[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: Re: What is science?: Where to start doctoral students?

[David Kellogg]

I just got this from my sister.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/metric-system-overhaul-will-dethrone-one-true-kilogram

My sister's smart as hell, but her intelligence is kind of corporeal: she
was a ballet dancer and then a very successful figure skating coach: she
has MS now, and some brain lesions and she is very worried about losing it,
i.e. intelligence. She considers me (correctly) as maladroit, which is a
kind of stupidity as far as she is concerned, but she knows I do
intelligence of a rather different, less somatic and more semantic, sort.
So she sometimes writes me when she is puzzled by things like this.

>From the corporeal point of view, it is rather puzzling. But from the
semantic point of view, it's a little like the gold standard. I am old
enough to remember a time when the dollar was defined by a certain quantity
of gold in Fort Knox. Now, it's the other way around: gold is defined by
the value of dollars. This change is a little similar: after the French
revolution, kilogrammes were defined by a certain quantity of metal in
Sevres, and now it's the other way around: we define the kilogramme using
math constants from physics, and that metal in Sevres is defined by the
value of the kilogramme.

But I am thinking that Andy's example is actually a good example of Hegel's
idealism. You might think that since Hegel is insisting on use value as the
measure of value he is being more materialist, or at least more
corporeal, than Marx. In fact, he is being less semantic and hence
less historical.

Value changes. In early societies it was indeed defined centrally by use
values and only marginally by exchange values. But when you look at real
estate in Seoul, which can cost more than a lifetime of an average worker's
income, you have to say this is no longer the case, even for articles of
every day use like housing. One reason that we cannot equate tools with
signs, is that while tools are centrally use value and only peripherally
exchange value, signs are always the other way around: their value is
established first through exchange and only then through their utility.

My sister understood my "gold standard" explanation immediately. And that
was really good enough for me.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New in *Early Years*, co-authored with Fang Li:

When three fives are thirty-five: Vygotsky in a Hallidayan idiom … and
maths in the grandmother tongue

