Dialectics of nature, does it work?

[Led Zeppelin]

Personally, I don't think so, for this reason:

Sartre’s case against a dialectic of nature is quite different from that of an American pragmatist or positivist. His arguments are distinctively existentialist.

He agrees that history and knowledge are dialectical processes because they are created by humanity and humanity is involved in their development. There is a historical materialism but no dialectical materialism. Dialectics is internal to history. The province of dialectics cannot go beyond human practice. It is illegitimate to extend dialectical laws to nonhistorical, nonhuman phenomena. Sartre presents three main reasons for this restriction:

1. Dialectics deals only with concrete totalities which human beings themselves “totalised” through practice. History and society are such. Nature, on the other hand, does not constitute a single integrated whole. Nature may be infinite, even contain an infinity of infinites. But it consists of fragmented totalities which have no inner unity, no universal and necessary interconnection. The disunity of nature forbids any universal dialectic.

2. The contradictions operating in history cannot be the same as antagonisms in nature. Social contradictions are based upon the reciprocal conditioning and organic interpenetration of their contending sides through human mediation. The opposing forces inside a physical-chemical system are not interactive and interrelated in this way. Brute matter, the “practico-inert”, is disjointed, dispersed, resistant to dialectical movement.

3. We can know society and history from the inside, as they really are, because they are the work of humanity, the result of our decision and action. Their dialectical linkages are disclosed through the contradictory interplay of subject and situation. But physical phenomena remain external to us and to other objects. They are opaque to our insight. We cannot penetrate to their real inner nature and grasp their essence.

In sum, nature must be nondialectical because of its disunity, its lack of contradiction, its insurmountable externality and inertia. The only possible dialectical materialism is historical materialism, which views our establishment of relations with the rest of reality from the standpoint of our action upon it.

Orthodox Marxists revert to theology and metaphysics, says Sartre, by extending dialectical laws over nature on purely philosophical or methodological grounds. He does, however, concede that dialectical laws may at some point be found applicable to nature. But only by way of analogy. This presently involves a risky extrapolation, which must await verification through further findings by the natural scientists. And even if they should discover that physical processes resemble the dialectical type and start to use dialectical models in their research, this would provide no insight into the nature of nature, no true knowledge of its essential features.

__________________________________________________ _________


Can someone (especially Rosa) please post reasons why Dialectics cannot be used on nature? And please let's limit it to Nature, I need this for a discussion, so I need some concrete examples.

[trivas7]

Nice post; what it lacks is an understanding that human beings and the dialectical method of their thinking too are part of nature. IOW, we see in human cognition the reflection of the same dialectical processes we see in nature.

My understanding of dialectics is that it is an epistemological theory before it is anything else, your mileage -- certainly Rosa's -- may vary.

[Led Zeppelin]

I didn't write that, it was from Novack.

You are right that they are part of nature too, but they are a different part, I believe Sarte would say, because: "Dialectics deals only with concrete totalities which human beings themselves “totalised” through practice. History and society are such. Nature, on the other hand, does not constitute a single integrated whole."

Or "without humans Nature would be deaf-mute", "dialectics is valid in certain domains but not in others. Its laws apply to mental or social processes but not to nature. A dialectic of nature belongs to Hegelian idealism, not to a consistent materialism."

Anyway, I think Rosa had some concrete examples of dialectics stumbling when applied to nature (I think it was some chemistry related example), so I was curious for examples like those which disprove that, if you have evidence to the contrary that would be good too.

[trivas7]

Anyway, I think Rosa had some concrete examples of dialectics stumbling when applied to nature (I think it was some chemistry related example), so I was curious for examples like those which disprove that, if you have evidence to the contrary that would be good too.
Indeed, Rosa has volumes to prove the absurdity of dialectics. My point is that dialectics is in the world like colors are in an object -- they are a human way of cognizing reality. I guess I don't agree with Sartre, 'totalizing' brings up a whole new set of issues.

[Led Zeppelin]

Well what do you think of this argument for example:



Scientific laws are experimental hypotheses verified by facts; but at present, the absolute principle that ‘Nature is dialectical’ is not open to verification at all. You may claim that some set of laws established by scientists represents a certain dialectical movement in the objects of these laws, but you cannot prove it.

[These remarks apply, of course, only to the dialectic conceived as an abstract and universal law of Nature. However, when the dialectic is applied to human history, it loses none of its heuristic value. Concealed, it directs the collection of facts; then it reveals itself by making them comprehensible, by totalising them. This comprehension reveals a new dimension of History, and finally, its truth, its intelligibility].

Neither the laws nor the ‘great theories’ will change, however you view them. Your problem is not whether light transmits energy particles to the bodies it illuminates, but whether the quantum theory can be integrated into a dialectical totalisation of the universe. You need not question the kinetic theory of gases; you need only see whether it weakens the totalisation. You are reflecting on Knowledge. And since the law discovered by the scientist, taken in isolation, is neither dialectical nor anti-dialectical (it is only a quantitative determination of a functional relation), the consideration of scientific facts (that is to say, of established laws) cannot furnish, or even suggest, a proof of the dialectic.

Dialectical Reason can only be captured elsewhere, so that it can be forcibly imposed on the data of physics and chemistry. It is well known, in fact, that the notion of dialectic emerged in History along quite different paths, and that both Hegel and Marx explained and defined it in terms of the relations of man to matter, and of men to each other. The attempt to find the movement of human history within natural history was made only later, out of a wish for unification. Thus the claim that there is a dialectic of Nature refers to the totality of material facts – past, present, future – or, to put it another way, it involves a totalisation of temporality. It has a curious similarity to those Ideas of Reason which, according to Kant, were regulative and incapable of being corroborated by any particular experience.

[trivas7]

Well what do you think of this argument for example:

Dialectical Reason can only be captured elsewhere, so that it can be forcibly imposed on the data of physics and chemistry. It is well known, in fact, that the notion of dialectic emerged in History along quite different paths, and that both Hegel and Marx explained and defined it in terms of the relations of man to matter, and of men to each other. The attempt to find the movement of human history within natural history was made only later, out of a wish for unification. Thus the claim that there is a dialectic of Nature refers to the totality of material facts – past, present, future – or, to put it another way, it involves a totalisation of temporality. It has a curious similarity to those Ideas of Reason which, according to Kant, were regulative and incapable of being corroborated by any particular experience.

Again, my general impression is that I disagree with Sartre's understanding of dialectics. IMO there is no 'dialectic of Nature' as such, the dialectic describes a process of human cognition, not something out in the world. Sartre is vexed by the idea of 'totalization', I don't find it in either Marx or Hegel.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LZ:


Anyway, I think Rosa had some concrete examples of dialectics stumbling when applied to nature (I think it was some chemistry related example), so I was curious for examples like those which disprove that, if you have evidence to the contrary that would be good too.

Well, we have already established in numerous threads here that not one single dialectical concept makes a blind bit of sense when applied to nature or society.

To take one example: we have yet to be told what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or, rather, the one or two pathetic attempts made by three or four comrades here to try to tell us what they are collapsed rather quickly, since it turned out that their 'explanation' meant that such 'contradictions' either could not exist, or if they did, they were not 'contradictions' to begin with.

You can access the painful details here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1221394&postcount=464

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1221395&postcount=465

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1221396&postcount=466

And throughout that thread.

Indeed, both Trivas and Gilhyle gave up trying to tell us what this obscure term meant (and then tried to deflect attention from that abject failure).

The question now is: why are you two continuing to flog this dead dialectical horse?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Uncidentally, I have collected the links to all the threads at RevLeft where I have completely trashed this 'theory' here:

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

[Led Zeppelin]

Rosa, didn't you have some concrete examples of dialectics not being applicable to nature? I remember something you said about ice melting at a certain temperature and its relation to some concept of dialectics.

I read through all those links and essays of yours but I couldn't find any clear concrete examples like that proving that dialectics cannot be applied to physics or chemistry, or just nature in general.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LZ:


Rosa, didn't you have some concrete examples of dialectics not being applicable to nature? I remember something you said about ice melting at a certain temperature and its relation to some concept of dialectics.

Yes, you will find plenty in this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/quantity-quality-t66709/index.html

And a summary of them in the article I had published in Weekly Worker:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/688/dialetics.htm

And another brief summary here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm

A longer one here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Why%20I%20Oppose%20DM.htm

But to answer your specific point: if water or ice is heated or cooled, it still says H20 (as water, ice or steam), so there has been no 'qualitiative' change here. That means that the most over-used dialectical example actually refutes Engels's 'Law'!

Moreover, many things in nature do not change suddenly (or 'nodally' to use the jargon) when heated or cooled: think of melting metal, plastic, glass, toffee and butter.

You will find plenty more examples in the links above


I read through all those links and essays of yours but I couldn't find any clear concrete examples like that proving that dialectics cannot be applied to physics or chemistry, or just nature in general.

Well they are in there, so I do not know how you managed to miss them.

Anyway, I am not sure what you mean by a general 'proof'.

What I actually do is show that the 'Laws' dialecticians appleal to are far too vague and imprecise for anyone to be able to say if they are true or false of nature and/or society, and I take the examples dialecticians themselves use to try to show that dialectics applies here, and show that they do not.

[Led Zeppelin]

Thank you for that, I probably missed them because I was skimming through the Essays which are pretty lengthy.

And by proof I meant evidence which shows that the laws of dialectics do not work when applied to Nature, like the melting and H20 examples you presented.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, the short ones are nit all that long.

You will find other examples in those essays.

Or did you want me to summarise all this here?

[Luís Henrique]

Well, we have already established in numerous threads here that not one single dialectical concept makes a blind bit of sense when applied to nature or society.

To take one example: we have yet to be told what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or, rather, the one or two pathetic attempts made by three or four comrades here to try to tell us what they are collapsed rather quickly, since it turned out that their 'explanation' meant that such 'contradictions' either could not exist, or if they did, they were not 'contradictions' to begin with.

With the due respect, I think I have explained what a dialectical contradiction is, without such explanation collapsing at all.

Let me try once more, from a different starting point.

Let's start with a logical contradiction:


John ate his cake, and saved it for tomorrow.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that John's cake is atomic, indivisible, can we agree that this is a formal contradiction of the A ^ !A form?

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


John ate his cake, and saved it for tomorrow.

Why is this a contradiction?

Both could be true and both could be false. [See below.]


Assuming, for the sake of argument, that John's cake is atomic, indivisible, can we agree that this is a formal contradiction of the A ^ !A form?

[Is the "!" sign meant to be negation?]

1) This is not even a formal contradiction until we know what these "A"s stand for.

2) If John put the cake in a plastic bag, swallowed it, and planned, say, to sell it tomorrow, both could be true.

Moreover, if John lied about eating the cake, and that it was a cake, both could be false.

3) How does this help us understand what a 'dialectical contradiction' is?

So: we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do, we know that they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

[Luís Henrique]

Why is this a contradiction?

Both could be true and both could be false.[See below.]

If the cake is indivisible, as I remarked, then it is either eaten or saved.


[Is the "!" sign meant to be negation?]Yes, it is.


1) This is not even a formal contradiction until we know what these "A"s stand for.They stand for the same proposition. So this notation means, A and not A.

It's the standard notation for a formal contradiction in its simplest form.


2) If John put the cake in a plastic bag, swallowed it, and planned, say, to sell it tomorrow, both could be true.

Moreover, if John lied about eating the cake, and that it was a cake, both could be false.I haven't stated

"John said that he ate the cake",

I have stated

"John ate the cake".

If John lied about eating the cake, then he did not eat the cake. But what is stated is that he ate the cake.

And "eat" means "eat" in this context, ie, chewing and swallowing something for nutritional ends.


3) How does this help us understand what a 'dialectical contradiction' is?It will, if we can agree that a proposition like that is a formal contradiction. If we can't, then it is helpless.

Luís Henrique

[chimx]

Please ignore this comment because I'm interested in this discussion you two are having. I just couldn't resist pointing out that if the cake was indivisible, it would probably make digestion impossible, and when it came out the other end the next day, it would in effect have been "saved".

[trivas7]

Please ignore this comment because I'm interested in this discussion you two are having. I just couldn't resist pointing out that if the cake was indivisible, it would probably make digestion impossible, and when it came out the other end the next day, it would in effect have been "saved".
Now that would truly be saving the appearances (http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:IjP_ukz0RIUJ:www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/HistTopics/World.html+saving+the+appearances&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us&client=firefox-a)! :)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


If the cake is indivisible, as I remarked, then it is either eaten or saved.

1) No cake is indivisble. This makes the truth-value of the propositions you are using indeterminate, since the meaning of 'cake' is now obscure. If so, your example cannot be a contradiction.

2) This implies you accept the law of exluded middle.

3) I showed how John can both eat his 'indivisible' cake, and save it. [See below.]


And "eat" means "eat" in this context, ie, chewing and swallowing something for nutritional ends.

But, you can't chew an 'indivisible' cake! Nor can it be digested to give up its 'nutritional' value.


They stand for the same proposition. So this notation means, A and not A.

But, we still do not know what proposition they stand for in your example.

And, as I argued above, in this case they cannot be propositions since they contain at least one word of indeterminate meaning (namely 'cake').


"John ate the cake".

But, it isn't even a cake.


And "eat" means "eat" in this context, ie, chewing and swallowing something for nutritional ends.

