File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1996/96-10-21.081, message 4


Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 15:16:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: social ontology


On Thu, 26 Sep 1996 ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk wrote:

> >There are realities. Relativism holds that there is one
> >reality but that we all see it differently. I disagree with this position; 
> >it is idealism. 
> 
> Notwithstanding that this is just about the most perverse reading of
> relativism I've ever come across, I'm unsure how you are defining idealism
> here but, on my definition, idealism normally refers to the view that
> 'objects are constructed out of appearances or ideas'. 

I think if there existed here a fuller understanding of the broad spectrum
of philosophical ideas and their connection with the larger socio-
historical process that my "reading" would not seem so perverse. The
different forms of relativism emerge from the different forms of idealism
and materialism. Definitions are not isolated from their historical
ideational context. The definition of idealism both explicitly stated here
and implicitly running through this thread is a very narrow, monolithic
definition. 

To be quick about it, this question reveals the popular misunderstanding
of the idealism-materialism dichotomy. We must, first and foremost, keep
in mind that the distinction can be analytical and/or metaphysical. In
either case it is arguably arbitrary and artificial. I tend to use the
concepts of subjective and intersubjective, or the anthropological
dichotomy emic-etic (a little more useful because it encompasses both
objective and subjective from the two points of reference - first order
and second order). But after a brief explanation of what idealism and
materialism are, these terms should not trouble us too much, that is
idealism and materialism. 

Idealism itself is, for the most part, that is in its general usage,
subjectless either in its view of the origins of thought and reality (the
system of thought or thought-objects), or in the process of ideological
production. The later form, however, can include the subject, and thus can
become (as it does in Marx) the ideational component of a materialist
philosophy (this recognition and acceptance of idealism in Marx avoids the
Hobbesean/Engels paradox). For example, the position emphatically stated
in a previous post (not by me) that human beings do not construct social
reality is an example of idealism because it asserts the existence of a
subjectless sociohistorical reality (which is absurd). If one begins with
this false premise one is led to argue the contradictory positions
presented in many of these posts, and the contradiction is not revealed to
the arguer because of the antinomial structure of the argument, i.e. the
greater connection to social process is not made explicit. This is the
fault of ahistorical and asocial analysis, particularly ones that assume
the impossiobility of transtivity. Again, it is the central flaw in all
these posts.

Let me back up a bit. Idealism basically comes in four forms: 

1. Absolute idealism is the idealism professed by Hegel, Fichte,
Schelling. This form of idealism naturalizes Kantian critical philosophy
and method, thus transforming what was intended as an speculative
epistemology into an absolute ontology. Absolute idealism, as Marx,
Nietzsche, and others pointed out, is a veil for theology. Absolute
idealism is a subjectless historical theory. It is teleological and
grounds its own speculation in the immutable laws of nature and
supernature. Engels approachs, if not move onto, this view with
dialectical materialism. Kant also delineated empirical and transcendental
realist positions, and found them to be problematic. In the Kantian
perspective, this makes sense. But from the historical materialist
perspective, these contradictions are resolved by recognizing
transcentental realism as a purely speculative endeavor (not that it
doesn't serve a purpose, for example in the current employ of legitimating
the capitalist structure by naturalizing it ontology. 

2. Cosmic idealism is a step removed from absolute idealism (though not by
much). Cosmic idealism avoids the supernatural implications of absolute
idealism by placing the dialectic outside society and into nature. Where
the neoKantians (in this case the Hegelian sort, not the historicists)
naturalize (rather mythologize or ontologize) Kantian critical
epistemology, the dialectical materialists naturalize (again ontologize...
even mystify) Marxian dialectics.

Engels is found here, for example. Empiricism, the purist form of
objectivist idealism, manifests here, as well. As I have already stated,
empiricism believes that the truth of a thing resides in the thing itself,
and this truth is revealed to us through sense impressions. This is
supported by the copy theory of knowledge (which Lenin rejected after
reading Hegel, declaring that Marxist for the past 50 years had had their
heads up their collective ass - incidentally, this lesson in the orthodox
tradition was never learned). It is wrong. How empiricists get around the
fact that no subject ever approaches an object without a preconceived
(socially constructed) interpretive frame has never been answered.