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7I8zYW3qkEqNBA66XAwS/full




On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 12:52 PM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Whew
> Mike
>
> On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 6:43 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>
>> er: "determinant of value"
>> ------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> On 8/11/2018 1:18 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>>
>> See
>> https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/property.htm#PRn62
>>
>> Hegel sees need (i.e., use-value) as the determinant of need. Although
>> later he says that a commodity cannot have value unless it is the product
>> of labour, he never suggests that the *quantity *of labour needed for
>> its production determines value. Thus Hegel accepts the common sense view
>> of things, that the value of a thing is determined by how useful it is. He
>> did not see the contradiction in this claim.
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> On 8/11/2018 8:55 AM, Greg Thompson wrote:
>>
>> Andy,
>> I'm interested in the conversation but have very little time to read or
>> dig or do anything other than quickly skim. I was just wondering if you
>> could provide a little bit of the explanation/background for this argument
>> (of yours):
>> "Marx's theory of value is sharply at odds with Hegel's (as elaborated
>> in the *Philosophy of Right*)"
>> It sounds interesting but it also sounds different from what I would have
>> thought/said about it. So I suspect that I have something to learn...
>> If you have no time either, no worries, I'll leave it be.
>> -greg
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 5:14 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Haydi, you must agree with me that the content, the real significance,
>>> of what people say often differs from what they say of themselves and their
>>> protagonists. I am a Marxist, and have been since my first reading of Marx
>>> in 1967. But you are justified in examining what I do and say, rather than
>>> taking me at my word. Everyone knows that Marx made the well-known
>>> criticisms of Hegel that you mention. We also know that he praised Hegel
>>> and made criticisms of "the materialists." But the point is to examine the
>>> content of his action and in particular his scientific writing.
>>>
>>> "Capital" (particularly its early sections) is modelled on Hegel's
>>> Logic. Marx tells us this in the famous passage (*Method of Political
>>> Economy*) where he gives the best explanation of the Logic that I know
>>> of. As you point out, he went on to make some crucially important
>>> criticisms of Hegel in that same passage ("the real subject ..." etc).
>>> Obviously Marx is not = Hegel.
>>>
>>> There are elements of Marx's approach which he takes from Hegel and
>>> elements which are in opposition to Hegel's approach. I tried to make this
>>> crystal clear in my little article
>>> https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Hegel-idealist.pdf .
>>>
>>> The ontology of "Capital" is sharply at odds with materialist ontology
>>> as it would have been known in the 1860s and equally at odds with the
>>> ontology of positivism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which
>>> arose from the crisis of natural science at that time which put an end to
>>> naive realism. Marx's theory of value is sharply at odds with Hegel's (as
>>> elaborated in the *Philosophy of Right*) and methodologically also at
>>> odds with Hegel in that it was not speculative but had a significant streak
>>> of empiricism in it. (I describe this in
>>> https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Goethe-Hegel-Marx_public.pdf
>>> ).
>>>
>>> If you look at the MIA Library
>>> <https://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm>
>>> https://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm and run your eye down the
>>> first 80% of so of the writers listed there. Almost all of these writers
>>> declared themselves "Marxists" (not the last 20% or so) and yet you will
>>> see a very wide spectrum of views here. No-one has the last word here. My
>>> conviction that Marxists have much to learn from Hegel was not lightly
>>> arrived at.
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>> On 7/11/2018 10:22 PM, Haydi Zulfei wrote:
>>>
>>> Nice !! Not to get Marx involved in the discussion!This is the whole
>>> thing!
>>> Because if Marx is involved in his original writing and making the last
>>> quote easier:
>>>
>>> Concepts need Conceptioners and conceptioners are , as said here also ,
>>> [Material] Human Beings living and Acting in their respective Material
>>> Surrounding out of which process Social Relations arise which in their turn
>>> , give birth to Thoughts and Ideas , concepts and categories , ideas of the
>>> Idea , Logic and the Absolute , cultures (in Bibler's terminology) which
>>> make Real?? Cosmologies (of course as META-physics beyond Physical Natural
>>> Hard sciences as these latter sciences deal also with atoms , electrons
>>> neutrons , positrons , quarks , galaxies , planets , etc. in their abstract
>>> or Hegelian (concrete as Concept) ontological/existential?? dependencies
>>> (the World which is outside Mind through Lenin's quote by some esteemed
>>> scholars and the World/s which need a Mind to claim existence) which is
>>> O.K. and in full respect.)
>>>
>>> This is what Marx meant in the last word of the last quote by "**[[Hence,
>>> in
>>> the theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept
>>> in mind as
>>> the presupposition.]]**"
>>>
>>> Neither the Social Relations have independent Being nor the sciences
>>> which arise from them.
>>>
>>> Every body has the right to think that "phenomena" of Mind/Thinking have
>>> the same Ontology as the Ontology of the Substantial/Material/Corporeal
>>> Universe does but ascribing this to Marx would be problematic. This was the
>>> beginning of the worry!
>>>
>>> In the same vein , no problem with "Any Category" first , but no
>>> imposition on Marx the more so that one might keep people in waiting for
>>> just a single evidence to one's Big Claim :-)).
>>>
>>> Marx is quite Robust in his Materialism and towards Hegel in full
>>> clarity and stance with quite indubious remarks:
>>>
>>> The best of the very Marx for Hegel:
>>>
>>> FROM CAPITAL VOLUME ONE:
>>>
>>> My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its
>>> direct opposite. To Hegel,
>>> the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking,
>>> which, under the name of “the
>>> Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos
>>> of the [[real]] world, and the
>>> real world is only the external, [[phenomenal form]] of “the Idea.” With
>>> me, on the contrary, the
>>> ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the [[human
>>> mind]], and translated into
>>> forms of thought.
>>> The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty
>>> years ago, at a time when it was
>>> still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of “Das
>>> Kapital,” it was the good
>>> pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Επιγονοι [Epigones –
>>> Büchner, Dühring and others]
>>> who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as
>>> the brave Moses
>>> Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., 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 modes of expression peculiar to him. The
>>> mystification which dialectic
>>> suffers in [[Hegel’s hands]], by no means prevents him from being [[the
>>> first to present its general
>>> 15 Afterword to the Second German Edition (1873)
>>> form of working]] in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it
>>> is standing on its head. It
>>> must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational
>>> kernel within the mystical
>>> shell.
>>>
>>> FROM GRUDERISSE WHICH INCLUDES ALSO THE METHOD OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
>>>
>>> But do not these simpler categories also have an independent historical
>>> or
>>> natural existence pre-dating the more concrete ones? That depends.
>>> Hegel, for
>>> example, correctly begins the Philosophy of Right with possession, this
>>> being
>>> the subject’s simplest juridical relation. But there is no possession
>>> preceding
>>> the family or master-servant relations, which are far more concrete
>>> relations.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It follows then naturally, too, that all the relationships of men can be
>>> derived from the concept of man, man as conceived, the essence of man, Man.
>>> This has been done by the speculative philosophers. Hegel himself confesses
>>> at the end of the Geschichtsphilosophie that he "has considered the
>>> progress of the concept only" and has represented in history the "true
>>> theodicy". (p.446.) Now one can go back again to the producers of the
>>> "concept", to the theorists, ideologists and philosophers, and one comes
>>> then to the conclusion that the philosophers, the thinkers as such, have at
>>> all times been dominant in history: a conclusion, as we see, already
>>> expressed by Hegel. The whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit
>>> in history (hierarchy Stirner calls it) is thus confirmed to the following
>>> three efforts.
>>>
>>> Critique: "humans create themselves out of nothing" Far from it being
>>> true that "out of nothing" I make myself, for example, a "[public]
>>> speaker", the nothing which forms the basis here is a very manifold
>>> something, the real individual, his speech organs, a definite stage of
>>> physical development, an existing language and dialects, ears capable of
>>> hearing and a human environment from which it is possible to hear
>>> something, etc., etc. therefore, in the development of a property something
>>> is created by something out of something, and by no means comes, as in
>>> Hegel's Logic , from nothing, through nothing to nothing. [Th. I. Abt. 2 of
>>> Hegel] p. 162
>>> Best
>>> Haydi
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 5:05:58 AM GMT+3:30, Adam Poole
>>> (16517826) <Adam.Poole@nottingham.edu.cn><Adam.Poole@nottingham.edu.cn>
>>> <Adam.Poole@nottingham.edu.cn> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> An interesting point to add to the discussion is the role that ontology
>>> plays as a tacit form of gatekeeping in many disciplines and journals
>>> (though thankfully, from my experience, not MCA). I have started to find
>>> this out as I have been publishing papers on International education from
>>> my doctorate (which I am going to defend in December). As part of this
>>> experience, I have found that:
>>>
>>>
>>> The journal article form does not lend itself to prolonged discussion of
>>> ontology due to length restrictions. So much of what is fundamental to
>>> research is left unsaid, but really needs to be said! Qualitative researchers
>>> need to justify themselves more substantially than quantitive
>>> researchers because notions of positivism (validity, generalizability, etc)
>>> are normalized and therefore do not require explication. However, your
>>> typically journal article does not provide enough room for qualitative
>>> researches to justify themselves.
>>>
>>>
>>> Reviewers and journals function as gatekeepers (just like funding
>>> agencies) so it is sometimes necessary to conform to a certain 'house
>>> ontology' in order to get the work out there. An issue I have found is
>>> that reviewer's can impose their ontology onto the writer - that is, their
>>> implicit assumptions about reality function as a framework for
>>> understanding and most significantly evaluating the work before them. If
>>> the work does not conform to their framework - if there is ontological
>>> dissonance - the work is likely to be rejected or heavily critiqued,
>>> leading to substantial rewrites that change the essential nature of the
>>> paper. On the other side, writers also impose their ontology onto the
>>> reader.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is all a roundabout way to say that ontology is also inextricably
>>> linked to power, and takes on dialogic and discursive dimensions.
>>> Essentially, ontology can be invoked by either side as a way to demonize or
>>> legitimize research, depending on where you stand. Ideally, it would be
>>> possible to transcend dualism, but practically speaking dualism functions
>>> as a convenient mechanism for gatekeeping and control.
>>>
>>>
>>> So whilst I agree completely with Martin (whose book I started to read
>>> yesterday and really like) that it is imperative to develop ontologies that