But, if you are allowed to screw around with 'cake; why can't I screw around with 'eat'? And, as I pointed out, John can't chew an 'indivisible' cake. So, even you cannot use your own terms here!


It will, if we can agree that a proposition like that is a formal contradiction. If we can't, then it is helpless.

As I have shown, it isn't even a formal contradiction.

But, even if it were, you have yet to show that both A and ~A are true.

Only then would it be an actual contradiction.

And good luck on that one...

So, we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Chimx, I just noticed your point, which I have also tried to make.

Well spotted!

[Luís Henrique]

OK.

This clearly goes in the direction of sheer nonsence, but let's have another try.

"John ate all his cake, and saved it all for tomorrow."

Can we agree that this is a formal contradiction?

Luís Henrique

[trivas7]

So, we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.
Well, which is it? :confused:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


"John ate all his cake, and saved it all for tomorrow."

Can we agree that this is a formal contradiction?

1) At best this is a discursive contradiction. It can only be formal if it is expressed in symbols, such as "p & ~p".

2) But, it is not even a discursive contradiction without the truth of this extra proposition:

A: "No one can both eat all their cake and save it all for tomorrrow".

B: "John ate all his cake, and saved it all for tomorrow."

But, B says A is false!

Alternatively, if B is true, then A is false, and so B cannot be a contradiction!

Nice try, only it wasn't.

So, we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trivas:


Well, which is it?

I went though all this in detail with Gilhyle. Please try to stay awake!

Gil attempted to define a 'dialectical contradiction' in a way similar to Scott Meikle:


"Marx's absolutely fundamental (Hegelian) idea [is] that the two poles united in an opposition necessitate one another ('belong to and mutually condition each other')...." [Ibid., p.19.]


"All the contradictions of capitalist commodity-production have at their heart the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value. Marx reveals this contradiction to lie at the heart of the commodity-form as such, even in its simplest and most primitive form....

"The simple form of value itself contains the polar opposition between, and the union of, use-value and exchange-value.... [Marx writes that] 'the relative form of value and the equivalent form are two inseparable moments, which belong to and mutually condition each other...but at the same time they are mutually exclusive and opposed extremes.' Concerning the first he observes that the value of linen cannot be expressed in linen; 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen is not an expression of value. 'The value of linen can therefore only be expressed relatively, that is in another commodity. The relative form of the value of the linen therefore presupposes that some other commodity confronts it in the equivalent form.' Concerning the second: 'on the other hand, this other commodity which figures as the equivalent, cannot simultaneously be in the relative form of value... The same commodity cannot, therefore, simultaneously appear in both forms in the same expression of value. These forms rather exclude each other as polar opposites.'

"This polar opposition within the simple form is an 'internal opposition' which as yet remains hidden within the individual commodity in its simple form: 'The internal opposition between use-value and exchange-value, hidden within the commodity, is therefore represented on the surface by an external opposition,' that is the relation between two commodities such that one (the equivalent form) counts only as a use-value, while the other (the relative form) counts only as an exchange-value. 'Hence, the simple form of value of the commodity is the simple form of the opposition between use-value and value which is contained in the commodity.'" [Meikle (1979), pp.16-17.]

Bold added.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1207517&postcount=361

However, if this is the case, and these "poles" mutually exclude one another, they cannot both exist at the same time.

If so, they cannot affect one another, and so cannot change one another, or anything else, for that matter.

In that case, we either still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is (since it can't be one, as it is causally ineffectual) or, if we do know what one is (i.e., "These forms rather exclude each other as polar opposites") then such 'contradictions' can't exist and so are causally ineffectual.

This is so unless we give "mutually exclude" (or "exclude each other") a new meaning.

In which case, we still do not know what "mutually exclude" means --, or if we do, then it cannot be part of a 'dialectical contradiction'.

QED.

[Luís Henrique]

A: "No one can both eat all their cake and save it all for tomorrrow".

B: "John ate all his cake, and saved it all for tomorrow."

But, B says A is false!

Alternatively, if B is true, then A is false, and so B cannot be a contradiction!

Ah, OK. But, then, in this case, A^B is a logical contradiction, isn't it?

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


Ah, OK. But, then, in this case, A^B is a logical contradiction, isn't it?

No (you are in fact now caught in a similar bind to that which ensnared Achilles in his debate with the Tortoise, in Lewis Carroll's dialogue -- I have posted it below). This is because, A and B, if held true would now depend on C:

C: "A and B are both true together."

A: "No one can both eat all their cake and save it all for tomorrrow".

B: "John ate all his cake, and saved it all for tomorrow."

But B is false even while A is true, so C is false. In which case, A & B is not a contradiction.

On the other hand, if B is true then A is false, so C is false. Same outcome.

In other words the set of propositions {A, B, C} cannot all be true at once.

In that case:

We still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

OK, here is is:


What the Tortoise Said to Achilles
Lewis Carroll

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reprinted from Lewis Carroll, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles," Mind 4, No. 14 (April 1895): 278-280.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on its back.

"So you've got to the end of our race-course?" said the Tortoise. "Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some wiseacre or other had proved that the thing couldn't be done?"

"It can be done," said Achilles. "It has been done! Solvitur ambulando. You see the distances were constantly diminishing; and so --"

"But if they had been constantly increasing?" the Tortoise interrupted "How then?"

"Then I shouldn't be here," Achilles modestly replied; "and you would have got several times round the world, by this time!"

"You flatter me -- flatten, I mean" said the Tortoise; "for you are a heavy weight, and no mistake! Well now, would you like to hear of a race-course, that most people fancy they can get to the end of in two or three steps, while it really consists of an infinite number of distances, each one longer than the previous one?"

"Very much indeed!" said the Grecian warrior, as he drew from his helmet (few Grecian warriors possessed pockets in those days) an enormous note-book and a pencil. "Proceed! And speak slowly, please! Shorthand isn't invented yet!"

"That beautiful First Proposition of Euclid!" the Tortoise murmured dreamily. "You admire Euclid?"

"Passionately! So far, at least, as one can admire a treatise that won't he published for some centuries to come!"

"Well, now, let's take a little bit of the argument in that First Proposition -- just two steps, and the conclusion drawn from them. Kindly enter them in your notebook. And in order to refer to them conveniently, let's call them A, B, and Z: --

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.

Readers of Euclid will grant, I suppose, that Z follows logically from A and B, so that any one who accepts A and B as true, must accept Z as true?"

"Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School -- as soon as High Schools are invented, which will not be till some two thousand years later -- will grant that."

"And if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true, he might still accept the sequence as a valid one, I suppose?"

"No doubt such a reader might exist. He might say 'I accept as true the Hypothetical Proposition that, if A and B be true, Z must be true; but, I don't accept A and B as true.' Such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid, and taking to football."

"And might there not also he some reader who would say 'I accept A and B as true, but I don't accept the Hypothetical '?"

"Certainly there might. He, also, had better take to football."

"And neither of these readers," the Tortoise continued, "is as yet under any logical necessity to accept Z as true?"

"Quite so," Achilles assented.

"Well, now, I want you to consider me as a reader of the second kind, and to force me, logically, to accept Z as true."

"A tortoise playing football would be -- " Achilles was beginning

"-- an anomaly, of course," the Tortoise hastily interrupted. "Don't wander from the point. Let's have Z first, and football afterwards!"

"I'm to force you to accept Z, am I?" Achilles said musingly. "And your present position is that you accept A and B, but you don't accept the Hypothetical --"

"Let's call it C," said the Tortoise.

"-- but you don't accept

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true. "

"That is my present position," said the Tortoise.

"Then I must ask you to accept C."

"I'll do so," said the Tortoise, "as soon as you've entered it in that note-book of yours. What else have you got in it?"

"Only a few memoranda," said Achilles, nervously fluttering the leaves: "a few memoranda of -- of the battles in which I have distinguished myself!"

"Plenty of blank leaves, I see!" the Tortoise cheerily remarked. "We shall need them all!" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I dictate: --

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other."

"You should call it D, not Z," said Achilles. "It comes next to the other three. If you accept A and B and C, you must accept Z."

"And why must I?"

"Because it follows logically from them. If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. You don't dispute that, I imagine?"

"If A and B and C are true, Z must he true," the Tortoise thoughtfully repeated. "That's another Hypothetical, isn't it? And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept A and B and C', and still not accept Z. mightn't I?"

"You might," the candid hero admitted; "though such obtuseness would certainly be phenomenal. Still, the event is possible. So I must ask you to grant one more Hypothetical."

"Very good. I'm quite willing to grant it, as soon as you've written it down. We will call it

(D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true.

"Have you entered that in your notebook?"

"I have!" Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as he ran the pencil into its sheath. "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."

"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?"

"Then Logic would force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see."

"Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your book, please. We will call it

(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?"

"I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.

Here narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so, Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was saying, "Have you got that last step written down? Unless I've lost count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come. And would you mind, as a personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century -- would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be re-named Taught-Us?"

"As you please!" replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he buried his face in his hands. "Provided that you, for your part, will adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A Kill-Ease!"

http://www.ditext.com/carroll/tortoise.html

This will always stand in the way of anyone trying to say (in propositions) what our ordinary use of language shows, as Wittgenstein noted.

Our ordinary use of language shows what a contradiction is, so your attempt to say what they are is doomed.

Give up -- you can't win this one...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

By the way, for those who do not know, this dialogue is based on one of Zeno's paradoxes:

http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/zeno_tort/index.asp

See also the discussion here:

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

[trivas7]

I went though all this in detail with Gilhyle. Please try to stay awake!

A simple yes or no suffices. In truth you're not interested in what a dialectical contradiction might be; your only motive on this forum by your own admission is to repudiate the dialectical method of Marxism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trivas:


A simple yes or no suffices. In truth you're not interested in what a dialectical contradiction might be; your only motive on this forum by your own admission is to repudiate the dialectical method of Marxism.

It is irrelevant what I am or am not interested in, what matters is that you lot cannot say what a 'dialectical contradiction' is --, or if you can, then we know that they cannot exist, and hence cannot change anything.

And we have already established that Marx was not interested in 'dialectical contradictions', so this is comment of yours light years away from the truth:


dialectical method of Marxism

[trivas7]

And we have already established that Marx was not interested in 'dialectical contradictions', so this is comment of yours light years away from the truth:
Nonsense; this has not been "established" to anyone's satisfaction but your own. I suggest you read Marx with an open mind, not the filter of your Wittgensteinian predilections.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trivas:


Nonsense; this has not been "established" to anyone's satisfaction but your own. I suggest you read Marx with an open mind, not the filter of your Wittgensteinian predilections.

Not so; the comrades here (I exclude you since you never made much of an effort) who attempted to take me on in this matter were not able to show where my reasoning was faulty, or my evidence incorrect.

And of course, if one reads what Marx actually said, he and I see eye to eye on this.

Unless, of course, you can show differently (ha, some hope!).

Even so: We still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

[trivas7]

Not so; the comrades here (I exclude you since you never made much of an effort) who attempted to take me on in this matter were not able to show where my reasoning was faulty, or my evidence incorrect.

OTC, your unwillingness to comprehend has been pointed out repeatedly.


And of course, if one reads what Marx actually said, he and I see eye to eye on this.

I have no idea what the this refers to. I dare say neither do you.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trivas:


OTC, your unwillingness to comprehend has been pointed out repeatedly.

Only by those who can't answer my arguments.


I have no idea what the this refers to. I dare say neither do you.

Quite the contrary. Unfortunatley for you mystics, Marx clearly indicated that 'his method' contained not one atom of Hegel.

This is what you had pointed out to you back in May:


Trivas:


Then you agree with what he wrote in the afterword to the third German edition of Das Kapital:

Sure, but you quote selectively, for Marx also quoted a reviewer thus:


"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:*

'The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own.... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx's book has.'

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added.]

You will note that Marx calls this the 'dialectic method', and 'his method', but it is also clear that it bears no relation to the sort of dialectics you have had forced down your throat, for in it there is not one ounce of Hegel -- no quantity turning into quality, no contradictions, no negation of the negation, no unities of opposites, no totality...

So, Marx's method has had Hegel totally extirpated. For Marx, putting Hegel on 'his feet' is to crush his head.

And of the few terms Marx uses of Hegel's in Das Kapital, he tells us this:


"and even, here and there in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him."

So, the 'rational core' of the dialectic has not one atom of Hegel in it, and Marx merely 'coquetted' with a few bits of Hegelian jargon in Das Kapital.

That is hardly a ringing endorsement of this mystical theory.

And it is little use you telling me he called Hegel a 'mighty thinker', since he pointedly put that in the past tense:


"I criticised the mystificatory side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty years ago, at a time when is was still the fashion. But just when I was working on the first volume of Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and mediocre epigones who now talk large in educated German circles began to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing's time, namely 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 mode of expression peculiar to him." [Ibid., pp.102-03. Bold emphasis added.]

Moreover, one can call a theorist a 'mighty thinker' and totally disagree with him or her. [For instance, I think Plato was a 'mighty thinker' but I disagree with 99% of what he said.]

Still less is there any use in your referring to the Grundrisse -- Marx saw fit not to publish that work, but he did publish the above comments.

So, Marx and I agree that 'his method' contains no Hegel whatsoever; only I go even further and ditch the jargon with which Marx 'coquetted'.

Now, we have been over this many times here, as I told you, in numerous threads.

