Andy wrote:
>Well, I think Novack offers very unhelpful advice, quite frankly. During
>the latter half of the 19th century there was a struggle going on over
>materialism versus idealism. To go labouring this point into the
>post-world war two period is like waging the Crusades in the third
>millennium. Lenin had some justification in his 1908 "Materialism and
>Empirio-criticism" because of the confusion flowing over from the
>confusion among scientists into the Bolshevik Party; Engels has some
>justification in bending the stick so far in his popularisations, but it
>is not justified or useful to keep doing that, any more than repeating
>what Lenin said in 1903 is useful.
Andy, what do you believe happened in the post-world war two period - or
for that matter, since the latter half of the 19th century - that has
invalidated or rendered obsolete the positions of Engels, Lenin, Vygotsky
and others on the historic struggle between idealism and materialism in
science and philosophy?
>"The Prophet hath 99 names, and one of them is Nature" and I should add,
>"dialectical-materialism" is another.
I am not sure what you are saying about prophets, Nature or dialectical
materialism here, Andy. Perhaps this refers to a specific quote I am not
familiar with - am I missing a deeper meaning?
>Nature exists independently of human consciousness. But there is not a lot
>else you can say about Nature other than formulations like "Nature is such
>that human beings can ...".
Returning to the original question, do you include the formulation of
scientific laws as something you *can* say about Nature?
>One of these things that Nature is such that, is that the reification of
>thought forms turns out to be a valid practical guide to day-to-day action.
As I understand it, reification is the process of treating thoughts as real
objects and acting accordingly. Surely, I am misreading your statement if
I take it to mean that the process of reification in general is a valid
practical guide to day-to-day action. What am I missing in your statement?
>Just as commodity fetishism is also a passably good practical guide to
>day-to-day economic activity. But it is not very good epistemology.
This question can easily lead us into a whole other subject, since Marx's
notion of the fetishism of commodities is so interesting, but I am curious:
how do you see commodity fetishism as a practical guide to day-to-day
economic activity, and what you mean by saying it is not very good
epistemology?
I hope we don't get too far away from this discussion of the lawfulness (or
not) of Nature - I am still especially interested in your thoughts on this.
- Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 01 2003 - 01:00:11 PST