3. Social idealism is the third sort. Marx can be considered a social
idealists in the materialist tradition (that is, historicism and social
constructionism, in contrast to Heidegger and Nietzsche). This is the
belief that through the process of socialization we are humanized, and
that social reality (which in the end is all reality) is maintained
socially through symbolic interaction. This is the process focus of
histroical materialism. It must be remembered that Marx did not reject
idealism, rather he, following Hegel, tied materialism and idealism
together, only reversing the order. This conflation is pointed out by
Avineri and other, although the rigid orthodoxy of much of the Marxist
movement (particularly those who accept positivist definitions of what
constitute science forcing historical materialism to fit within the
traditional science frame when the foundations of historical materialism
are incommensurable with positivist assumptions - although as a historical
object positivism, with all its contradictions, can be explained within
the historical materialist frame) has lead to great ignorance regarding
the foundations of the Marxian program.

Indeed, to continue this a little bit and connect it with other previously
disconnected bodies of thought, Marx held this in common with more pure
social idealists, such as Mead, Berger, Luckmann, Schutz. In fact, Median
thought is very dialectical, derived, as was Marxian epistemology, from
Hegel. Both Mead and Marx ground their philosophies in the material, i.e.
social world. Again, Marx is squarely in this camp. There is not
contradiction here because Marx held both views simultaneously. When you
disregard this, as most orthodoxy does, then the antimony emerges. 
Because social idealism, as the ideational component of historical
materialism is, in my opinion, the only tenable epistemology, this is the
starting point for interpretations of Marx, precisely because he was a
historicist (other, more idealistic historicists include Dilthey, Rickert,
and Windelband, just to fix this philosophy; Popper and Hayek tried to
deform the term by transforming it into its opposite definitially).

4. To finish this primer up, individual idealism argues that human beings
are rational creatures innately, that is to say that systems of knowledge
are apriori. This is rationalism. Kant resides here, as well as Cartesian
philosophers of all sorts. Whereas empiricism is the epistemology of
objectivist idealist ontology, rationalism is the ontological form of
subjectivist idealism. These two combine to form the basis of positivism.
This is the ideology legitimating capitalism.

It should be pointed out, because Bhaskar and others have chosen to draw
this component out and exaggerate its role, not on a methodological basis
but on an epistemological basis, that although Marx rejected positivism in
the main, as a philosophical stance, he did often use these methods in his
political economy. Engels, however, by way of contrast, was positivist to
the core and provides a good contrast to Marx in delineating these ideas
in this area. On a basic level, this philosophy is often called
"apriorism." Individual idealism is often connected to cosmic idealism. In
fact, Engels connected the two levels in both Anti-Duhring and "Dialectics
of Nature." In the former he attacks Duhring for his apriorism, but is
apparently unaware - this has been the excuse made for Engels - of his own
apriorism throughout the work. However, excluded passages from the
Anti-Duhring reveal Engels was in fact well aware of the contradiction in
his thought. He went through the manuscript and carefully purged the more
obvious appeals to individual and cosmic idealism. But these passages are
very revealing (I touched upon them in an earlier post). For example, in
one excluded passage Engels writes: 

	The fact that our subjective thought and the objective world are
	subject to the same laws, and hence, too, that in the final
	analysis they cannot contradict each other in their result, but
	must coincide, governs absolutely our whole theoretical thought.
	It is the unconscious and unconditional premise for our
	theoretical thought.

Here Engels admits his idealism. If subjective thought is subject to the
same laws as those laws that govern the objective world then human beings
are mere objects of universal laws of history and nature. We are, in every
event determined not by other humans in social interaction, but by
objective imperatives that lie external to our social beings, and hence
external to our knowledge. Clearly an absurdity, particularly from the
perspective of historical materialism.

This is absolute idealism! To posit the existence of something outside of
knowledge is to produce imaginaries (speculations on unknown things), and
to bring these imaginaries into contemplation objectivates them. God came
into being precisely because he fill the gap between what was known and
what was believed to be unknown. Absolute idealism performs the same
function as theology here, and in contradiction to the cosmic idealism
Engels try to fuse with individual idealism. Before them this amalgamation
produced positivism. They arrive here but with absolute idealism in their
minds as well through Hegel. And so the end product - dialectical
materialism - is this bizarre, hopelessly contradicted philosophy. On top
of all this (and I wouldn't care if it were not for this) they have the
language of praxis, which demands they put this model into practice.
Transcendental realism approached dialectical materialism, positing the
intransitive and universal laws of social development. By the criteria of
positivism this is nonfalsifiable. By the criteria of historical
materialism it is a contradiction. So it falls dramatically within each
paradigm. For me, this puts the issue to rest.