May I suggest you bother to read a few threads before making a fool of yourself here in future.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1158574&postcount=73

Either you have a very poor memory, or you prefer not to "think about things you do don't think about", just like so many Fundamentalist Christians -- or both.

Neither Gil not BTB were able to answer these points.

[trivas7]

Only by those who can't answer my arguments.

I, for one, have never understood what your "arguments" amount to.


And of course, if one reads what Marx actually said, he and I see eye to eye on this.

Again, what does the this refer to?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trivas:


I, for one, have never understood what your "arguments" amount to.

Yes, playing dumb is probably your best tactic.


Again, what does the this refer to?

As I said, playing dumb is your best tactic.

[Dystisis]

Nature, on the other hand, does not constitute a single integrated whole. Nature may be infinite, even contain an infinity of infinites. But it consists of fragmented totalities which have no inner unity, no universal and necessary interconnection. The disunity of nature forbids any universal dialectic.First off, what do you mean by "infinity of infinites"? Surely one of those infinites would be enough. All infinites are infinities of infinities... of infinities... ad nausea. The pythagoreans called them (infinite and irregular numbers) "unspeakables" for this reason, it is in my opinion absurd to try and approach infinity as a "number" in a classical sense.

Anyways, I would say that nature is in perfect unity and that everything (think atomic) are in a perfect unity. I don't know if I can prove this to you, in a similar way that science is unable to do so, it is just something you kind of figure out. See my signature, physically a drop of water is no more or less remarkable (or has no more or less effect on nature) than a bullet, presuming their mass is equal. Everything is in a constant state of interaction.

I would say that infinity is unity -- and the other way around, because besides unity there is only division creating a number of units, computable (thus not infinite) and derived from the unity. This may seem murky but use a perfect sphere as an example. Like infinity, a perfect sphere is impossible to calculate and create for us humans because it consists of an infinite amount of intercepting planes. Coincidentally (not really) a sphere or circle is also what we use as a "symbol" for 1 or unity, because it is the simplest undivided form.

I will look over the rest of the thread later and comment further if it contains anything which has anything to do with how nature works, as opposed to how the minds of secluded philosophers work..!

[gilhyle]

Rosa, you say:


Our ordinary use of language shows what a contradiction is,


At best this is a discursive contradiction. It can only be formal if it is expressed in symbols, such as "p & ~p".
:rolleyes:

I see you have hijacked another reasonable thread Rosa and prevented another reasonable question being given any serious discussion.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


I see you have hijacked another reasonable thread Rosa and prevented another reasonable question being given any serious discussion.

But, we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is --, or if we do, then we know they cannot exist, ans so cannot change anything.

You 'reasonable' mystics just cannot cope with the fact that you lot have been rumbled.

[gilhyle]

But, Rosa still does not even know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is --, or if she does, then she thinks they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


But, Rosa still does not even know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is --, or if she does, then she thinks they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything

That's OK, since I'm in good company, for you are in the same predicament as I, and so is everyone else.

Unless, of course, you can show differently.

But, you'd have done that already, if you could...

[gilhyle]

Oh its done alright, leaving you with the issue of whose company you are in in not having seen it....and to answer your next post: how do you know that ? :thumbup1:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

'Know' what?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Oh its done alright, leaving you with the issue of whose company you are in in not having seen it....and to answer your next post: how do you know that ?

Not so, you refused to explain (after I showed that Scot Meikle's explanation could not work), and then you went off in a sulk.

So, we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do, we also know they cannot exist and so cannot change anything.

[ComradeRed]

I haven't studied this thread too much, but here's my two cents: you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole when trying to describe nature by dialectics.

Consider electricity: there are two charges - positive and negative. This is somehow dialectical, interpenetration of negation of negation blah blah blah. Whatever.

Now this doesn't work in general -- there are some forces with one charge! There are others with three! How do you explain this?

Gravity has one charge, strong force three.

Dialectics "breaks down" and your left with nothing...

[trivas7]

I haven't studied this thread too much, but here's my two cents: you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole when trying to describe nature by dialectics.

Dialectics doesn't describe nature, correct, it describes how human beings think re nature, and finds that the two are coherent.

[apathy maybe]

Dialectics doesn't describe nature, correct, it describes how human beings think re nature, and finds that the two are coherence.
I don't think of nature as dialectical. Whenever I try and force things into two boxes (opposites as it were), I invariably find that there is at least one, and generally more, possibilities.

I can go up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards, etc. These things aren't in opposition or conflict.

There is no opposite of a tree either for that matter. A tree just is.

[trivas7]

I don't think of nature as dialectical.

Then you don't think of things as a Marxist, who sees that nature acts in self-contradictory ways.

[Dean]

Then you don't think of things as a Marxist, who sees that nature acts in self-contradictory ways.

That's not entirely accurate. Many Marxists reject the Dialectic, as it is not inherently necessary for the rest of the Marxist theories. Also, its important to recognize that Marx himself rarely spoke of Dialectics - it was primarily Engels who focused on the concept.

[trivas7]

That's not entirely accurate. Many Marxists reject the Dialectic, as it is not inherently necessary for the rest of the Marxist theories. Also, its important to recognize that Marx himself rarely spoke of Dialectics - it was primarily Engels who focused on the concept.
Point taken; I should have said "then you don't think like Marx..."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trivas:


I should have said "then you don't think like Marx..."

But, and once again, it has already been established that Marx abandoned 'the dialectic' (as you mystics understand it) by the time he wrote Das Kapital


Then you don't think of things as a Marxist, who sees that nature acts in self-contradictory ways.

And yet, if that were so, one would think that you mystics could actually tell us what these "self-contradictory ways" are. But the opposite is in fact the case: not one of you can.

So, this is rather ironic, then:


Dialectics doesn't describe nature, correct, it describes how human beings think re nature, and finds that the two are coherent

It certainly describes how you mystics imagine you think about things, but when asked to explain yourselves, you lot just twist and turn, prevaricate, distract attention, but in the end you cannot actually tell us what this way of 'thinking' amounts to.

So, it seems that 'dialectical' thinking is synonymous with 'lack of critical thought' -- or perhaps: 'when asked, bottle it'.

And in your case, this way of not thinking has created a comrade who 'does not think about things he does not think about.'

[By the way, you won't know this, since he has been away for three or four months, but Comrade Red is one of the most insistent anti-dialectical Marxists you could wish to meet. He even makes me look like a shrinking violet.]

[apathy maybe]

Then you don't think of things as a Marxist, who sees that nature acts in self-contradictory ways.
Yet you said,

Dialectics doesn't describe nature, correct, it describes how human beings think re nature, and finds that the two are coherence.

I'm not a Marxist, and that should be obvious. But seriously, nature isn't "self-contradictory", that's just silly talk.

[trivas7]

But seriously, nature isn't "self-contradictory", that's just silly talk.
I didn't say nature is self-contradictory, I said it acts in self-contradictory ways.

[ComradeRed]

I didn't say nature is self-contradictory, I said it acts in self-contradictory ways.

Don't you mean you "believe" that it appears this way? Or are you trying to describe nature with dialectics?

[trivas7]

Don't you mean you "believe" that it appears this way? Or are you trying to describe nature with dialectics?
Distinguish your belief in appearances from appearances themselves. And how do you describe nature with dialectics?

[ComradeRed]

Distinguish your belief in appearances from appearances themselves. Ah yes, a good dialectical dodge...


And how do you describe nature with dialectics? I don't. Math is a far superior tool than dialectics in the realm of exact descriptions.

Dialectics allows you to be pretentious...which is good for the parties, I guess.

But there is an unreasonable effectiveness of math applied to nature. Similarly, there is an unreasonable ineffectiveness of dialectics applied to...anything!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trivas, I did try to warn you:


By the way, you won't know this, since he has been away for three or four months, but Comrade Red is one of the most insistent anti-dialectical Marxists you could wish to meet. He even makes me look like a shrinking violet.

Red, I am afraid, Trivas does not think, he just repeats dogma.

Now, where have we seen that before...?

[trivas7]

Ah yes, a good dialectical dodge...
But there is an unreasonable effectiveness of math applied to nature. Similarly, there is an unreasonable ineffectiveness of dialectics applied to...anything!
Please let me know the next time math effects social revolution. Until then who cares what you find effective?

[ComradeRed]

Please let me know the next time math effects social revolution. Until then who cares what you find effective?

The terrible irony is that the "revolutions" that were "guided" by dialectics failed miserably :lol:

Well, scrap that excuse of a tool.

And the relevance to understanding nature is...? Oh right, none but a straw man! (Might it be noted, a crappy one at that!)

Perhaps you could try focusing on topic? Until then, who cares what you have to say?

[trivas7]

The terrible irony is that the "revolutions" that were "guided" by dialectics failed miserably :lol:

Spoken like a true capitalist. With as miserable an understanding of the role dialectics has played in social revolution.

[ComradeRed]

Spoken like a true capitalist. With as miserable an understanding of the role dialectics has played in social revolution. Yes, I see you are incapable of carrying out a discussion without resorting to red herrings.

How unsurprising for a dialectician.

And if you'd like to discuss the "success" of the Soviet Union, or any other bourgeois revolution you'd like, go to the history forum to start such a discussion...since the revolutions all sort of ended a while back in capitalism.

[gilhyle]

The original post was about Sartre, who had - I think - a more equivlocal view of dialectics of nature than has been suggested. But we have moved off that. Consider the idea that:


Math is a far superior tool than dialectics in the realm of exact descriptions

This is patently true, but its like suggesting cheese is more edible than vineger. Is that the pont? Not really. dialectics is neither part of the methodology of natural science nor a substitute for the practice of natural science.

The real issue here is natural science and whether/how well it works or doesnt work at any point in time. We cannot talk about nature apart from our understanding of it (except as a category in the critique of philosophy, but thats another story). Our understanding of it is either the understanding common sense has or natural science has ( and the two patently overlap).

At the time Engels was writing, he had a strong sense that sceince (or at least certain parts of it) were in crisis and that dialectics allowed one speculatively to see ahead as to how those problems would be resolved. He was, arguably, correct, given how science has developed, but it is striking both that science has become much better at dealing with change than in his day and that his comments did not show sufficiently clearly how that progress could be made.

In the same way now we can see how Marx's attempts to create certain initiatives in maths to deal with the analysis of market movements can now be seen to be totally inadequate, but to have been on to important issues....read Mandelbrot.

In the 1920s again there was a strong sense of science being in crisis, particularly among soviet scientists looking at the west. Once again, dialectics for them, promised a way forward....only Vygotsky was able to make any practical use of dialectics to deliver that and, frankly, relied as much on Piagetian dialectics as Marxist dialectics to achieve that.

Again in the 1970s there was another sense of science in crisis, and again a turn to dialectical and holistic thinking to try to think outside the box and see how to go forward. See for example Adolph Fischer's Modern Physics and Antiphysics (1970)

In particular sciences this pattern recurs again and again. There are methodological problems again and again in different braches of science linked to failed reductionist projects, imposition of rational agent assumptions, inability to move from study of the entity to study of the system, from study of the system to study of the dynamic system. many o these problems get overcome in time, but not without huge difficulties.

Natural science is not separate from nature. Natural science conceptualises nature. So to diferentiate between whether science is dialectical and whether nature is dialectical, as if we had some access to understanding of nature separate from science is not coherent. Equally to see dialectics as an alternative methodology to the methodologies of natural science is wrong. Dialectics has no such aspirations. Rather the way we understand nature is not separated out from life - that is the point. We cannot say there is a part of life, namely the study of nature, which is free from what influences and constrains us elsewhere, in all other areas of our thinking.

BTW Comrade Red, dialectics has not per se guided any revolutions.

[ComradeRed]

In the 1920s again there was a strong sense of science being in crisis, particularly among soviet scientists looking at the west. Once again, dialectics for them, promised a way forward....only Vygotsky was able to make any practical use of dialectics to deliver that and, frankly, relied as much on Piagetian dialectics as Marxist dialectics to achieve that. And yet their work has fallen by the wayside.

Frankly, Vygotsky's psychology - like all psychology (to be fair) - is bullshit nonsense. To quote Richard Feynman:

It's a great game to look at the past, at an unscientific era, look at something there, and say have we got the same thing now, and where is it? So I would like to amuse myself with this game. First, we take witch doctors. The witch doctor says he knows how to cure. There are spirits inside which are trying to get out. ... Put a snakeskin on and take quinine from the bark of a tree. The quinine works. He doesn't know he's got the wrong theory of what happens. If I'm in the tribe and I'm sick, I go to the witch doctor. He knows more about it than anyone else. But I keep trying to tell him he doesn't know what he's doing and that someday when people investigate the thing freely and get free of all his complicated ideas they'll learn much better ways of doing it. Who are the witch doctors? Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, of course.


Again in the 1970s there was another sense of science in crisis, and again a turn to dialectical and holistic thinking to try to think outside the box and see how to go forward. See for example Adolph Fischer's Modern Physics and Antiphysics (1970) Where, in the USSR?

In the West, the only "crisis" was renormalization of non-abelian gauge theories, and strong force.

These were resolved using basic representation theory.

(To be fair, the USSR had some great mathematicians working on some math that was relevant, and they had some great physicists working on strong force.)


