himself noted, his theory was contradicted by (and is still contradicted by, and might always remain contradicted by) the fossil record. This massive obstacle is still largely ignored, downplayed, re-interpreted, or explained-away by Darwinians. The fact that neo-Darwinism is probably incorrect however has not stopped Marxists of almost every stripe from hailing it as if it were the biological equivalent of the Holy Grail.9

Furthermore, some theories can make both successful and unsuccessful predictions. Consider the 'contradictions' between Newtonian Physics and observation -- those that prompted both the discovery of Neptune and the 'non-discovery' of the planet Vulcan:

"The arguments which terminate in an hypothesis's positing the existence of some trans-Uranic object, the planet Neptune, and the structurally identical arguments which forced Leverrier to urge the existence of an intra-Mercurial planet, the planet 'Vulcan', to explain the precessional aberrations of our 'innermost' solar system neighbour are formally one and the same. They run: (1) Newtonian mechanics is true; (2) Newtonian mechanics requires planet P to move in exactly this manner, x, y, z, …; (3) but P does not move à la x, y, z; (4) so either (a) there exists some as-yet-unobserved object, o, or (b) Newtonian mechanics is false. (5) 4b) contradicts 1) so 4a) is true -- there exists some as-yet-undetected body which will put everything right again between observation and theory. The variable 'o' took the value 'Neptune' in the former case; it took the value 'Vulcan' in the latter case. And these insertions constituted the zenith and the nadir of classical celestial mechanics, for Neptune does exist, whereas Vulcan does not." [Hanson (1970), p.257.]

[More details in Hanson (1962). There are many other examples like this in the history of science. This claim will be documented more fully in a later Essay.]

...

It could be objected to this that these examples clearly ignore wider and/or longer-term issues. In the first case, the Ptolemaic system was finally abandoned because it proved inferior to its rivals in the long run. The same applies to Darwin's theory, which when combined with Mendelian genetics, is closer to the truth, something that is also true of Newtonian Physics, which has been superseded by the TOR.10

[TOR = Theory of Relativity.]

...

That is undeniable, but this response is unfortunately double-edged: if it is only in the long run that we may evaluate a theory as successful, then that theory might never be so judged. As we saw in Essay Three Part Two (summarised above), this is because future contingencies could always arise to refute that theory -- no matter how well it once seemed to 'work'. In fact, if history is anything to go by, this has been the fate of the vast majority of previous theories. Even though most, if not all, at one time 'worked', or were well-supported, the overwhelming majority have been abandoned. As Stanford notes:

"...[I]n the historical progression from Aristotelian to Cartesian to Newtonian to contemporary mechanical theories, the evidence available at the time each earlier theory was accepted offered equally strong support to each of the (then-unimagined) later alternatives. The same pattern would seem to obtain in the historical progression from elemental to early corpuscularian chemistry to Stahl's phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's oxygen chemistry to Daltonian atomic and contemporary physical chemistry; from various versions of preformationism to epigenetic theories of embryology; from the caloric theory of heat to later and ultimately contemporary thermodynamic theories; from effluvial theories of electricity and magnetism to theories of the electromagnetic ether and contemporary electromagnetism; from humoral imbalance to miasmatic to contagion and ultimately germ theories of disease; from 18th Century corpuscular theories of light to 19th Century wave theories to contemporary quantum mechanical conception; from Hippocrates's pangenesis to Darwin's blending theory of inheritance (and his own 'gemmule' version of pangenesis) to Wiesmann's germ-plasm theory and Mendelian and contemporary molecular genetics; from Cuvier's theory of functionally integrated and necessarily static biological species or Lamarck's autogenesis to Darwinian evolutionary theory; and so on in a seemingly endless array of theories, the evidence for which ultimately turned out to support one or more unimagined competitors just as well. Thus, the history of scientific enquiry offers a straightforward inductive rationale for thinking that there are alternatives to our best theories equally well-confirmed by the evidence, even when we are unable to conceive of them at the time." [Stanford (2001), p.9.]

[See also Stanford (2000, 2003, 2006).]

So, if anything, practice shows that practice is unreliable!

Furthermore, if it is only in the long run that superior theories win out, or can be seen to be superior, then for most of the time, inferior theories could make (and have made) successful predictions. In that case, we would have no way of telling the good from the bogus for most of the time.

The above observations apply equally well to dialectics. If Marxists have to wait for the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism before they know whether their theory is correct, then they might not only have a long time to wait, they could find that Marx's caveat (below) in the end refutes everything (i.e., everything but that anti-deterministic pronouncement). Clearly, Marx and Engels would not have put this passage in the Communist Manifesto if practice always determined truth, and correct theories invariably worked -- whatever they might appear to have said elsewhere:

"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." [Marx and Engels (1968b), pp.35-36. Bold emphasis added.]

Anyway, such long-term promissory notes cannot tell us today whether MAD is now correct. Indeed, as noted earlier, this is one of the main weaknesses of pragmatic criteria: they are projective, not merely assertoric.

Furthermore, an appeal to the "closer approximation" of a particular theory to the truth would be to no avail (or, at least, of no help to MAD-fans); as we have seen throughout this site, in this respect DM is not even in the running. This is partly because its own precepts condemn its adherents (and humanity) to infinite ignorance (on this, see below), and partly on the fact that its core theses make not one ounce of sense (on this see Essays Two through Eleven).

[MAD = Materialist Dialectics; DM = Dialectical Materialism.]

More details here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20010_01.htm