Re: [xmca] Re: the Strange Situation

From: Andy Blunden <ablunden who-is-at mira.net>
Date: Fri Oct 24 2008 - 15:50:01 PDT

That seems fine Martin. Apart from Greenspan who can't be
taken seriously. The guy's an ideological idiot and got into
his job because he would ruthlessly implement the diktats of
the captains of finance. Obviously, he will never see
*anything* coming.

Funnily enough, Lenin had it right on this one in his much
maligned "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/02.htm

But I also explain it in
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/hegels-logic/Hegels_Logic.pdf

See p. 54ff for "Thing-in-Itself"

Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
> Andy,
>
> Now this helps a lot! Let me see where to take this. To avoid reifying the
> thing-in-itself I need to see it as a process, not as static, and as in
> relation, not in isolation, right? So the thing (seemingly-in-itself) is
> developing, appearing, as for-others, that's to say in relation to the
> activities of other things and people? For example, the economic crisis is a
> real phenomenon, but one which was created, brought into existence, through
> and in the material actions of real people and institutions. Alan Greenspan
> said in Congress yesterday that no-one yet truly understands the crisis,
> that no-one knew enough to predict it. Leaving aside the prediction of
> open-ended social processes, this still suggests that we could make progress
> in our knowledge of this current object...
>
> Or (another example) the objects that scientists deal with and try to know
> and understand come into existence in their practical activities, in a
> scientific paradigm, understood as a matrix of practices for the conduct of
> research and the education of researchers (rather than knowledge in the
> head, which is a common misunderstanding of Kuhn's position). Again, the
> object is really for-others, but seems to be in-itself. (I could rant about
> supercolliders *creating* the so-called 'elementary particles' which it is
> claimed they merely *discover*, but I'll resist the temptation.)
>
> How am I doing, dialectically speaking?
>
> Martin
>
>
> On 10/23/08 7:28 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>> "conceptual thinking can become adequate to the
>> thing-in-itself": I don't think you can really put it like
>> that. You are yourself reifying the "thing-in-itself" in
>> this expression. For Hegel "thing-in-itself" and "concept"
>> are both moments of the development of the idea. And
>> actually he would put the concept higher (more real) than
>> the thing-in-itself.
>
>
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 
Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
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Received on Fri Oct 24 15:50:14 2008

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