In particular sciences this pattern recurs again and again. There are methodological problems again and again in different braches of science linked to failed reductionist projects, imposition of rational agent assumptions, inability to move from study of the entity to study of the system, from study of the system to study of the dynamic system. many o these problems get overcome in time, but not without huge difficulties. Ironically, despite these "methodological failures" (for whatever method you're talking about), science has done surprisingly well with observation and model building.

In practice, no scientist follows the "scientific method" and says to themselves "OK, I've done steps 1 through 4, now I need to do step 5, hmm..."

It's more like "Here's data, make a model that works" or "Based off of previous work, I can derive this model; how to make a prediction with this or recover in a suitable limit what has already been done."

The notion of "rational agents" (whatever that means) has no role in science...perhaps social science, but remember the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class themselves.

Similarly, the argument about "systems" seems completely out of place if you've ever studied field theory (even classical field theory!).

It's quite cleverly set up to be a system.

No offense, but this is entirely the sort of "back seat driving" I am talking about when I say "Philosophers are the back seat drivers of science." Worse, they don't even have their license!


BTW Comrade Red, dialectics has not per se guided any revolutions. Try explaining that to trivas7

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


In particular sciences this pattern recurs again and again. There are methodological problems again and again in different braches of science linked to failed reductionist projects, imposition of rational agent assumptions, inability to move from study of the entity to study of the system, from study of the system to study of the dynamic system. many o these problems get overcome in time, but not without huge difficulties.

Natural science is not separate from nature. Natural science conceptualises nature. So to diferentiate between whether science is dialectical and whether nature is dialectical, as if we had some access to understanding of nature separate from science is not coherent. Equally to see dialectics as an alternative methodology to the methodologies of natural science is wrong. Dialectics has no such aspirations. Rather the way we understand nature is not separated out from life - that is the point. We cannot say there is a part of life, namely the study of nature, which is free from what influences and constrains us elsewhere, in all other areas of our thinking.

And yet dialectics cannot explain a single thing -- small wonder then that scientists continue to ignore it totally.


BTW Comrade Red, dialectics has not per se guided any revolutions.

Indeed, it is totally useless; even hardened revolutionaries like Lenin recognised this!


At the time Engels was writing, he had a strong sense that sceince (or at least certain parts of it) were in crisis and that dialectics allowed one speculatively to see ahead as to how those problems would be resolved. He was, arguably, correct, given how science has developed, but it is striking both that science has become much better at dealing with change than in his day and that his comments did not show sufficiently clearly how that progress could be made.

Nice soothing generalities, but short on specifics. Exactly where was Engels right?

[gilhyle]

Vygotsky's psychology - like all psychology (to be fair) - is bullshit nonsense.

But that is science....it is the state of the science of psychology today. You may not think much of it. But science progresses slowly - it must go from where it was to where it can get to and that is a journey. Sorry to sound so cliched but your point demands cliches in response. Of course the science of psychology is under developed - we can see that cos we can take an historical perspective on it and compare it to the greater development of other sciences. But so what that its level of development is low....its still science; its still the organised pursuit of understanding from within the academic realm as financed by capitalism for military or educational or industrial purposes (and in the case of psychology the influence of military research is very high).


espite these "methodological failures" (for whatever method you're talking about), science has done surprisingly well with observation and model building.I quite agree....and I made that point on another thread when calling into question the appropriateness for today of Engels' arguments about the reliance of science on metaphysical categories in the 1870s. As a by the way, it is interesting, however to question why this is so in the imperialist epoch of capitalism. How/why does imperialism still seem able to efficiently finance the development of certain branches of science ?


The notion of "rational agents" (whatever that means) has no role in scienceWell, you are not talking here about 'science' you are talking about certain natural sciences. The concept of a rational agent has a key role in economics. Similarly it has a role (in effect) in the modelling of evolution. You may or may not consider these as sciences. But if you restrict your reference to those sciences where quantification and closed models work most effectively, then no wonder you get the conclusion that in 'science' quantification and closed models and experimental data work well.....you have defined that into your premise in order to derive that conclusion !

No offense, but this is entirely the sort of "back seat driving"No offence taken, but even the natural sciences have a sociology. Even the natural sciences have a political economy. Even the natural sciences are part of this society and Im not naive enough to believe that there is a scientific community out there just pursuing scientific problems uninfluenced by the dominant ideological methodological constraints. I doubt you believe that either. You defend the natural sciences. Rightly so to my mind. They have made more progress than could have been expected 130 years ago. But that doesnt resolve the underlying issue or make them free of need to grasp relations that are systematic but not logical or necessary or reducible or unchanging.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


But that is science....it is the state of the science of psychology today. You may not think much of it. But science progresses slowly - it must go from where it was to where it can get to and that is a journey. Sorry to sound so cliched but your point demands cliches in response. Of course the science of psychology is under developed - we can see that cos we can take an historical perspective on it and compare it to the greater development of other sciences. But so what that its level of development is low....its still science; its still the organised pursuit of understanding from within the academic realm as financed by capitalism for military or educational or industrial purposes (and in the case of psychology the influence of military research is very high).

Vygotsky's 'theory' is in fact third-rate metaphysics masqerading as science. For instance, his idea that we all require "inner speech" to comprehend anything is not backed up by serious analysis or evidence. Indeed, he even admits that this evidence is impossible to gather, since "inner speech" is inaccessible. "Inner speech" would in fact get in the way; rather like having an inner i-pod one could never switch off blasting away in our ears. Of course, such 'inner voices' would be a sure sign of psychosis, anyway.

Moreover, as Meredith Williams points out:


"Vygotsky attempts to combine a social theory of cognition development with an individualistic account of word-meaning.... [But] the social theory of development can only succeed if it is combined with a social theory of meaning." [Williams (1999b), p.275.]

Williams, M. (1999a), Wittgenstein, Mind And Meaning (Routledge).

--------, (1999b), 'Vygotsky's Social Theory Of Mind', in Williams (1999a), pp.260-81.

This is hardly surprisng, since he, along with others such as Voloshinov, simply adopted a traditional approach to this problem, which sees 'understanding' as a private inner act of cognition (in fact this approach derives from ancient mystical ideas about the soul -- 'modernised' by idealists like Descartes and Hegel).

Now, we do not have to read Wittgenstein to see this is non-viable, it runs counter to the social nature of language and understanding as Marx saw things.

[I will be publishing an Essay on this in the next month or so -- more for Gil to ignore.]

[gilhyle]

ever the philosopher......you obviously know nothing about vygotsky.....before you embarrass yourself again with your back seat philosophical generalisations. read, for example vygotsky and cognitive science by william frawley, one of many books discussing vygotsky in the context of data from empirical research - but then real science doesnt disturb your philosophy, your like gallileo's cardinals

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


ever the philosopher......you obviously know nothing about vygotsky.....before you embarrass yoursel again withyour back seat philosophicalgeneralisations. read, forexamplevygotsky andcognitive science by william frawley, one of man mnay books discussing vygotsky in the context of data from empirical research

Yes, we know what you mean by 'evidence': whatever supports your preconceived ideas. We saw that abundantly illustrated in the Anti-Duhring thead you chickened out of.

And, yes, I have read this sort of 'evidence' before. It's about as convincing as Christian evidence for 'God' is.

Oh, and by the way, Frawley's book is in the Bibliography to my next Essay (I read it four years ago):

Frawley, W. (1997), Vygotsky And Cognitive Science. Language And The Unification Of The Computational Mind (Harvard University Press).

[gilhyle]

It may be in your bibliography but you patently have not read or understood it. The fact that inner speech is not directly observable does not make it a metaphysical claim. It is an hypothesis which is studied by extensive experimental work. See for example 'Inner Speech and Second Languge Acquisition: An Experimental-Theoretical Approach" within Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Lantoff and Appel (eds)


we know what you mean by 'evidence': whatever supports your preconceived ideas.

Nor is this a personal assessment of mine. There are over 2,000 (mostly peer reviewed) articles and books on Vygotsky published, mostly since the early 1980s. See the bibliography Socio-Historicocultural Psychology by Mohamed Elhammoumi (1997)....and thats incomplete even as of that date and there are a lot more since.

What shines through here is your underlying project - which is the use of your metaphysics to rule out Marxist theory and to insist on its subordination to the dominant ideology.......your insistence on respectability is your guiding light. And it confuses your whole servile perspective when a Marxist gets taken seriously within science, so you have to try to eliminate that anomaly within your schema of low caste Marxism and high caste science.


his idea that we all require "inner speech" to comprehend anything is not backed up by serious analysis or evidence. Indeed, he even admits that this evidence is impossible to gather, since "inner speech" is inaccessible.

Of course, Vygotsky (while noting that inner speech is not directly observable) never says that good evidence about inner speech cant be discerned. More importantly, in this case, we see that your search or respectability takes you back to the early twentieth century prejudices of Mach-like philosophers, crude empiricists through the ages who seek to deny our capacity to scientifically posit and studied the unobserved.

If you have somthing to say about the evidence there is for inner speech, then compose an article and submit it to a peer reviewed journal and see how you get treated....instead of posturing here.

And that goes for this to:


This is hardly surprisng, since he, along with others such as Voloshinov, simply adopted a traditional approach to this problem, which sees 'understanding' as a private inner act of cognition (in fact this approach derives from ancient mystical ideas about the soul -- 'modernised' by idealists like Descartes and Hegel).


This is an empirical question, not one your philosophy can pre-determine. Vygotsky has participated in the attempt to study learning by the method of hypothesis and experiment...for that you condemn him, for not starting from your philosophy, you condemn him....where there is science you see mysticism, i.e. religion. Your view of the world is radically distorted by your prejudices.

As to Voloshinov Voloshinov and Vygotsky have little or nothing in common. More to the point,


"Inner speech" would in fact get in the way; rather like having an inner i-pod one could never switch off blasting away in our ears. Of course, such 'inner voices' would be a sure sign of psychosis, anyway.


Look at this logico-deductive method substituting for empirical science !! Incredible, you do it without a blush. Having accused Marxism of just this type of crude thinking, you do it yourself ! Obviously, completely unaware of the empirical work on the regulative functions in the mind for censoring and repressing disruptive thinking - you decide it cant be there because it wouldnt be efficient, ignoring the possibility that it is there, but is controled.

You constantly drag into philosophy what belongs to science, while accusing Engels (who made sure he did not do this) of exactly what you do yourself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


It may be in your bibliography but you patently have not read or understood it. The fact that inner speech is not directly observable does not make it a metaphysical claim. It is an hypothesis which is studied by extensive experimental work. See for example 'Inner Speech and Second Language Acquisition: An Experimental-Theoretical Approach" within Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Lantoff and Appel (eds)

As far as I can see, Frawley presents no evidence for anyone even to believe that this mythical process actually exists, even though you said he did:


before you embarrass yourself again with your back seat philosophical generalisations. read, for example Vygotsky and cognitive science by William Frawley, one of many books discussing Vygotsky in the context of data from empirical research

Now, I will obtain the other book you recommend, but if what you said about Frawley is as accurate as your latest pontifications, what I expect to find there is not evidence, but supposition. Rather like that which can be found in the work of those trying to prove Chomsky's ideas are correct, or that 'God' exists.


Nor is this a personal assessment of mine. There are over 2,000 (mostly peer reviewed) articles and books on Vygotsky published, mostly since the early 1980s. See the bibliography Socio-Historicocultural Psychology by Mohamed Elhammoumi (1997)....and that's incomplete even as of that date and there are a lot more since.

And, there are countless thousand 'peer reviewed' books and articles on, say, the 'free market', but who believes this barrage of propaganda?

Maybe you do, since it is, after all, 'peer reviewed'!:lol:

In that case, the number of 'peer reviewed' papers written by a set of ideologues, and 'peer reviewed' by other ideologues, is not in itself sufficient to establish that 'inner speech' exists. Science is littered with 'peer reviewed' books and papers about entities that do not and have never existed. Who now believes in the ether, or in the immobile continents? And remember all that 'dialectical' evidence that we were told supported Lysenko's whacko ideas?


What shines through here is your underlying project - which is the use of your metaphysics to rule out Marxist theory and to insist on its subordination to the dominant ideology.......your insistence on respectability is your guiding light. And it confuses your whole servile perspective when a Marxist gets taken seriously within science, so you have to try to eliminate that anomaly within your schema of low caste Marxism and high caste science.

1) You have asserted I have a 'metaphysics' several times, but when it comes to giving us even one clear example, you go all quiet. I wonder why?

2) Wtf does this mean: "your insistence on respectability is your guiding light"? Where have I 'insisted' on anything remotely like this?

It seems to me that you are the one who craves 'respectability' with your appeal to the "over 2,000 (mostly peer reviewed) articles and books on Vygotsky", as if to intimidate the rest of us into accepting your naive view that ephemeral psychological fashion determines scientific truth.

No area of science is littered with as many whacko ideas in search of gullible minds to colonise as psychology and cognitive science. You need to be a tad more critical, and indeed careful, in what you allow to take over your brain.


Of course, Vygotsky (while noting that inner speech is not directly observable) never says that good evidence about inner speech cant be discerned. More importantly, in this case, we see that your search or respectability takes you back to the early twentieth century prejudices of Mach-like philosophers, crude empiricists through the ages who seek to deny our capacity to scientifically posit and studied the unobserved.

So, you admit it: there is no evidence, it's all supposition based on a hare-brained idea. You'll be telling me next that there is no direct evidence for 'God', but that does not mean that we do not have 'good evidence'.