> If I say that there
> is but one reality that we all describe differently this hardly seems to
> constitute idealism. Also, remember Marx's remarks about drowning men saving
> themselves by getting rid of the concept of gravity. I suppose it's
> perfectly feasible for you to redefine realism/idealism in whatever way you
> see fit. Still, as RB points out whatever the merits of the denial of
> reality in theory this is never the stance in practice. I doubt whether even
> you would be able to construct a reality that enables you to substitute
> cyanide for water.

Considering the foregoing discussion of idealisms, the position of one
reality with multiple perspectives is a form of absolute idealism at
worst, cosmic idealism at best, nonfalsifiable in any case.

> Andy goes on:
> 
> >On the point of absences, you need to make this clearer. As for the
> >assertion that there is but one reality, it is precisely on this point
> >that disagree. It asserts the existence of a reality we can never know,
> >that at best we only have different perceptions of it. 
> 
> How does this conclusion follow from the premise? you really have the most
> remarkable ability to draw conclusions that are not inherent in the premise.
> Who said anything about us being unable to know anything about this reality.
> But it's not this simple or this hard. As Margolis puts it, 'We cannot
> seriously believe that science totally misrepresents the world, nor can we
> determine the fit' (this is paraphrased).

The assertion that there is one reality with multiple perspectives is an
assumption of the existence of a reality that we can all never know
absolutely. If you can't see this then I admit I am helpless before you. 

> >It
> >also leads to the hierarchical arrangement of knowledge systems as we
> >assert one epistemological frame to be more objective in its perception of
> >this one reality. 
> 
> Another conclusion that does not follow from the premises. (See above about
> ontological matters coming first.) The assertion of one epistemological
> frame over another, certainly does happen, but not in an ontologiccal
> vacuum. 

The conclusion follows from the premises, however I do agree that the
assertion of one epistemological frame over another does occur within an
ontological frame. However, take one step back and we find that this
ontological frame is a social production. And we must access this ontology
through the epistemological frame which arises out of it. Therefore both
are dependent on the other. You are trying to separate them, and argue for
the mind-independent existence of one, and therefore arrange conveniently
knowledge systems based on this premise. Thus you are trying to locate
your ontology separate from your epistemology - a contradiction, at least
within the paradigm of historical material.

> Lets look at some examples (keeping an eye on Ruth and Michael's
> point about ontological differentiation):
> 
> Theory 1        The Earth is round.
> Theory 2        The Earth is flat.
> 
> Theory 1        Millions of Jews were murdered in Germany between 1939-1945.
> Theory 2        There was no Holocaust.
> 
> Theory 1        Women today, generally, fare less well in Western societies.
> Theory 2        Women today, generally, fare better in Western societies.
> 
> can you make no epistemolgical heirachy here Andy? Still it's not a heirachy
> that can be decided in advance of object specification.

These are ontological assertions. You have not asked me to be critical of
the systems of knowledge through which I came to understand these social
facts. So your use of the term epistemology here is inappropriate. Can I
make an ontological hierarchy of them? Sure, but it depends on which frame
you want me to adopt. 

> By your own account, perhaps. Through in and by Praxis. Again examples
> 
> Theory 1        we can not walk on water
> Theory 2        We can walk on water
> 
> Word of advice though Andy, I suggest you only try 2 in water no deeper that
> your own height.

Peter didn't take your advice.

> Or again, bearing in mind Ruth and Michael's excellent points about object
> differentiation:
> 
> Theory 1        Global capital tends to relocate to Home countries.
> Theory 2        Global capital is used in Host countries to improve the
> social                 conditions of the peasants.
> 
> 
> >Sounds silly when you say it out loud, when
> >you make it explicit, but that is what is being argued here. What the
> >thing is is what we believe we see, 
> 
> Yes but that is your view is it not. Things are just as we make them?

Things are and are not what we each individually or in groups make them. 
It depends. If we lived in a anarchist community, where mass participation
brought the social production process under the power of reason, yes, our
social reality could be what we each consciously make it intersub-
jectively. The objective reality production would also be much more of a
consciously collective effort in this circumstance. Currently the
production of social reality is in the main an elite construction, or we
should say the construction process is controlled by the ruling class, and
therefore our reality is not what most people make it along this axis. 
Our day-to-day practical interaction also contains both elements of our
agency and the structures we move in. Things are not either/or, as you
wish to make them. Indeed, I believe your either/or neecessity is what
generates strange (and alienated) statements like: humans beings don't
construct social reality. The dialectic was never meant to be manichean in
form or content (another problem that I see running implicitly throughout 
this thread).
 
