File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 479


Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 11:38:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>


My thanks to Andrew Austin for keeping me apprised of this burgeoning
discussion of Sidney Hook and pragmatism on lists to which I did not
subscribe.  Today I'm in a rush, but when I have time, perhaps I will take
pains to refute Austin's argument more thoroughly than I can now.  For the
moment, I'll just throw in a few general observations.

1.  Perhaps the most shallow approach to intellectual history is to declare
an identity or affinity between two thinkers based on isolated
point-for-point comparisons ignoring a systematic understanding of how two
thinkers systematically differ.

2.  Another problem is the sound-bite approach to scholarship: isolated
extractions of general statements from one or more thinkers to make
grandiose extrapolations not supportable by a more in-depth analysis of the
texts and their contexts.

3.  Worst of all is the extensive quoting of sound bites from secondary
sources that may have never correctly interpreted the primary sources in the
first place.

4.  Finally, the clogging up of an argument by quotation of so many
secondary sources of dubious relevance, the actual logical thread of the
argument is completely lost.

5.  The sound bites from Marx on practice are useless for making this
comparison with pragmatism or Mead.  There is no convincing scholarship here
on the problem that Marx was addressing in making these remarks.

6.  Avineri's comments are rather perverse, as he presents an idealist
interpretation of Marx (the world is man-made) to contrast to pragmatism:

>	Whereas pragmatism starts with the premise that man adapts himself
>	to a given, pre-existing environment, Marx views man as shaping
>	his world. Marx's view are also quite incompatible with William
>	James' other premise about the basic irrationality of the external
>	world.  Marx, on the contrary, always argues that the world is
>	open to rational cognition because it is ultimately shaped by man
>	himself and man can reach an adequate understanding of his
>	historical activity. (Avineri 1968, p. 74-75) 

Instead of looking to Marx, we get this sloppy, partial view of Marx from
one of many dubious interpreters.

7.  More useless sound bites:

>Where do pragmatists, e.g., Dewey and Mead, really stand? They are
>realists and dialecticians. Their method of science is very Marxist. For
>example, Dewey's idea of "warranted assertability" in his conception of
>truth parallels historical materialism. Gramsci notes that "as a
>philosophy, historical materialism asserts theoretically that every
>'truth' thought to be eternal and absolute has practical origins and has
>represented or represents a provisional value" (1996, p. 188). Gramsci
>himself noted this connection. He writes that "it is necessary to study,
>above all, Bergson's philosophy and pragmatism to find out to what extent
>certain positions of their would have been inconceivable without the
>historical link of Marxism" (1996, p. 141). 

8.  Vague banalities proving nothing:

>In contrast to the popular ideal of science, pragmatists and historical
>materialists hold that the world is always changing. It is changing
>because of forces inherent in the movement of the world through time. And
>the world is changing because humans are changing it. Scientific laws are
>not "discovered" in the positivist sense; scientists construct laws. Laws
>are not eternal but hold as long as the present structure of reality
>holds, or until the scientist can find a better way to explain reality.
>Furthermore, the world is a concrete totality, and must be understood in
>these terms. A method approaching a solution to the problematic of
>historicity in scientific production, without at the same time lapsing
>into idealist relativity or objectivist idealism, and that analyzes the
>world holistically, presents an alternative to the dominant social
>scientific standpoints of positivism and neo-positivism. This method is
>found in the dialectic. 

Including non sequitur bullshit:

>The opponents of historical materialism on this
>list presuppose, along with their positivist colleagues, the unchanging
>and a priori character of the external world. Their thinking is decidely
>undialectical.

9.  Stupid, sloppy shit:

>Crucially, Marx's argument appears closer
>to the Fichtean formulation than to the Hegelian. Marx's (1983)  criticism
>of Feuerbach is precisely because Feuerbach supposes that the world can be
>accessible to the self through contemplation, and thus Feuerbach does not
>understand reality as the sensuous production of human practical activity.
>What is particularly relevant here is that Mead finds the same problem
>addressed in Fichte's work, and the similarity in the logic Marx and Mead
>deploy after taking over the form of Fichte's argument reveals another
>convergence in their work. 

