[Xmca-l] Re: Oliver Sacks/Romantic Science

‪Haydi Zulfei‬ ‪ haydizulfei@rocketmail.com
Sat Sep 5 04:15:52 PDT 2015


Andy,
Thanks for the explanation !
A large part of my personal debate was about the theses , the first one in particular and you admitted that you'd seen nothing richer than them . Then , it was not a matter of recent decades , revisions , innovations or the other Marx or Marxes .  To put it simply even today : The table exists and the idea of the table exists . Does creating fuzzy foggy boundaries in between help resolve our problems ? Now , that's not our main point of reference .

What you're talking about was my Post-Script , an addendum to a major point . Shortly , within our bounds (Vygotsky Marxist School of the Time and beyond) , could we say : "All true concepts are both universal and concrete" ?
I would not provide support for this because , I think , David Kellog or Mike is able to locate if such a saying exists within Vygotsky's Collected works or some other Vygotskian's . My mind triggers blazingly though it's too old . 
Larry ! I'll read your post again and try to provide an answer . Many thanks !
Best
Haydi  
      From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
 To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> 
 Sent: Saturday, 5 September 2015, 4:58:38
 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Oliver Sacks/Romantic Science
   
Haydi, on the question of ontology and epistemology ...
Ontology is the study of being. That does not mean that it 
is concerned only with independently existing entities. It 
is the study of what forms of being there are, such as 
"thoughts". In recent decades this has come to mean a person 
or a culture's belief in the array of different entities 
that may be talked of, e.g. gods, classes or individuals, so 
it is an aspect of cultural difference.
Epistemology is the study of knowing, in particular the 
limits and validity of knowledge. It is not necessarily a 
study of reflection. In recent decades it has comes to mean 
a person or a culture's beliefs about the legitimate sources 
of knowledge, e.g. priests, books or experience, etc.
It was Hegel who first proposed that these sciences were 
bankrupt and should be transcended, because every social 
formation had its own integral "epistemology" and "ontology" 
and there was no final answer to the question these sciences 
proposed, so Hegel's view leads us to the modern way of 
talking about epistemologies and ontologies in the plural 
and aspects of a way of thinking and acting in the world.
Hegel's Ontology is the first Book of the Logic, and I can 
see a sense in which you could say that the Second Book is 
about epistemology, but I don't think this is accurate.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


On 5/09/2015 7:08 AM, ‪Haydi Zulfei‬ ‪ wrote:
> P.S. Many a time I've made efforts , asked others , to differentiate between ONTOLOGY and EPISTEMOLOGY ; yet I've stayed on the same spot . First thesis of Feuerbach tells us if it's the case that we imagine / conceive the objects there to themselves without any wrestling on our part to get involved with them , then science / genuine materialism would not present any meaning to us . All things arise from the wrestling and the involvement . On this point , too , in either case , our work and thinking power are involved except that with ontology , we try to conceive things as existent and trace them as external transformables in themselves while with epistemology we deal with the pertaining ideas as reflexions . Then , in the natural and physical sciences , by concrete we mean "of matter" , corporeal , while in philosophy and gnoseology which is the province of the second of our division , knowledge , concrete , of necessity , would mean conceptual , the highest and most valued categorial philosophical term .
> In what ways am I completely mistaken ?
> Best
> Haydi
>
>


  


More information about the xmca-l mailing list