> and in modifying the way we see we see
> >a different thing. In the former view, the empiricist view, we assume the
> >intransitivity of the object world. 
> 
> No actuallly, you're totally wrong here, empiricism is a form of idealsim.
> The existence of the object depends on the fact or possibility of it being
> experienced. That's why Bhaskar is such a big spanner in the works of all
> attempts to move beyond empiricism. 

Empiricism, as I have already noted time and time again is a form of
idealism. You are exactly right. However idealism assumes the intransivity
of the world, i.e. empiricism presumes the truth of an object lies in the
object itself. So, at least it appears to me, you do not know what
idealism is (at least the three central forms of idealism, to which you
have made rough approximations). Materialism, not vulgar materialism
(which is a form of idealism for precisely that reason), does not assume
the intransivity of the world. The world is always in flux. I think we
have identified the major flaw in your thinking in this area (but it is
not only you, most people make this mistake). 

> >I agree with Gramsci's
> >observation that transcendental realism is "religious residue." 
> 
> Well this is rich coming from Gramsci, probably the most idealist of Marxists.

See, here again, a fundamental misunderstanding of philosophical
underpinnings. Traditional philosophy, bourgeois in nature, seeks to
invert the world, making forms of idealism into materialism and forms of
materialism (historically and socially-focused forms) into idealisms. If
Marx taught us anything it is to see past the camera obscura of bourgeois
thought. Yet here it comes right back at me. Again, this isn't just you,
this is the common flaw in academic philosophy, sociology, political
economy, etc. 

Okay, sorry to not address the rest of this post, but I think at this
point it is clear we are not playing on the same football field. Your
missive has assumptions in it which completely flip the world upsidedown.
I really cannot debate you when our premises are so fundamentally
different. 

I will finish rather with Marx:

	...this reproduction is at the same time necessarily new
	production and the destruction of the old form.... THE ACT OF
	REPRODUCTION ITSELF CHANGES NOT ONLY THE OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS
	[there goes your intransitive reality]... BUT THE PRODUCERS CHANGE
	WITH IT, BUT TRANSFORMING AND DEVELOPING THEMSELVES IN PRODUCTION,
	forming new powers and new conceptions, new modes of intercourse,
	new needs, and new speech.

	It is above all necessary to avoid postulating 'society' once
	again as an abstraction confronting the individual. The individual
	IS a SOCIAL BEING. The manifestation of his life - even when it
	does not appear directly in the form of a communal manifestation,
	accomplished in association of othe rmen - is therefore a
	manifestation and affirmation of SOCIAL LIFE. 
	   In his *species-consciousness* MAN CONFIRMS HIS REAL SOCIAL
	LIFE AND REPRODUCES HIS
	EXISTENCE IN THOUGHT... a really individual communal being - 
	HE IS EQUALLY THE WHOLE, THE IDEAL WHOLE, THE SUBJECTIVE
	EXISTENCE OF SOCIETY AS THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE. HE EXISTS IN
	REALITY AS THE REPRESENTATION OF THE REAL MIND OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE
	AND AS THE SUM OF HUMAN MANIFESTATIONS IN LIFE. 
	   THOUGHT AND BEING are indeed distinct but they also FORM A
	UNITY." 

	The main shortcoming of all materialism up to now (including
	that of Feuerbach) is that the object, the reality, sensibility,
	is conceived only in the form of the object or of perception [so
	much for Lenin's reliance on Kantian phenomenology], but not as
	sensuous human activity, praxis, not subjectively. [Thesis on
	Feuerbach]

	My relationship to my surroundings is my consciousness...
	Consciousness is therefore, from the beginning a social product
	and remains so as long as men exist at all [The German Ideology]

	[Feuerbach] does not see how the sensuous world around him is
	not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the
	same, but the product of industry and of the state of society;
	and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, it
	is the result of the activity of a whole succession of
	generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding
	one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modifying its
	social system according to its changed needs. Even the objects
	of simplest 'sensuous certainty' are only given to him through
	social development, industry and the commercial intercourse.

	In the SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF THEIR EXISTENCE, men inevitably
	enter into definite relations, which are independent of their
	will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given
	stage in the development of THEIR material forces of production.
	The totality of these relations of production constitutes the
	economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which
	arises a legal and political superstructure and to which
	correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of
	production of material life conditions the general process of
	social, political and intellectual life. It is not the
	consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their
	SOCIAL EXISTENCE that determines their consciousness. 