10.  The following assumes Marx was a mere philosopher, whose task was
basically to straighten out Hegelian philosophy.  One wouldn't know that
Marx's critical engagement with Hegelianism was also informed by sources or
perspective external to "philosophy" as well:
 
>With all this in mind, we can see several problems face Marx in reworking
>Hegel's system.  Harris writes that "the logical method that Hegel
>presented as the climax of the Logic in which it was employed is really
>not a method at all, but only a name for Hegel's own genius" (1997, p. 
>30).  Marx's challenge is to find a way of keeping Hegel's "genius" while
>pulling from the latter's thought a scientific method. 

11.  More reasons to hate Bhaskar:

>This is a double mystification; Hegel is committing what
>Bhaskar (1989) calls the "epistemic fallacy," i.e., the reduction of the
>world to knowledge about the world, at the same time projecting
>consciousness panlogistically. 

I understand the "epistemic fallacy" in the case of empiricism.  In the case
of objective idealism, what can this mean?  The projection of the world from
pure thought itself?  If so, this process should be clarified and not
obfuscated as Bhaskar does to everything.

12.  Incompetent characterization of Engels:

>Mead's attack on psychological parallelism, the position that there exists
>in the mind a representational world that mirrors or parallels the
>physical world, perhaps best reveals the dialectical and realist position
>in Meadian thought. And this has great bearing on the false position held
>by my opponents who advance Engels position which is drawn from
>psychological parallelism which was the dominant construct in Engels day. 
>Psychological parallelism grew out of problems arising from the
>philosophical and scientific division of reality into mind and body I have
>described here. The main problem of this division, led by reductive
>materialism and a focus on observable physical phenomena, a conceptual
>fragmenting of the totality by division rather than differentiation, was
>that in this fashion the mind is banished to a residual category.

13.  Non sequitur comparison of Mead and Marx, not to mention Mead's evasion
of ontological status of mind:

> The mind is a social product and,
>arising in the life-process, it is transformed through adaptation to an
>ever changing reality.  It must be analyzed as behavior in the context of
>the social totality. The mind is the result of a long evolutionary
>process. The mind is not the ghost in the machine, but is the active
>process of the organism negotiating its environment. Mead vanquishes the
>soul without vanquishing humanity. Mead position may be summed up
>precisely by quoting Marx: "It is not the consciousness of men that
>determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that
>determines their consciousness" (1983, p. 160).

14.  Nobody ever confused Marx's position with physicalism, nobody, not even
the Soviet dialectical materialists.  Also, the question of consciousness as
brain activity is not reducible to the question of consciousness as social
product:

>Just as Mead's focus on consciousness should not distract from the
>materialism that underpins his position, the materialist foundation of
>Marx should not be confused with physicalism. Consciousness is not a
>by-product of the brain in Marx's theory. Indeed, Marx argues that
>consciousness is an integral part of human life. 

15.  Partial truth; subjectivist interpretation of Marx:

>Mead and Marx are arguing that reality is a reality for humans. And, in
>this relation, reality is objectified, both through physical activity and
>through consciousness. For Mead, as for Marx, the relation is held as
>ontological. Textbook myths are overturned here--Marx is a pragmatist and
>Mead is a materialist. Both are consummate dialecticians.

16.  You get an "F" for this inept, vacuous piece of shit:

>I appreciate the attention of those of you who have had the patience to
>look through these notes. 

17.  I think I am going to puke:

>What I am presently taking up, having produced broad outlines of a
>historical comparison of thought, a technique I call reclaiming
>foundations, and reclaiming the dialectic and pragmatism of the positions
>I have just discussed, is to bring in Darwin and explain the deep relation
>between the logic of natural selection and the logic of the dialectic in
>both the thinking of Marx and Mead. 
 





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