And who is looking for 'respectability' with all this talk about 'peer review'?

Moreover, I have no problem with the 'unobserved', but I do have one with the existence of objects and processes that are based on guesswork, myth and lamentably poor philosophy of mind, as is the case with 'inner speech'.

You can read/ignore my detailed reasons in my next Essay.


If you have something to say about the evidence there is for inner speech, then compose an article and submit it to a peer reviewed journal and see how you get treated....instead of posturing here.

And yet, I have no more need to do that than I have for writing an article for a 'peer reviewed' journal on the non-existence of fairies.


This is an empirical question, not one your philosophy can pre-determine. Vygotsky has participated in the attempt to study learning by the method of hypothesis and experiment...for that you condemn him, for not starting from your philosophy, you condemn him....where there is science you see mysticism, i.e. religion. Your view of the world is radically distorted by your prejudices.

Not so, it is a conceptual issue about what cognitive scientists mean by the words they use.

If they are using such words as 'understand' and 'thought' in a technical sense, fine. But then their conclusions will have no bearing on the ordinary use of such words. In that case, such work will not actually be about understanding and thought.

If, on the other hand, they are using such words in an ordinary sense, then they are misusing them, and we should mistrust their results.

In fact, it is clear that they, like all such ideologues, oscillate between these two poles, and end up with -- as Wittgenstein said of psychology in general -- 'conceptual confusion'.


Look at this logico-deductive method substituting for empirical science !! Incredible, you do it without a blush. Having accused Marxism of just this type of crude thinking, you do it yourself ! Obviously, completely unaware of the empirical work on the regulative functions in the mind for censoring and repressing disruptive thinking - you decide it cant be there because it wouldn't be efficient, ignoring the possibility that it is there, but is controlled.

Why are you getting so emotional again?

Another source of your opiates under threat is it?

As if philosophers have never been allowed to criticise the conceptual confusions of scientists!

Once more, if there were such a thing as 'inner speech' it would get in the way of our being able to think straight.

I notice you ignored that point -- and that was probably the result of your latest tantrum: "How dare she question the sacred (peer reviewed) truths of science!"

But, let me remind you that it wasn't an 'empirical' matter in the Anti-Dühring thread. There you were trying to sell us the idea that evidence did not really matter, since dialectical 'laws' were different -- although you could not quite bring yourself to tell us how and why they were 'different', they just were, or indeed, inform us what a 'dialectical law' actually is.

But now you take the opposite view, and berate me for doing what you wanted to do in defence of Engels!


You constantly drag into philosophy what belongs to science, while accusing Engels (who made sure he did not do this) of exactly what you do yourself.

I am not sure your head is screwed on right, for this is precisely what you did in the Anti-Dühring thread.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

By the way, I have just tried to buy:


Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Lantoff and Appel

from Amazon, but their software tells me this book does not exist.

Perhaps you should e-mail them for having the temerity to question the existence of 'unobservables'?

So, unless you made this work up (perhaps like Vygotsky dreamt-up 'inner speech'), can you check the title, or I will remain in Wittgensteinian darkness forever!

-------------------------

Ok, I have just checked the bibliography to The Cambridge Companaion to Vygotsky, and this lists the book as "Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research".

And it's by Lantolf and Appel.

Not too good on detail are you?

Perhaps you should have had your last post 'peer reviewed'?:rolleyes:

---------------------

Ok, just ordered it.

We'll soon see how much 'evidence' there is, and how much of that is mere 'supposition'.

[gilhyle]

Once more, if there were such a thing as 'inner speech' it would get in the way of our being able to think straight.

I notice you ignored that point


Amazing you actually quoted my response just before claiming I ignored you:

And it was this

Obviously, completely unaware of the empirical work on the regulative functions in the mind for censoring and repressing disruptive thinking - you decide it cant be there because it wouldn't be efficient, ignoring the possibility that it is there, but is controlled.

You see Rosa your logic is not as conclusive as you think. Reality has more options thann your philosophy allows.

We'll soon see how much 'evidence' there is, and how much of that is mere 'supposition'.

Read away, but it wont make any difference. I mean if you have been able to read Vygotsky's own writings without seeing that they work through the moments of hypothesis (what you incorrectly call supposition), experiment and reflection, then this one book isnt going to help. The whole Vygotskian literature is centred around experimentation...granted coupled with conceptual reflection, but the experimentation is no less important for that reason. Vygotsky's own work originates in empirical observation ....the idea that its metaphysics is just so wide of the mark that I just dont know how you could have got to it, its staggering. You dont need to read one book, you need to engage with the whole discipline !

More generally, Of course it is possible to criticise the conceptual confusions of science. I made that very point to Comrade Red. But the purpose of such criticism can never be to tell scientists that what they are finding in their empirical work isnt there, because your logic tells you it cant be. The fact is, to stick with the example, that the evidence on second language acquisition shows a reliance on first language and has a form which requires explanation. Explaining that is not a matter for methodological critics of scientific conceptual confusions. It is a matter for scientists operating within their discipline......that is why I mention the importance of participating in the peer reviewed discipline of the science.

Criticism by philosophers or Marxists of the conceptual confusions of scientists is never a substitute for the practice of science. Such criticisms must at best be suggestive and the disciplined scientific process must still be undertaken to make progress. What you seem to do, which is strikingly different from what Engels does is not to suggest limits on scientific work caused by pre-conceptions but rather to tell the scientists that they must proceed in this or that way. The dialectical critique of science does not do that, but you seem to. And that really is metaphysics, it confuses logic and reality.

Even economics, dismal as it is, is still a science and in that regard it deserves to be valued and not treated as mere ideology. Some of it is so ideological as to be virtually useless, but some of it is potentially very useful and, in any case, it IS the knowledge of economics that our society has, for better or worse, and anything Marxism has to add remains external to it (except where sraffians and such like find ways to reintegrate Marxist political economy into economics, on the basis of misunderstanding what Marxist political economy is).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Amazing you actually quoted my response just before claiming I ignored you:

And it was this


Obviously, completely unaware of the empirical work on the regulative functions in the mind for censoring and repressing disruptive thinking - you decide it cant be there because it wouldn't be efficient, ignoring the possibility that it is there, but is controlled.

You see Rosa your logic is not as conclusive as you think. Reality has more options than your philosophy allows.

1) Where did I use logic to make this point?

2) Where do you even address the point, let alone answer it?

Here it is again:

Once more, if there were such a thing as 'inner speech' it would get in the way of our being able to think straight.

Feel free to ignore it again of you can't answer it...


Read away, but it wont make any difference. I mean if you have been able to read Vygotsky's own writings without seeing that they work through the moments of hypothesis (what you incorrectly call supposition), experiment and reflection, then this one book isn't going to help. The whole Vygotskian literature is centred around experimentation...granted coupled with conceptual reflection, but the experimentation is no less important for that reason. Vygotsky's own work originates in empirical observation ....the idea that its metaphysics is just so wide of the mark that I just don't know how you could have got to it, its staggering. You don't need to read one book, you need to engage with the whole discipline !

1) You asserted that Frawley's book actually contained this elusive 'evidence':


It is an hypothesis which is studied by extensive experimental work. See for example 'Inner Speech and Second Language Acquisition: An Experimental-Theoretical Approach" within Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Lantoff and Appel

but it doesn't. So, you are not to be trusted when it comes to assertions about 'evidence', as we also discovered in the Anti-Dühring thread.

2) You can't even get the details of the books you recommend (or the author's name) right. So, based on your incapacity to handle detail, we are more likely to find that this additional book you quoted has plenty of evidence for the existence of Big Foot, but precious little else.

3) Vygotsky's ideas about 'inner speech' cannot have begun from observation, since it is impossible to observe.

4) You must know (but perhaps you do not) that mainstream psychology holds Vygotskian theory in considerable doubt, and that includes the alleged 'evidence'. So, it's not just me who is being sceptical.


More generally, Of course it is possible to criticise the conceptual confusions of science. I made that very point to Comrade Red. But the purpose of such criticism can never be to tell scientists that what they are finding in their empirical work isn't there, because your logic tells you it cant be. The fact is, to stick with the example, that the evidence on second language acquisition shows a reliance on first language and has a form which requires explanation. Explaining that is not a matter for methodological critics of scientific conceptual confusions. It is a matter for scientists operating within their discipline......that is why I mention the importance of participating in the peer reviewed discipline of the science.

1) Peer review is only of recent origin. For example, Einstein's work was not peer reviewed.

Moreover:


One of the most common complaints about the peer review process is that it is slow, and that it typically takes several months or even several years in some fields for a submitted paper to appear in print. In practice, much of the communication about new results in some fields such as astronomy no longer takes place through peer reviewed papers, but rather through preprints submitted onto electronic servers such as arXiv.org. However, such preprints are often also submitted to refereed journals, and in many cases have, at the time of electronic submission, already passed through the peer review process and been accepted for publication.

While passing the peer-review process is often considered in the scientific community to be a certification of validity, it is not without its problems. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of Journal of the American Medical Association is an organizer of the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, which has been held every four years since 1986. He remarks, "There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print."

Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, has said that "The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Criticisms_of_peer_review

None of Marx or Engels's works (or those of Lenin, Plekhanov, and Trotsky) were 'peer reviewed'.

Once more, it is in fact you who seeks 'respectability' here, with this fetish.

2) The phenomenon of second-language acquisition does not need the assumption of 'inner speech' to make it happen.

3) We have yet to be told what 'inner speech' is!


Criticism by philosophers or Marxists of the conceptual confusions of scientists is never a substitute for the practice of science. Such criticisms must at best be suggestive and the disciplined scientific process must still be undertaken to make progress. What you seem to do, which is strikingly different from what Engels does is not to suggest limits on scientific work caused by pre-conceptions but rather to tell the scientists that they must proceed in this or that way. The dialectical critique of science does not do that, but you seem to. And that really is metaphysics, it confuses logic and reality

1) In fact, dialecticians have a long history of telling scientists what to do and think, beginning with Engels's confused ramblings, through to Lenin's declaration that modern physics was idealist, and then on to Soviet scientists rejecting quantum mechanics, relativity and genetics (for the same reasons). And these days we have Woods and Grant telling us that the Big Bang never happened.

2) I'd like to see you find an actual quotation from my work (here, or at my site) that justifies this latest lie of yours:


What you seem to do, which is strikingly different from what Engels does is not to suggest limits on scientific work caused by pre-conceptions but rather to tell the scientists that they must proceed in this or that way. The dialectical critique of science does not do that, but you seem to. And that really is metaphysics, it confuses logic and reality

But, we know from past experience you are all talk and no 'evidence' (even though you demand that I look at the 'evidence' for the existence of 'inner speech'!).

It's just one more item to add to the long list of things you make up about my ideas, but never substantiate -- nor do you apologise or withdraw them.


Even economics, dismal as it is, is still a science and in that regard it deserves to be valued and not treated as mere ideology. Some of it is so ideological as to be virtually useless, but some of it is potentially very useful and, in any case, it IS the knowledge of economics that our society has, for better or worse, and anything Marxism has to add remains external to it (except where sraffians and such like find ways to reintegrate Marxist political economy into economics, on the basis of misunderstanding what Marxist political economy is).

Eh?

Have you forgotten what the word 'relevant' means?

So: we still do not know what 'inner speech' is (let alone what evidence there is for it), and we also do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do we also know that they cannot exist and so cannot change anything.

What a sorry 'theory' you have allowed to colonise your brain!

[gilhyle]

QUOTE]Once more, if there were such a thing as 'inner speech' it would get in the way of our being able to think straight.
[/QUOTE]

Either this is an observation from which no conclusion is or should be drawn - in which case dont make it cos your only causing confusion OR you are concluding that because inner speech is inefficient it doesnt exist. In the latter case you are drawing conclusions about reality prior to experience, along the lines....reality is efficient, inner speech is not efficient therefore inner speech does not exist. If you are making that argument you are just using logic to apply a principle to exclude a possible reality or you are making an observation from which nothing is concluded in which case its just a wasteful diversion, given where this tread has been.


Frawley's book actually contained this elusive 'evidence Frawleys book contains references to the various experimental research, not all of it but some of it. But look, the point which you miss is that the methodological reflections (as in Frawleys book) need to be conducted WITH the experimental research. This is a point worked out in detail by Vygotsky in his main work on the Crisis in Psychology (see Volume Three of his misnamed Collected Works)


Vygotsky's ideas about 'inner speech' cannot have begun from observation, since it is impossible to observe.


Again, read the above work by Vygotsky where he deals with this issue. The simple answer to your question is that it began from the observation of behaviour which could not be better explained than by the hypothesis of inner speech....but, you know, try applying that argument to physics and see how far you get.


The phenomenon of second-language acquisition does not need the assumption of 'inner speech' to make it happen.


You approach this as a philosopher not as a scientist. Scientific hypotheses are not always made up solely of what is logically required; scientific hypothese often, but not always use a prinicple of simplicity, but that isnt the same thing. Nor is it a good argument against an hypothesis that it is not REQUIRED by the available evidence. Actually science proceeds in a more complex manner....its hilarious that you are here doing exactly what you (falsely) accused Engels of doing - substituting his philosophy for scientific practice.


dialecticians have a long history of telling scientists what to do and think,

No there was a short history in the USSR of the Bureaucracy dictating to scientists. Woods and Grant...who cares about them ?


