File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 114


Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 09:37:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: M-TH: Kant, etc. (Was: Marx a *naive* correspondence theorist!!)



1. Kant's refutation of idealism. 

Hugh is right that K's RoI in the CPR doesn't purport to show that we can
have experience only of external objects, just that we can and must have
experience of external objects if we are to have experience at all. In
fact the question of whether we can ahve experience that is is not of
external objects is a difficult question in Kant's philosophy, but this is
too technical for a Marx list.

Hugh wants to know:

the status of all these internal and external objects
> in relation to the mental (or transcendental) structures for perceiving,
> judging, relating and understanding them. 

and he points out that they are conditioned by these structures (well he
doesn't use Kan't term, but that's the idea). Quite right, K is an
idealist. My point is just that he isn't a Berkleyean idealist who thinks
we are stuck with out own perceptions, in our own heads, and that's the
end of it.

Hugh seems to believe that the solution to the problem of how, if we make
being prior to thought, we can be assured that thought lines up with
being, is that we make a sort of "leap of faith." This is no solution at
all, in terms of giving any reasonm to think that we get things right. It
doesn't help to say that we are programmed by evolution to make this leap,
but Hugh recognizes that.

Incidentally we get the following bit of triumphalist rhetoric from Hugh:

> historical processes etc. This is why "Marxism" is such a hotbed of
> conflicting views, because it's the arena for the last despairing battles
> of imperialist ideology to save what it can as the mode of production that
> spawned it sinks stinking and bloody and writhing into the swamp of history.

It seems to me taht H has the tables turned. Imperialism and its
ideologies are doing fine. It's Marxism that's hanging ion by its teeth
and eyebrows. I'm all for optimism of the will, but a little pessimism of
the mind, please!

> For my money the pomo line is just a late arrival among the ideologies of
> decaying bourgeois society that desperately try to destroy all confidence
> in scientific investigations and conclusions concerning the situation of
> humanity in its present state of development.

Well, most of us here agree generally with this assessment of pomo, the
decaying stuff aside. Another cavil: bourgeois ideology is a hydra=headed
beat. Some of it is antiscientific. Other heads are pseudo-scientific,
e,g., bourgeois economics or pop sociobiology. The ruling class is
opportunistic. They'll make use of anything that comes to hand.

> [Kant] is the philosopher of the moment before the
> decisive world-historical victory of the bourgeois revolution in 1789
> final philosopher of the Enlightenment, the heroic intellectual build-up to
> this victory.

Bear this in mind for a moment. I asked why it mattered that K doesn't
believe that we can know things as they are in themselves, I mean, apart
from the fact,a s I take it to be, that K is wrong about that. H says:

> Confidence in foundations is absolutely necessary for successful building.
> Confidence in what you're doing and where you're going is necessary for
> things like skating, reading -- you name it. Fundamental lack of confidence
> is a hugely inhibiting factor in thought and science 

But as you said, K is the great representative of the triumph of the
bourgeois revolution and of its intellectual counterpart, the scientific
revolution. Even supposing H's point about confidence to be right, and I'm
not sure it is, K has confidence in spades. There, he says, I'll show you
that science is great and metaphysics dreck. We can have faith in what we
can't know (religion) and can be sure of what we do (Newton). There's no
hint of pomo or other skepticism here.

> >Lots of material things aren't even potentially perceptible. The interior
> >of the sun. Quarks. Gluons. Black holes. Spacetime itself. We can perceive
> >their effects, but that's something else. Anyway, it's positivist to think
> >taht what makes them material is perceptibility.
> 
> Pure quibble. When I say "potential", I mean that IF we had some mechanism
> by which we could sit at the event border of a black hole, THEN we could
> perceive what was going on there. IF we could ride on a quark, etc. I don't
> mean that it's empirically feasible, just thinkable.

Well, thinkable is isn't ptential. In any case, I chose my examples
carefully. No causal signals can get out of a black hole, so it's not even
thinkable that we could perceive what's in it. We can do the math and
observe the effects, that's all. Quarks, gluons, etc., are so small and
delicate that they too can only be observed, if that's the word, by their
effects. The intrerior of the sun would blow any observer into plasma. 

But the real point is that Hugh hangs on the positivist notion that to be
material or real something must be observable. This is deeply antirealist.

> >Sure I do. I've been in organizations for almost my whole life as a red.
> >My current group, Solidarity, isa  good outfit of militant activists.
> 
> And what do people think Marx would have to say about it??

I think he'd join. if he were here today. Of course this is sheet
speculation.

> >I don't know what the "absolutes" are doing here. Realism is, as I take
> >it, true, what aboslute realism would be I don't know. I take realism to
> >be the hypothesis that material objects exist independently of the mind
> >and have more or less the properties science says they do. Truth isn't
> >absolute or not, propositions are either true, because they correspond to
> >raelity, or false, because they don't. It's not a notion that admits of
> >degrees. Certainly, absolute or not, is beside the point. Outside math and
> >logic, nothing is certain.
> 
> Sounds to me like reality is true because it corresponds to reality. 

No. Propositions or sentences are true. It is they that correspond to
reality, when they do. If you mean, how do we know that a sentence is
true, when it is, the answer is, look at the argument for the claim it
makes and see if it's any good. That's the best we can do. It doesn't give
certainty, but as I say, outsaide math and logic, there is no certainty
tobe had.
> 
> But reality is surely more than maths or logic (analytical logic), so
> reality is therefore not certain. So what reality do true propositions
> correspond to??

A confusion. Our knowledge of empirical raelity is not certain. It might
be wrong. But we cannot talk of reality being certain or not. It just is.
True propositions corrwespond to whatever state of affairs they describe.
Is that so hard? There's a lot here that's desperately hard, but this
isn't one of those things. 

> 
> >Hugh makes fun of my caricature of his party and its notion of free
> >discussion, but tell me, High, does your picture of the rule of your party
> >have space for opposition parties?
> 
> Well, Low, since the Soviets pre-1917 had different parties, and the
> reasons for banning other parties were extreme pressure and perhaps not
> even then strong enough,

Why do we have to use what the Russians did as our model? I don't mean
that we shouldn't learn from them, but why restrict ourselves to their
experience? Our circumstnces are different, and there are other models
too, if we want to follow them or learn from them.

 I see no reaon at all for expecting an a priori
> ban on parties of the working class, and I even see (depending on
> circumstances) an acceptance of some non-working-class parties. The
> overriding criterion will be the viability of the dictatorship of the
> proletariat.

That's pretty weak and attenuated. My view is that multiparty democracy
for all tendencies is nonnegotiable. It's a priori for me, if you want to
use that language. If counterrevolutionary parties try to overthrow the
worker's state by force, they can be dealt with the way one deals with
any criminals, at least, the specific individuals who attempt the
conpiracy can be. But peaceful organizing, protest, and electioneering
must be sacrosant in a democratic society.

>If > the opposition hopes to win power to restore capitalism, forget it. >
> Otherwise, go ahead.

That's what I was afraid of. In Hugh's story, socialism will be imposed on
a majority even if it's against the will of the majority in a peaceful
political contest.

Hugh praises Plato at the expense of the Sophists, which is pretty natural
for someone with this view. The Sophists were defenders of democracy im
the main, although sometimes in a rather ugly way (Gorgias), others in an
attractive way (Protageras). Plato of course advocated the imposition of
elite rule by the party (I mean the philosopher-kings, but they are
communist in Plato's story) in virtue of their superior knowledge of the
correct line, backed by the force of the warriors. It's no wonder Hugh
goes for that. Give me Protageras anyday.

--Justin 




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