>>> do not split researchers into partisan camps, actually making this happen
>>> is problematic, not least of all because the journal article itself (which
>>> I would argue is the paradigmatic academic form these days) does not lend
>>> itself to this endeavor. The issue is also an economic one: paywalls,
>>> limited space in journals, pressure to publish, and suddenly ontological
>>> idealism is compromised. I do think a new form of academic paper needs to
>>> be developed that can support greater reflexivity in order to bring out our
>>> ontological and epistemological assumptions. The standard 6000ish words,
>>> intro methods, findings, discussion, conclusion structure leaves little
>>> space for reflective/reflexive writing.
>>>
>>>
>>> Anyway, just a doctoral student's take on ontology in relation to
>>> publishing.
>>>
>>>
>>> Adam
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on
>>> behalf of Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net><mpacker@cantab.net>
>>> <mpacker@cantab.net>
>>> *Sent:* 07 November 2018 04:11:34
>>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: Re: What is science?: Where to start
>>> doctoral students?
>>>
>>> Well Huw I’ll take a shot! I’ve never thought that xmca-ers worry too
>>> much about overcomplicating a thread!  :)
>>>
>>> Quantitative research (and I’m talking about the way this is construed
>>> in the social sciences, not in physics, for example) is generally taught as
>>> experimental design and hypothesis testing, which is largely the model the
>>> logical positivists laid out a hundred years ago. They considered
>>> ontological (metaphysical) claims to be untestable, and so unscientific.
>>> Consequently, courses in quantitative research pay little or no attention
>>> to ontology. The result is that the researcher’s ontological assumptions
>>> are tacitly imposed on the phenomenon. After all, quantitative researchers
>>> believe (as the logical positivists taught them) that they can
>>> ‘operationally define’ their variables. That’s to say, *they* get to decide
>>> what is intelligence, or poverty, or a student, or a woman…
>>>
>>> The result is something that Alfred Schutz complained about: "this type
>>> of social science does not deal directly and immediately with the social
>>> life-world common to us all, but with skillfully and expediently
>>> chosen idealizations and formalizations of the social world.” The result is
>>> "a fictional nonexisting world constructed by the scientific observer.”
>>>
>>> Harold Garfinkel made a similar point: he rejected "the worldwide
>>> social science movement” with its “ubiquitous commitments to the policies
>>> and methods of formal analysis and general representational theorizing.” He
>>> saw that the statistical and formal models built by formal analysis “lose
>>> the very phenomenon that they profess.”
>>>
>>> I’ve tried to attach an article by Spencer (1982) that is, in my view,
>>> making essentially the same point, but the listserv rejects it:
>>>
>>> Spencer, M. E. (1982). The ontologies of social science. *Philosophy of
>>> the Social Sciences*, *12*(2), 121-141.
>>>
>>>  Typically, social scientists are completely caught up in the ontology
>>> of their discipline, and completely ignore the ontology of the phenomenon
>>> they are studying - that’s to say, its constitution: what its constituents
>>> are and how they are assembled.
>>>
>>> On the other hand, the issue of the implicit ontology of qualitative
>>> research is the central theme of my book. I argue there that by and large
>>> Qual has bought into the ontological dualism of mind-matter, so that
>>> researches assume that the natural sciences study matter (objectivity), and
>>> so qualitative research must study mind (subjectivity).
>>>
>>> The book develops an argument for escaping from this dualistic ontology,
>>> and actually paying attention to human being - a kind of research that
>>> Foucault called ‘a historical ontology of ourselves.’ Along the way I try
>>> to do justice to what has been called the ‘ontological turn’ in
>>> anthropology, the argument that different cultures have distinct
>>> cosmologies, rather than distinct cosmovisions - that’s to say, they have
>>> different ontologies; they live in distinct realities; they don’t simply
>>> have different ways of conceptualizing a single underlying reality.
>>> Latour’s most recent work is making a similar argument about the different
>>> institutions in which all of us live - that each institution has its
>>> distinct mode of existence (its distinct way of being; its distinct
>>> ontology).
>>>
>>> So if I had my way, or my ideal winter holiday gift, it would be that
>>> qualitative research provides a way for psychology (and perhaps the other
>>> social sciences) to move beyond dualism and embrace multiple ontologies.
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> *"I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss
>>> matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my
>>> partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with
>>> the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 6, 2018, at 11:22 AM, Huw Lloyd < <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
>>> huw.softdesigns@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Best to leave that for the time being, no point overcomplicating the
>>> thread.
>>>
>>> Huw
>>>
>>> On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 at 15:02, Martin Packer < <mpacker@cantab.net>
>>> mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> And what do you take their implicit ontology to be, Huw?
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 5, 2018, at 6:33 PM, Huw Lloyd < <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
>>> huw.softdesigns@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> The problem that I was responding to before regarding "qualitative and
>>> quantitative" labels is that the adoption of these labels (and their
>>> implicit ontology)...
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>> --
>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Anthropology
>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>> Brigham Young University
>> Provo, UT 84602
>> WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>
>>
>>
>>
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