None of Marx or Engels's works (or those of Lenin, Plekhanov, and Trotsky) were 'peer reviewed'.

Precisely !!! and you wont think about that....you wont consider what is the distinctive character of marxism as a science, in particular how a discipline is imposed on the practice of Marxism as theory in the absence of academic insitutions such as universities and journals to discipline practices....how the party disciplines (or doenst) marxist science..the sense in which marxism must be a science sui generis because of the political project to which it is linked. All that you just dont consider.


no 'evidence'

No Rosa, this is a revolutionary Marxist website, I am not going into a debate (which belongs within the discipline of psychology) on the existence or nature of inner speech. It doesnt belong here. There is evidence, there is evidence for alternative models....and its all a matter of psychological science

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Either this is an observation from which no conclusion is or should be drawn - in which case don't make it cos your only causing confusion OR you are concluding that because inner speech is inefficient it doesn't exist. In the latter case you are drawing conclusions about reality prior to experience, along the lines....reality is efficient, inner speech is not efficient therefore inner speech does not exist. If you are making that argument you are just using logic to apply a principle to exclude a possible reality or you are making an observation from which nothing is concluded in which case its just a wasteful diversion, given where this tread has been.

You miss the point, as usual. Read it again (it is so simple that it takes only slightly more intelligence than you seem capable of mustering, to grasp):


Once more, if there were such a thing as 'inner speech' it would get in the way of our being able to think straight.

Dwell on it for a couple of weeks, and if you still can't figure it out, and if you ask me reeeel nice, I might condescend to help you out.


No there was a short history in the USSR of the Bureaucracy dictating to scientists.

In fact, it began with Engels, and then Lenin, and petered out with the fall of communism. So, for the best part of 130 years, dialecticians did what you say they never do.


Woods and Grant...who cares about them ?

Many comrades here do.


Precisely !!! and you wont think about that....you wont consider what is the distinctive character of Marxism as a science, in particular how a discipline is imposed on the practice of Marxism as theory in the absence of academic institutions such as universities and journals to discipline practices....how the party disciplines (or doesn't) Marxist science..the sense in which Marxism must be a science sui generis because of the political project to which it is linked.

And yet you make a fetish out of 'peer review'.


All that you just don't consider.

On the contrary, my work is part of this process. You are the one who will not allow any criticism of the sacred creeds to proceed. So, it is you who rejects this process.


No Rosa, this is a revolutionary Marxist website, I am not going into a debate (which belongs within the discipline of psychology) on the existence or nature of inner speech. It doesn't belong here. There is evidence, there is evidence for alternative models....and its all a matter of psychological science

In other words, and once more: you have no evidence.

Post it in the Science section, then...

[Don't hold your breath comrades, there is no evidence for Gil to post.]

So: we still do not know what 'inner speech' actually is (let alone what evidence there is for it), and we also do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do we also know that they cannot exist and so cannot change anything.

[gilhyle]

In fact, it began with Engels, ....

You've done more dictating to scientists on this thread alone than Engels did in his whole life.


Dwell on it for a couple of weeks, and if you still can't figure it out, and if you ask me reeeel nice, I might condescend to help you out.


Child


Post it in the Science section, then...

You entirely miss the point......if you are going to do science (other than Marxism) do it with the scientists as part of the scientific community. There is no other way to do science. If you are going to do Marxism, you can just about begin doing a small bit of it here....but you cant practice any natural science or psychology or any other such science on this website......

Your just addicted to the winning phrase Rosa, You care not what you say as long as it suggests youre right and the other person is wrong. So you are reduced to this childish baiting. Im not insecure enough to rise to your nonsense. Go on, publish on Vygotsky. Ive long since finished writing on Vygotsky and I dont intend to take it up again just to talk to someone with a closed mind.

So Be foolish....I have no desire to stop you/educate you...I merely aimed to record for any comrades who would read you that Vygotsky is a credible, important scientist, with an empirical basis for his work - suggesting hypotheses susceptible to replacement based on further experiment..... contrary to your bile. I leave you the last word since it matters so much you.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


You've done more dictating to scientists on this thread alone than Engels did in his whole life.

1) So, you admit Engels did dictate to scientists, when you had denied this earlier.

2) Where do I dictate to scientists?


Child

No, sorry, not nearly nice enough. You really haven't got the hang of this grovelling lark, have you?. Still, it matches you lack of facility with evidence...


You entirely miss the point......if you are going to do science (other than Marxism) do it with the scientists as part of the scientific community. There is no other way to do science. If you are going to do Marxism, you can just about begin doing a small bit of it here....but you cant practice any natural science or psychology or any other such science on this website......

In short, when you are pressed to produce evidence, you deny you need to do so, but on the other hand when I point out that there is none in support of Vygotsky's a priori 'psychology', you claim there is plenty, and that I am always ignoring evidence -- but, oddly enough, you can't quite manage to provide any.

All the while, you try to deflect attention from that fact.


Your just addicted to the winning phrase Rosa, You care not what you say as long as it suggests you're right and the other person is wrong. So you are reduced to this childish baiting. Im not insecure enough to rise to your nonsense. Go on, publish on Vygotsky. I've long since finished writing on Vygotsky and I don't intend to take it up again just to talk to someone with a closed mind.

And you are addicted to a losing theory, which makes my 'addiction' all the more easy to act out -- in short, once more, you are a push-over.


Go on, publish on Vygotsky. I've long since finished writing on Vygotsky and I don't intend to take it up again just to talk to someone with a closed mind

I was going to anyway, but it's nice to have your royal permission.:lol:


So Be foolish....I have no desire to stop you/educate you...I merely aimed to record for any comrades who would read you that Vygotsky is a credible, important scientist, with an empirical basis for his work - suggesting hypotheses susceptible to replacement based on further experiment..... contrary to your bile. I leave you the last word since it matters so much you.

Too bad there is no evidence to support his dogmatic theory then, isn't it?

If there were any, you'd have been happy to rub my face in it! But, once again, you just turn tail and run when put under pressure.

Small wonder, too, that his 'theory' is not widely accepted by the psychological profession -- perhaps, then, he is the Velikovsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky) of the Mind?:lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ok, I have just received the book Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research edited by James Lantolf and Gabriela Appel (Ablex Publishing, 1994), and as far as I can see, all the contributors simply assume this ill-defined entity exists, but present no evidence that it does. In fact, one contributor (Tatiana Ushakova, 'Inner Speech and Second Language Acquisition: An Experimental-Theoretical Approach', pp.135-56) confirms how inchoate this entity is by listing at least twenty different, mutually exclusive, attempts to define 'it', all the while presenting no evidence that 'it' (whatever 'it' is) actually exists.

Much of the rest of the book consists of researchers, all of whom believe in the existence of this mythical entity (so we have here a dubious research architectonic to begin with! I mean, do we accept as scientific the 'experiments' of those who believe in ESP, or the 'evidence' of those who believe in flying saucers?), testing various corollaries of Vygotsky's 'theory' with respect to second language acquisition and associated activities. However, it seems to me that the results, as unremarkable as many are, are open to alternative explanations, which are not considered as far as I can see (so much for scientific objectivity in this obscure back-water of psychological study).

So, if you have any other books and/or papers you know of that actually show that this mythical entity ('inner speech', whatever 'it' is) exists, I'd be interested to know, so I can access them and see if they are any better.

However, I will read this book in more detail, and report back if I find anything that suggests these authors have actually bothered to show that the subject of their hard word indeed exists, or whether, like so many other failed concepts that litter the history of psychology, this one is as substantive as belief in Harpies and Gorgons.

In fact, so far this book merely confirms Wittgenstein's assessment of psychology in general:


"The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a 'young science'; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory). For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.)" [Wittgenstein (1958) Philosophical Investigations, §xiv, p.232.]

In that none of the contributors even so much as thinks to consider the philosophical problems associated with 'inner speech'.

[gilhyle]

Granted, the phenomena are logically open to other explanations, if you have some ulterior agenda pushing you in that direction.....and you do Rosa, because of your philosophy.

But science doesnt work like that. Experiments occur within a hypothetical paradigm to which they lend support or with which they are consistent....or indeed which they support in some other more emotive or political sense. Real science is not the thing of your imagination.

Nor is it the case that conceptual clarification can be exhaustively conducted in advance of scientific practice. The paradigms are not assessed with logical rigour accepting only the unavoidable. Rather science proceeds by speculation, testing, assessment of results, confirmation, suggestion....and sometimes by blind stubborn insistence in defiance of the balance of evidence.

You have no understanding of the feature of human argument and understanding to which dialectics refers, but it refers to this actual structure of human argumentation, which is neither driven by logical implication, nor which progresses in defiance of logical implication but which progresses by a more complex combination of methods and stances .....which you simply dont understand.

Thus what we see in the book which you so predictably disparage is that experimentation plays a key role in Vygotskian practice of psychology. For example there are famous experiments underlying the concept of inner speech which measure the occurence of barely noticible flexing of the vocal cords accompanying silent reflection. This observation does not force us to poostulate inner speech, but the movement was only looked for because the hypothesis was in place and, being looked for, was found. That makes this experiment SUPPORTIVE of the paradigm. There are many other examples.

More generally, anyone who knows Vygotsky's work knows that he was an ingenious experimenter who made siginificant innovations in the design of experiments - summary constructing a wide variety of experiments based on purposely impeding the process to be studied (e.g. learning) so as to build up evidence from what happens when the process does not work, which is indicative of how it works. Anyone who has tried to design good experiments can hardly fail to admire Vygotskys ingenuity in experimentation.

What is clear from this post and others is that you believe strongly in the potential for philosophers to provide conceptual clarifications independently of the practice of science. This is the Lockean empiricist view of philosophy as the under-labourer of science....repeated in the more naive versions of analytical philosophy in the 20th century.

But, for the most part, conceptual refinement must be done by scientists in the course of their practice and not by philosophers divorced from the practice of science. It is not the case that the moments of conceptual clarification and experiment can be done separately.

Now that may lead you on to ask what Engels was doing....and I will answer that if you wish, but raising that only takes the focus off your erroneous method of doing an an analytical philosophical critique of science from outside....dictating to science as I said you do and as Engels does not.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil (who took up issue with me that there was indeed evidence supporting the whacko ideas of Vygotsky; but now that I have checked, and there is none, he/she deflects attention onto me, once more!):


Granted, the phenomena are logically open to other explanations, if you have some ulterior agenda pushing you in that direction.....and you do Rosa, because of your philosophy.

But science doesn't work like that. Experiments occur within a hypothetical paradigm to which they lend support or with which they are consistent....or indeed which they support in some other more emotive or political sense. Real science is not the thing of your imagination.

Yes, and mystically-oriented scientists believed in the crystalline spheres for centuries, when there was no evidence for their existence either.

Same here.


Nor is it the case that conceptual clarification can be exhaustively conducted in advance of scientific practice. The paradigms are not assessed with logical rigour accepting only the unavoidable. Rather science proceeds by speculation, testing, assessment of results, confirmation, suggestion....and sometimes by blind stubborn insistence in defiance of the balance of evidence.

And that is why the vast majority of psychologists reject Vygotsky -- there is no evidence that the things he says exists, actually exist.

You will be defending the humoral theory of disease next, and on similar grounds!


You have no understanding of the feature of human argument and understanding to which dialectics refers, but it refers to this actual structure of human argumentation, which is neither driven by logical implication, nor which progresses in defiance of logical implication but which progresses by a more complex combination of methods and stances .....which you simply don't understand.

Yes, you are right, it is so hard for me to comprehend how mystics like you continue to believe in things for which there is absolutely no evidence.

In fact, I do not 'understand' theology either, and for the same irrationally materialist reasons. What a fool I am!:rolleyes:


Thus what we see in the book which you so predictably disparage is that experimentation plays a key role in Vygotskian practice of psychology. For example there are famous experiments underlying the concept of inner speech which measure the occurrence of barely noticeable flexing of the vocal cords accompanying silent reflection. This observation does not force us to postulate inner speech, but the movement was only looked for because the hypothesis was in place and, being looked for, was found. That makes this experiment SUPPORTIVE of the paradigm. There are many other examples.

Blah, blah -- the bottom line is that there is no evidence this mythical entity exists, contrary to your earlier, over-bold assertion that there was plenty of it, before you thought I had access to the book to which you referred me, which, funnily enough, and once more, shows you up to be the fabulist we have come to know you to be.

And, the 'famous experiments' you refer to are in fact ambivalent in their results too, but if anything, they support the behaviourist 'paradigm' far better, not Vygotsky's. So, 'inner speech' (whatever 'it' is, and even those who believe in it cannot tell us what 'it' is!) is just 'outer speech' with the volume turned off. And these processes were looked for because of Watson's work, not Vygotsky's.

Finally, idiots do 'careful experiments' to show that the ESP 'paradigm' is sound, and even bigger idiots believe the 'results' -- same with you and Vygotskian pseudo-science.


More generally, anyone who knows Vygotsky's work knows that he was an ingenious experimenter who made significant innovations in the design of experiments - summary constructing a wide variety of experiments based on purposely impeding the process to be studied (e.g. learning) so as to build up evidence from what happens when the process does not work, which is indicative of how it works. Anyone who has tried to design good experiments can hardly fail to admire Vygotsky's ingenuity in experimentation.