It is not material existence that determines their consciousness, but
"SOCIAL EXISTENCE." It is not the material world producing their
existence, but the "SOCIAL PRODUCTION of their existence." It is "the mode
of production of material life," that is, human activity in thought and
labor in transforming the natural world into a human world, that
"conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual
life." So the ideas of our intellectual life are directly tied to, and
subordinated to "the social production of our existence" and "the
production of material life." And I have been saying this all along. I
repeat: ideas like TRUTH and LAW are not independent of man; they are
productions of man in real human activity, i.e. in their social relations,
relations to the productive means, and the transformation of nature (the
production of material life) in reproducing human social existence. 

	In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from
	heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to
	say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive.... 
	We set out from real, active men.... The phantoms formed in the
	human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material
	life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to
	material premises. MORALITY, RELIGION, METAPHYSICS, ALL THE
	REST OF IDEOLOGY AND THEIR CORRESPONDING FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS,
	THUS NO LONGER RETAIN THEIR SEMBLANCE OF INDEPENDENCE." 

1. Men say, imagine, and conceive "laws," "truth," "facts," etc..

2. Rather than beginning with these ideas Marx begins with real active
men, men in social relationship to one another (human activity), and men
in relationship to the productive means and nature.

3. The ideas that men produce - "laws," "truth," "facts," etc. - are
"necessarily sublimates of their material life-process,"  that is, the
manner in which men reproduce their social world, through labor and social
interaction with other men, gives rise to their ideational patterns. 

4. This phenomenon of human ideations arising out of the social relations
of man is based in the social relations themselves.  They are material.
They are real. Not disembodied ideas like "truth" or "natural law" etc. in
fact, laws are written by men.  Truth is a human construct because it is
an idea and therefore cannot be material.

5. "Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their
corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance
of independence." Exactly! Ideas like "truth" and "law" are not
independent of real men in real material life-processes. When you
recognize that "truth" and "law" arise from the real activities of man in
society then you have historical materialism. When you believe these ideas
- e.g.  the idea of truth, scientific truth - are independent of the
social world, when you posit the existence of natural law that stands
transepochally and/or suprasocietally, or is "discovered" by humans, then
this is idealism.

	THE PRODUCTION OF IDEAS, OF CONCEPTIONS, OF CONSCIOUSNESS, IS AT
	FIRST DIRECTLY INTERWOVEN WITH THE MATERIAL ACTIVITY AND THE
	MATERIAL INTERCOUSE OF MEN, THE LANGUAGE OF REAL LIFE.... THE
	SAME APPLIES TO MENTAL PRODUCTION as expressed in the language
	of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. of a
	people. MEN ARE PRODUCERS OF THEIR CONCEPTIONS, IDEAS, ETC. -
	real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite
	development of their productive forces and of the intercourse
	corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. CONSCIOUSNESS
	CAN NEVER BE ANYTHING ELSE THAN CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE, AND THE
	EXISTENCE OF MEN IN THEIR ACTUAL LIFE PROCESS. If in all
	ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a
	*camera obscura*, this phenomenon arises just as much from their
	historical life-process and the inversion of objects on the retina
	does from their physical life-process. 

	MAN MAKES HIS LIFE-ACTIVITY ITSELF AN OBJECT OF HIS WILL AND HIS
	CONSCIOUSNESS. He has conscious life-activity.... In CREATING AN
	*OBJECTIVE WORLD* BY HIS PRACTICAL ACTIVITY in working up
	inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being.
	It is just in the working-up of the objective world, therefore,
	that man first really proves himself to be a species being. This
	production is his active species life. Through and because of
	this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The
	object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man's
	species life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in
	consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality.
	and therefore HE CONTEMPLATES HIMSELF IN A WORLD HE CREATED. In
	tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore,
	estranged labor tears from him his species life, his real
	species objectivity. 

The completion of the dictum again supports my position. I recognize this
is a Bhaskar list, and that Marx's ideas might not apply, but since he
looms large in this discussion, and in my arguments, I thought it
necessary to correct Bhaskars' scientistic and positivistic, and therefore
idealist, interpretations of Marxian historical materialism. 

I hope this post is taken with good will. It is only that it has become
apparent to me that core assumptions make my responses to specific
questions a waste of bandwidth. I apologise for drawing the list off
topic. I will try to lurk more. Thanks.

Andy




   

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