Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 10:33:26 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Structures are not things that are true or false, even if Hegelian Marxists say so


Hi Ruth,

I don't think a mirage is (only) an optical illusion if by that you mean 
that it's just in the eye of the beholder. It's the effect of definite 
physical conditions within which the observer is located.

>it is the expression of propositional content that can properly be said 
>to be true or false.

The relevant propositional content of the wage-form is the claim that 
'the acts of exchange which take place here are free and equal'. This is 
false, argues Marx, because it conflates powers with their exercise and 
abstracts from the background of force.

This false proposition is however inscribed in a social institution, and 
there's a world of difference between such propositions and ones that 
emanate as it were from armchairs. Millions of people in their 
thrownness daily act as if the propositional content were true. The 
social world thus takes on an appearance -- irreducible, as we know, to 
propositions -- which is false (in other cases misleading etc). It 
really does appear to be the case that free and equal exchanges are 
taking place, but they are not.

I can't see that such a view commits to absolute idealism (or that the 
theory of alethic truth does: 'there is a reason in the nature of things 
for the way things are' is surely a key assumption of all science; imo 
it does though point beyond the old idealism vs materialism problematic, 
but that's another story).

Mervyn





"Groff, Ruth" <ruth.groff-AT-marquette.edu> writes
>Sorry about that -- my e-mail program doesn't seem to have indicated 
>the quoted text.  Here's another go:
>
>
>       Hi all,
>
>
>       Mervyn wrote:
>       Seems to me you yourself are assuming that only consciousness or
>       language-like things can be true or false.
>
>
>       I wrote:
>       Yes.  The claim is something like that -- that it is the 
>expression of propositional content that can properly be said to be 
>true or false.  This is because (in my view) the concept of truth 
>describes a relationship BETWEEN a claim containing propositional 
>content and a referent.
>
>
>       Mervyn wrote:
>       Is a mirage false? The thirsty traveller or other animal soon discovers
>       it to be so, but it can be explained without imputing consciousness to
>       the whole world.
>
>
>       I wrote:
>       I don't think that you believe social structures, even 
>capitalist ones, to be an optical illusion.  I'm pretty sure I agree 
>with Tobin.  It is the belief that water is there that is false.
>
>
>       Mervyn wrote:
>       The notion that the (social) world itself, and not just our
>       consciousness, can be false is at the heart of the marxian theory of
>       ideology and of ideology critique, as the 11th thesis on Feuerbach
>       testifies (cf PON section on ideology). Yet Marx didn't subscribe to
>       either (a) or (b). Either his reasoning or yours, it would seem, has
>       gone wrong somewhere....
>
>
>       I wrote:
>       I think that my point about the absolute idealist metaphysics 
>into which the Hegelian claim that reality itself is true or false fits 
>is in fact really important.  It is an interesting question whether and 
>in what sense Marx, who, as far as I can tell, thinks that 
>consciousness is (merely)a property of human beings, can adopt the 
>language in anything other than a metaphorical way.  Bhaskar does not 
>have this problem, of course, because the metaphysics of alethic truth 
>shares the necessary features of absolute idealism.
>
>       Ruth
>
>
>
>
>




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