So 'ingenious' that he had to appeal to indirect 'evidence', since there was/is no direct evidence. And the indirect evidence is either irrelevant, or it is better explained by other 'paradigms', and ones that do not postulate an 'entity' ('inner speech') that would in fact prevent us from understanding one another.

Hence, this inchoate notion ('inner speech') not only has no evidential support, it is philosophically unsound to boot.


What is clear from this post and others is that you believe strongly in the potential for philosophers to provide conceptual clarifications independently of the practice of science. This is the Lockean empiricist view of philosophy as the under-labourer of science....repeated in the more naive versions of analytical philosophy in the 20th century.

Indeed, philosophical work here shows that the simplistic 'philosophy' (not science, note) to which Vygotsky appealed, and which you lot have uncritically swallowed, not only has no supporting evidence, it is conceptually confused, as Wittgenstein noted.

And this goes way beyond Locke.


But, for the most part, conceptual refinement must be done by scientists in the course of their practice and not by philosophers divorced from the practice of science. It is not the case that the moments of conceptual clarification and experiment can be done separately.

Now that may lead you on to ask what Engels was doing....and I will answer that if you wish, but raising that only takes the focus off your erroneous method of doing an analytical philosophical critique of science from outside....dictating to science as I said you do and as Engels does not.

Who is 'dictating' to scientists? These jokers are rather poor philosophers, which fact needs exposing, not sycophantically lauding.

[gilhyle]

So 'ingenious' that he had to appeal to indirect 'evidence', since there was/is no direct evidence. And the indirect evidence is either irrelevant, or it is better explained by other 'paradigms', and ones that do not postulate an 'entity' ('inner speech') that would in fact prevent us from understanding one another.


And my point is if you can show that, go off and argue it in psychology journals.....and dare I say it, why not devise some experiments to reveal the issue, try getting yourself a grant and do something useful......all you're doing arguing it here on this topic is listening to the sound of your own voice.....this has nothing to do with revolutionary Marxism as politics and belongs entirely within the practice of psychology.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil (still with no evidence):


And my point is if you can show that, go off and argue it in psychology journals.....and dare I say it, why not devise some experiments to reveal the issue, try getting yourself a grant and do something useful.......

Why would I want to "go off and argue it in psychology journals"? I am not an academic, like you, and do not want to influecne academic opinion in any way. As I have told you several times already, my only aim is to influence revolutionaries, and if I can't do that, give you mystics as hard a time as I possibly can.


all you're doing arguing it here on this topic is listening to the sound of your own voice.....this has nothing to do with revolutionary Marxism as politics and belongs entirely within the practice of psychology

Is this really the best you can do in response to my challenge to you to show that Vygotsky's work is any more scientific than parapsychology or humoural theory?

Silly question, really -- we already know that it is the best you can do.

Some academic you are!:rolleyes:

[gilhyle]

All your categories are undefined and you refuse to clarify them.

For example:


show that Vygotsky's work is any more scientific than parapsychology or humoural theory?


So tell me .....how 'scientific' is parapsychology, on a scale of 1 to 10, please set out the relevant criteria and assessment methodology for quatifying how scientific parapsychology is...please measure a few other sciences for comparison and then we can measure Vygotsky

Ah but no...there is a problem, you are not comparing like with like....apparently you want to compare a practice (parapsychology) with a person (vygotsky) - incomparable categories. But does that matter to you ? .....Not at all. A good rhetorical phrase supercedes all such considerations.

Furthermore to follow up on your suggestion, one would have to discuss parapsychology on a revolutionary socialist website.....talk about a diversion.

OF course you dont mean what you say, you have no intention of seriously suggesting a comparison of Vygotsky, parapsychology etc. You are just mouthing off.

For example, you write this:


Much of the rest of the book consists of researchers, all of whom believe in the existence of this mythical entity (so we have here a dubious research architectonic to begin with! I mean, do we accept as scientific the 'experiments' of those who believe in ESP, or the 'evidence' of those who believe in flying saucers?), testing various corollaries of Vygotsky's 'theory' with respect to second language acquisition and associated activities.

Are you really suggesting that no legitimate scientific experimentation operates within a paradigm ? Is all legitimate experimentation a testing of paradigms....of course you are not really suggesting that. You know well if you have read any philosophy of science that you cant sustain that.

You cant defend that idea about science with substantial empirical evidence ....and you have no intention of doing so. Its just mouthing off so you can link this back to your own supposedly anti-mystical rant (which is actually itself a simplistic mysticism of logic).

By your own admission you have judged the book you have wasted your money on (wasted not because its a bad book, but wasted cos you cant pay any attention ) before you have read it, before you have chased up any of the source references, before you have gone off and read up any of the well known studies on inner speech...not to speak of any other aspects of Vygotsky's thought.

Of course you dont need me to find those research papers, but you have no intention of finding them. Rather, your only concern is to condemn Vygotsky without reading them.

You dont take what you say seriously, so why should anyone else ? If I was to take seriously your suggestion that the empirical evidence for inner speech should be gone through on this website, your only response would be something like 'What ?'....and then you would go back decrying supposed mystics. So I would waste my energy.

If I was to take seriously your suggestion of trying to differentiate parapsychology from legitimate psychological science, and work up a proposal, you would just go 'What ?' or some such sign of incredulity again and go back to your rant.

If I was to take seriously any of your chopped up quotes and try to consider what had been said in context, you would just reiterate the quote. This is because your are not interested in coming up with likely, or balanced readings. You are determinedly committed to confining your use of quotation to hostile quotation, without regard to balanced reading.

And as you say yourself, your only purpose is to
influence revolutionaries for your pre-set agenda and so Vygotsly for you is not a serious psychologist to be assessed, he is just one more icon to in your quixotic desire to demonise dialectics. He happened to use dialectics as a heruistic tool so he has to be attacked...because you have, after all, effectively denied that scientists ever consciously use dialectics as a tool and, therefore, those who do have to have the standing of scientist taken from them or your claim would be empirically falsified. Stephen Rose next ?

It seems the complexities of reality must be reduced to your categories, at all costs.

As I said before....go make a fool of yourself, write about Vygotsky in this patently false way and make sure you publish it somewhere where you cant be subjected to informed criticism within a disciplined debate...make sure publish it somewhere where you can control the environment (your own website) or where it is so irrelevant that you will be left to rant on by people with better things to do (i.e. here). I say it again if you have an argument to make, go make it to Vygotskians and lets see you survive their criticism....otherwise you're not serious and you are trying to influence revolutionaries in an unprincipled way. Of course if you did it and Vygotsky was shown up as having a flawed experimental method because of his interest in dialectics, I have no doubt that revolutionaries would be very interested in the outcome, and probably very influenced by it (in so far as Vygotsky is of any interest to revolutionaries at all - and he is not of much interest to many)

Once upon a time, there was a man who stood on a hill in the middle of nowhere out of ear shot and challenged all comers for the title of world champion boxer......no one had the courage to take up his challenge and so by default he had to declare himself world champion.:laugh:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


All your categories are undefined and you refuse to clarify them.

1) I have no categories.

2) You are just pissed off because I thought of this accusation first.

3) This is a fine complaint coming from someone who has swallowed a 'theory' that uses terminally vague jargon.


So tell me .....how 'scientific' is parapsychology, on a scale of 1 to 10, please set out the relevant criteria and assessment methodology for quantifying how scientific parapsychology is...please measure a few other sciences for comparison and then we can measure Vygotsky

Ah but no...there is a problem, you are not comparing like with like....apparently you want to compare a practice (parapsychology) with a person (Vygotsky) - incomparable categories. But does that matter to you ? .....Not at all. A good rhetorical phrase supersedes all such considerations.

Furthermore to follow up on your suggestion, one would have to discuss parapsychology on a revolutionary socialist website.....talk about a diversion.

OF course you don't mean what you say, you have no intention of seriously suggesting a comparison of Vygotsky, parapsychology etc. You are just mouthing off.

Oh dear, I have really hit a nerve attacking your pet pseudo-scientist haven't I?

But, to be fair, you are right. I should not have compared Vygotsky's work with parapsychology, and for that I'm truly sorry.

Paraspsychology is far more scientific than Vygotskyian mumbo jumbo. I apologise for maligning parapsychology in this way.:lol:


Are you really suggesting that no legitimate scientific experimentation operates within a paradigm ? Is all legitimate experimentation a testing of paradigms....of course you are not really suggesting that. You know well if you have read any philosophy of science that you cant sustain that.

You cant defend that idea about science with substantial empirical evidence ....and you have no intention of doing so. Its just mouthing off so you can link this back to your own supposedly anti-mystical rant (which is actually itself a simplistic mysticism of logic).

By your own admission you have judged the book you have wasted your money on (wasted not because its a bad book, but wasted cos you cant pay any attention ) before you have read it, before you have chased up any of the source references, before you have gone off and read up any of the well known studies on inner speech...not to speak of any other aspects of Vygotsky's thought.

Of course you don't need me to find those research papers, but you have no intention of finding them. Rather, your only concern is to condemn Vygotsky without reading them.

You don't take what you say seriously, so why should anyone else ? If I was to take seriously your suggestion that the empirical evidence for inner speech should be gone through on this website, your only response would be something like 'What ?'....and then you would go back decrying supposed mystics. So I would waste my energy.

If I was to take seriously your suggestion of trying to differentiate parapsychology from legitimate psychological science, and work up a proposal, you would just go 'What ?' or some such sign of incredulity again and go back to your rant.

If I was to take seriously any of your chopped up quotes and try to consider what had been said in context, you would just reiterate the quote. This is because your are not interested in coming up with likely, or balanced readings. You are determinedly committed to confining your use of quotation to hostile quotation, without regard to balanced reading.

Getting quite heated here aren't you?

Why? Is it because I have caught you out (yet again!) and actually checked the evidence you claimed I was unaware of, and found that it did not exist.

After all you did say this:


ever the philosopher......you obviously know nothing about Vygotsky.....before you embarrass yourself again with your back seat philosophical generalisations. read, for example Vygotsky and cognitive science by William Frawley, one of many books discussing Vygotsky in the context of data from empirical research - but then real science doesn't disturb your philosophy, your like Galileo's cardinals

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1234404&postcount=66

And:


It may be in your bibliography but you patently have not read or understood it. The fact that inner speech is not directly observable does not make it a metaphysical claim. It is an hypothesis which is studied by extensive experimental work. See for example 'Inner Speech and Second Language Acquisition: An Experimental-Theoretical Approach" within Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Lantolf and Appel (eds)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1234774&postcount=68

Now, I really do feel for you. It can't be easy being shown up in public (yet again!).

However, the fault lies in you -- after all, you are on record here saying this:


.....before you embarrass yourself again with your back seat philosophical generalisations. read, for example Vygotsky and cognitive science by William Frawley, one of many books discussing Vygotsky in the context of data from empirical research

only to have it pointed out to you that Frawley too offers no evidence. So, it looks like you are the one "embarrassing yourself" here.

Then you rammed your foot even further down that class-compromised throat of yours, with this:


It is an hypothesis which is studied by extensive experimental work. See for example 'Inner Speech and Second Language Acquisition: An Experimental-Theoretical Approach" within Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Lantolf and Appel

When that too was a dud.

So, I understand why you are now ranting and raving.

I would too in your position -- except I am never in your position, since I always check my facts, unlike you.

I hope you do not mind if I ignore much of what you say -- I learnt that trick off you.

It's probably best ignored anyway; it does you few favours...


for your pre-set agenda and so Vygotsky for you is not a serious psychologist to be assessed, he is just one more icon to in your quixotic desire to demonise dialectics. He happened to use dialectics as a heuristic tool so he has to be attacked...because you have, after all, effectively denied that scientists ever consciously use dialectics as a tool and, therefore, those who do have to have the standing of scientist taken from them or your claim would be empirically falsified. Stephen Rose next ?

It seems the complexities of reality must be reduced to your categories, at all costs.

As I said before....go make a fool of yourself, write about Vygotsky in this patently false way and make sure you publish it somewhere where you cant be subjected to informed criticism within a disciplined debate...make sure publish it somewhere where you can control the environment (your own website) or where it is so irrelevant that you will be left to rant on by people with better things to do (i.e. here). I say it again if you have an argument to make, go make it to Vygotskians and lets see you survive their criticism....otherwise you're not serious and you are trying to influence revolutionaries in an unprincipled way. Of course if you did it and Vygotsky was shown up as having a flawed experimental method because of his interest in dialectics, I have no doubt that revolutionaries would be very interested in the outcome, and probably very influenced by it (in so far as Vygotsky is of any interest to revolutionaries at all - and he is not of much interest to many)

So, still no evidence then?


Once upon a time, there was a man who stood on a hill in the middle of nowhere out of ear shot and challenged all comers for the title of world champion boxer......no one had the courage to take up his challenge and so by default he had to declare himself world champion.

Ok: the list is steadily lengthening:

We still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or, if we do, we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

We can now add this: we still do not know what 'inner speech' is (and none of those who believe in this mythical 'process' seem to know either), nor have we any evidence at all that 'it' exists.

No wonder so many of you dialecticians become Christians...

[gilhyle]

:cool: Ha ! Ha! Funny, if it wasnt sad ...but the fact remains, Frawley's book contains relevant references, but you dont bother to check them....the Lantof and Appel book, you also condemn before you have even properly read it (by your own admission) and certainly without having checked the sources ....but all this is trivial beside the question of what you are doing writing about Vygotsky at all....which is, sitting on your hill and challenging the world .....from saftey.

Instead of doing that, trot off to these guys:

http://www.ilaword.org/annual_conference.htm

See what they make of your ruminations on Vygotsky...no doubt they will be amazed by the revelation that there is actually no empirical research supporting, testing and refining Vygotsky's idea. :laugh:

Anything difficult in my post, such as that your suggestion that hypothesis-assuming research is confined to pseudo science is rubbish or that you use the term 'science' without being able to say what it is (while considering vagueness sufficient to condemn others) or that you are involved in a mysticism of logic or that you debate in an unprincipled fashion because your aim here is to manipulate debate at the rhetorical level only in order to create influence for yourself, rather than to share in a debate.....none of that you engage with. Like a neo-con charging anti-imperialsts with anti-americanism, you prefer sneeringly to charge your opponent with getting heated, in the hope of finding some high ground.

No Rosa, as little as you want to admit it, your method of debate is like that of Gerry Healy and Tony Cliff and Grant and all those old sectarian warhorses from the 1940s and 1950s, a method of debate designed in pursuit of a sectarian power, rather than any mutual growth, sneering, sophistic, rhetorical, unprincipled......its a pity, cos you do have something to say worht considering, but your militancy is in a destructive cause. We are in a new era and revolutionaries need a more open approach than this hectoring, bullying, manipulative style.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Ha ! Ha! Funny, if it wasn't sad ...but the fact remains, Frawley's book contains relevant references, but you don't bother to check them....the Lantof and Appel (sic) book, you also condemn before you have even properly read it (by your own admission) and certainly without having checked the sources ....but all this is trivial beside the question of what you are doing writing about Vygotsky at all....which is, sitting on your hill and challenging the world .....from safety.

Well, perhaps you can point them out to me, since I could not find any. And, as I pointed out earlier, if these 'references' are like the papers found in the Lantolf and Appel book (and you still can't get the details right can you? A sloppy approach to detail seems to be your guiding light -- no wonder you like dialectics), where the existence of 'inner speech' is never questioned, then I am sorry to have to tell you that we still await proof that there is a real process here. All we seem to have up to now is a series of self-important studies into the modern day equivalent of Gryphons and Harpies: 'inner speech'.

Even worse, these Vygotskian parapsychologists cannot even agree as to the nature of 'inner speech', let alone show it exists.


See what they make of your ruminations on Vygotsky...no doubt they will be amazed by the revelation that there is actually no empirical research supporting, testing and refining Vygotsky's idea.

Yes and here's a link to an alien abduction site, which 'phenomenon' enjoys just about the same amount of rational and evidential support:

http://www.abduct.com/


Anything difficult in my post, such as that your suggestion that hypothesis-assuming research is confined to pseudo science is rubbish or that you use the term 'science' without being able to say what it is (while considering vagueness sufficient to condemn others) or that you are involved in a mysticism of logic or that you debate in an unprincipled fashion because your aim here is to manipulate debate at the rhetorical level only in order to create influence for yourself, rather than to share in a debate.....none of that you engage with. Like a neo-con charging anti-imperialists with anti-Americanism, you prefer sneeringly to charge your opponent with getting heated, in the hope of finding some high ground.

And I am sure that your motives are as pure as the driven snow in your endeavour to spread ruling-class ideology among us revolutionaries.

And I note once more: since you can't show that this mythical entity/process exits, you again try character assassination -- as you have been doing now for over two years -- in a desperate attempt to detract attention from that fact.

Anyone with even half a brain would have been able to see by now that the above tactic isn't working. I am still here, and you are still floundering.

And here is yet more character assassination:


No Rosa, as little as you want to admit it, your method of debate is like that of Gerry Healy and Tony Cliff and Grant and all those old sectarian warhorses from the 1940s and 1950s, a method of debate designed in pursuit of a sectarian power, rather than any mutual growth, sneering, sophistic, rhetorical, unprincipled......its a pity, cos you do have something to say worth considering, but your militancy is in a destructive cause. We are in a new era and revolutionaries need a more open approach than this hectoring, bullying, manipulative style.

1) In what way does my 'method of debate' resemble that of Healy and Cliff?

2) What 'sectarian power' do you think I am aiming at? This is an internet forum for goodness sake, not a smoke filled room! You really are floundering, aren't you?

3) And you are the emotional one here, reacting with no little vehemence when I exposed the pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo you have fallen for.

So, to sum up:

We still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or, if we do, we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

We can now add this: we still do not know what 'inner speech' is (and none of those who believe in this mythical 'process' seem to know either), nor have we any evidence at all that 'it' exists.

No wonder so many of you dialecticians become Christians...

[gilhyle]

Well I wont pursue this much further, but if you want to reflect on your method of debate, there are a range of points relevant. Let me cite one for example. On occasion, you will ask for evidence of Marx agreeing with dialectical ideas. That appears reasonable given that you cite him in support of the view that he does not support dialectical ideas. However, in the face of ANY quotation from Marx supporting dialectical ideas you have three-fold response:

1) That quote is from Marx's pre-Capital period subsequent to which he realised the error of his ways;
2) That quote is from Marx's private correspondence, was not published by him and should not be considered;
3) That quote although from Capital, is only Marx 'coquetting' with dialectics

When taken together, it can be seen that these rationales exclude ALL possible quotations from Marx, in advance, as support for the suggestion that he supported dialectics.

What is interesting is to go back and reflect on why you ever ask for quotes from Marx supporting dialectics since you have in place (to your own satisfaction) a framework for interpretation which precludes there being any valid empirical evidence that Marx supported dialectics. Thus we see that if you ever ask for such evidence it is, on your part, a rhetorical trap you use to chide your opponent with one of the ripostes listed above. You dont earnestly or honestly seek empirical evidence, rather you seek out opportunities to plant sophistic rhetorical gestures on this board in the hope of influencing revolutionaries to your view, irrespective of whether it is supported by the evidence or not. Asking for quotes from Marx in support of dialectics is just a device to allow you to respond as above.

That is an example of a hegemonic strategy, seeking to dominate the philosophy thread on this website by any means necessary as those old warhorses tried to create little sectarian spaces in which their own perspectives could dominate. You treat Vygotsky as you do not because you have the slightest interest in development psychology but because you want another canvas on which you want to lay out your anti-dialectical arguments, believing as you patently do that extensive repetition of the same arguments in a wide variety of forms will make them more influential. There is nothing wrong with seeking influence but there is a problem with the way you are doing it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil (still flogging a dead dialectical horse):


Well I wont pursue this much further, but if you want to reflect on your method of debate, there are a range of points relevant. Let me cite one for example. On occasion, you will ask for evidence of Marx agreeing with dialectical ideas. That appears reasonable given that you cite him in support of the view that he does not support dialectical ideas. However, in the face of ANY quotation from Marx supporting dialectical ideas you have three-fold response:

1) That quote is from Marx's pre-Capital period subsequent to which he realised the error of his ways;
2) That quote is from Marx's private correspondence, was not published by him and should not be considered;
3) That quote although from Capital, is only Marx 'coquetting' with dialectics

1) My 'method of debate' is to read what Marx actually said. How absolutely awful of me! Have I no shame!

2) This is off-topic.

And we know why; you have already lost the Vygotsky argument, so you try to distract attention, once more. It seems therefore that many single-celled organisms have a steeper learning-curve than you![/I]]

3) As I predicted several months ago, this is yet another of your 'reviews' of my alleged sins -- and as I also predicted, you once again present no evidence to back-up your allegations.

4) We will see more of the same in a few months time, too -- as your 'dialectical anger' boils over (non-nodally). http://www.politicalcrossfire.com/forum/images/smiles/eusa_boohoo.gif


When taken together, it can be seen that these rationales exclude ALL possible quotations from Marx, in advance, as support for the suggestion that he supported dialectics.

And we know why, since Marx himself (not me) indicated quite clearly he had waved goodbye to the mystical theory that is still colonising your brain.

[B]But, I am just the messenger here -- and yet you attack me!

You should, in fact, pick a fight with Marx for destroying the source of your opiates.


What is interesting is to go back and reflect on why you ever ask for quotes from Marx supporting dialectics since you have in place (to your own satisfaction) a framework for interpretation which precludes there being any valid empirical evidence that Marx supported dialectics. Thus we see that if you ever ask for such evidence it is, on your part, a rhetorical trap you use to chide your opponent with one of the ripostes listed above. You don't earnestly or honestly seek empirical evidence, rather you seek out opportunities to plant sophistic rhetorical gestures on this board in the hope of influencing revolutionaries to your view, irrespective of whether it is supported by the evidence or not. Asking for quotes from Marx in support of dialectics is just a device to allow you to respond as above.

That is an example of a hegemonic strategy, seeking to dominate the philosophy thread on this website by any means necessary as those old warhorses tried to create little sectarian spaces in which their own perspectives could dominate. You treat Vygotsky as you do not because you have the slightest interest in development psychology but because you want another canvas on which you want to lay out your anti-dialectical arguments, believing as you patently do that extensive repetition of the same arguments in a wide variety of forms will make them more influential. There is nothing wrong with seeking influence but there is a problem with the way you are doing it.

1) You are right when you say I have no interest in developing psychology -- except for one small detail. Microscopic in fact. Hardly worth mentioning: there is a "para" suffix missing from your use of the word "psychology".

Unlike you, I appreciate genuine science.

2) You are the one who can't produce evidence -- but, why ruin a good lie with the truth. By all means project your failings on to me if it helps you get through the day.

I'd suggest you seek psychological help instead, but if I did, I am afraid you'd trundle off to see a psychic or a witchdoctor -- or worse, a Vygotskian...

3) I can see that my 'hegemonic strategy' has been rumbled, and just when I was about to branch out across the Galaxy! http://www.politicalcrossfire.com/forum/images/smiles/icon_twisted.gif

Dammit! http://www.politicalcrossfire.com/forum/images/smiles/999922.gif

I knew I was no match for you...

------------------------------

So, to sum up:

We still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or, if we do, we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

We can now add this: we still do not know what 'inner speech' is (and none of those who believe in this mythical 'process' seem to know either), nor have we any evidence at all that 'it' exists.

No wonder so many of you dialecticians become Christians...

[gilhyle]

I note that you dont make the obvious response: which would be to identifity a body of works by Marx from which quotes on this topic could be legitimately taken by your opponents (always assuming they could find them). What is striking here, is that it does not disturb you AT ALL for it to be shown how your methodology excludes the writings of Marx from the assessment of Marx's views (except when you can find a quote that suits you) !!


This is off-topic.

Quite....but you asked, here:


In what way does my 'method of debate' resemble that of Healy and Cliff?


And since it is off topic, I said this:


Well I wont pursue this much further

And I wont, but just to point to this:


you once again present no evidence to back-up your allegations.


This is your bottom line. By my rough calculation you have posted about six posts on average per day since you joined this site.....Given that, somewhat bizarre, intensity of activity, it is always going to be open to you to complain that you havent been answered, others have not provided the evidence you require etc, etc.....but its a device without substance. Anyway, I wont go on with this as it is off-topic.


there is a "para" suffix missing from your use of the word "psychology".


This is pure rhetoric on your part. Vygotsly is well recognised as a psychologist of substance, even by those who disagree with him fundamentally. He is not considered by the science to stand outside it, whether by people who agree with him or people who do not.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil-I-do-not-want-to-pursue-this-much-further-hyle:


I note that you don't make the obvious response: which would be to identifity a body of works by Marx from which quotes on this topic could be legitimately taken by your opponents (always assuming they could find them). What is striking here, is that it does not disturb you AT ALL for it to be shown how your methodology excludes the writings of Marx from the assessment of Marx's views (except when you can find a quote that suits you) !!

But, I have no need to, since Marx saved us the task. Get over it.

And why should it disturb me if I am representing Marx's most mature thoughts?

On the contrary, it should disturb you.


This is your bottom line. By my rough calculation you have posted about six posts on average per day since you joined this site.....Given that, somewhat bizarre, intensity of activity, it is always going to be open to you to complain that you haven't been answered, others have not provided the evidence you require etc, etc.....but its a device without substance. Anyway, I wont go on with this as it is off-topic.

1) In fact it is very close to 8.5 per day, as you would have been able to ascertain had you looked at my profile page.

2) Forget everyone else, you don't answer me.

3) And Engels is was who said:


"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976) Anti-Dühring, p.13. Bold emphasis added.]

"We all agree that in every field of science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.

"Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line." [Ibid., p.47. Bold emphasis alone added.]

And Marx added:


The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. [German Ideology, quoted from here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm).] Bold added.

So, in view of the fact that you are a dogmatist, I am not surprised you do not like to be asked for evidence. It's the same reason theologians do not like it


This is pure rhetoric on your part. Vygotsky is well recognised as a psychologist of substance, even by those who disagree with him fundamentally. He is not considered by the science to stand outside it, whether by people who agree with him or people who do not.

You are the expert on rhetoric around here, so I will bow to your superior knowledge.

Anyway, the bottom line is that you still have no evidence, nor have you any reply to the fact that even the believers in this para-psychological entity, 'inner speech', cannot agree over what it is.

So, to sum up:

We still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or, if we do, we also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

We can now add this: we still do not know what 'inner speech' is (and none of those who believe in this mythical 'process' seem to know either), nor have we any evidence at all that 'it' exists.

No wonder so many of you dialecticians become Christians...