Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 17:04:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Marx a *naive* correspondence theorist!!


On Sun, 4 Jan 1998, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> Perhaps Justin is using some special definition of "naive" here, meaning
> "incredibly sophisticated and theoretically informed"???

No, naive means accepting the commonsense view of truth and reality that
most people accept unreflectively. Of course one need to accept the view
unreflectively to accept the view that most so accept. In fact I do think
that Marx did, rather, with questions of truth and realistic ontology. He
has no such elaborated theory of these things as Lenin does (for example).
There's just no evidence taht Marx ever gave these questions much thought.
He may have had good reasins not to do so, but that's no reason to suppose
that his incredible sophitication in other areas translates to areas where
he had nothing, or virtually nothing, to say.

Now, I am a naive realist about the external world and a naive
correspondence theorist about truth. I have some fairly sophisticated
arguments to back up these positions. But I am, or was, more interested
these questions than Marx seems to have been.

> "Being more engaged with" and/or "knowing more about" need not imply
> understanding better.

Obviously. But there is no evidence that Marx did understand theories of
truth better than Tarksi (or Lenin) or theories of reality better than
Hegel or Richard Boyd or Paul Feyerabend or, indeed, Lenin. 
> 
> As for correspondence, perhaps Justin could explain briefly which
> correspondences he and Marx see as central and why.

Well, I can't tell you what Marx's theory of truth is, because he doesn't
have one. I attribute to him a naive correspondance theory on the basis of
a few scattered remarks that are not elaborated. As to what _I_ think the
C-theory is, it is, as I suggested, a fairly hairy business when you get
into it. Tarski suggested that truth in formal languages can be explained
recusrively in terms of a satisfaction function, such that a proposition p
is true in the language if and only if p, that is, if the state of affirs
p to which the proposition that asserts it is satisfied. This is a lot
easier to make out in a formal language where everything is nicely
regimented, Natural languages are full of wierdness. Donlad Davidson hgas
suggested a way to extend the Tarki program to at least selected fragments
of natural languages, included those involving simple declarative
sentences asserting states of affirs about the external world and which
avoid indexicals ("I"; "here"; "now") and statements about beliefs about
things, among others. These are seriosu limitations, and philosophers of
language have their hands full tryingto account for them. I can suggest
some readings if Hugh is interested. One accessible book is by the
Australian Marxists Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny, called Language and
Reality. 

> It might appear obvious, but have a glance at what for instance Hegel has
> to say about self-consciousness (self-awareness, whatever)

Not the same thing AT ALL.

 in the
> Phenomenology and the obviousness will fade a bit. And what's the
> difference between "thinking" as an object of thought and perception and
> "external reality" as an object of thought and perception? "Thinking"
> appears as a special case of the "external world", not as something
> qualitatively different.

But it's not, really. There is an asymmetry, many actually. The external
world can exist without thinking. Thinking cannot exist without thinking,
for one.

 The processes of thought, like the processes of
> feeling, are imperceptible and hidden to introspection.

True within limits. The mind is not utterly transparent to itself. Our
beliefs about what we think can be wrong, although there's a certain
paradoxical quality in saying this in many cases. Could I be wrong that I
am in pain? Could I be wrong, assuming that I understand the meaning of
the words, in thinking that I think that the cat is on the mat? 

 We can't see our
> own retina, unless we objectify it in some way so we can perceive an image
> of it. Same goes for thought.

A faulty analogy. We see _with_ our retina. Seeing isn't retinizing. We
don't think _with_ our minds; our minds _are_ thinking, there's nothing
else to them.

 Alienation, reification, objectification etc
> are all prerequisites for observing these processes in others and
> ourselves. 

Wha?

Just as objectified arbitrary signs are necessary to hang
> meaning on to in language. 

There's a case to be made--I'm not sure I agree with it--that there is no
meaning independent of language or something like it. I do think that it's
an error to suppose that there are these things, meanings, tow hich we try
to fit our language. In any case, what this has to do with the proposition
taht we can't know our minds better tahn we can know thenature of the
nonmental world I am sure I do not know.

The laws by which it all hangs together, physics
> for external reality, logic for thought, syntax for language, are all
> non-individual non-subjective externally binding regularities.
> 
But knowing our minds is knowing individual things, which we can know
without knowing the laws that govern them. I can know that I spilled the
milk without knowing about fluid dynamics and gravity. Likewise I can know
I think that the cat is on the mat without knowing any cognitive psychology.

> As for the mind being nothing to think about but thinking, I'd imagine
> there's quite a bit to think about in terms of the physical (human and
> social and planetary) environment of mind and its effects, not to mention
> questions of the content and purpose of thinking.

Well, the content of thinking is just thoughts. Purposes are thoughts, or
at any rate mental, as well. Thoughtrs may be physical. I have argued in
print taht they are. But what makes the physical states that constitute
thinking thoughts is not obviously psychological. In any case, knowledge
of the physical realities that underly thinking is like knowing any
general laws that govern a mental or physical process, unnecesasry for
knowing what it is we think  and not necesasrily terribly illuminating for
understanding thinking. If someone were to give the correct physical
description of a process of reasoning, without saying that is what it was,
someone who didn't think about reasoning in those terms would have no
notion that it was a piece of reasoning being described. 

> If there is an assumption here that the mind as such (logic, thought and
> language etc) is a natural object of study, then this is already the result
> of a large-scale long-term process of social validization of various
> abstractions relating to scientific and philosophical pursuits. Not
> particularly obvious, again.

Sure. But that's not what I said was obvious, as you will see if you look
at it again. Anyway, "obvious" is always relative to what we take for granted.

 (Unless Kant is taken to be so axiomatic, and
> his results so incontravertible that anything Kantian is obvious. The only
> remedy for this is to read a few pages (half-a-sentence or so) of Kant
> himself.)

If I may dare to suggest it, I think I am probably better qualified tahn
you to hold forth on Kant. I certainly regard nothing Kant says as
obvious, although some of it might be true. In any event, I don't see why
even if we take everything Kant says to be obvious taht it controverts the
statement you make above. Kant would agree quite heartily with it.

> The first is the obvious one that we can be completely confident that the
> world exists and would exist even without human observers to give it the
> OK.

I thought you were the fellow who said that all truth was just relative to
us and our way of doing things here and now. In fact I agree with the
naive realist position you state here. But let me assure you that there
_nothing_ obvious about it. Not only do I know a lot of sophisticated
realist arguments, I know a lot of sophisticated antirealist arguments.

 It's reality gives humanity the OK, not the other way round. Without
> humanity, however, or more generally without language operating in a
> similar way to human language, there would be no propositions whose truth
> value could be tested.

This might be so. I have in draft a paper I probably will never complete,
however, that disputes it. The basic idea of the paper is that linguistic
propositions might be regarded as having an abstract existence like
numbers are thought to have by "Platonists" about mathematics; if so, the
correspondence realtion between them and the things taht make them true
holds even if no one ever thinks or says them. The underlying idea is taht
even if there were no people or any sentient beings to have a language, it
would still be _true_ that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun.
Still, this view is very controversial. Many of my former colleagues in
philosophy would agree with you, and I am not very confident of my
position in that paper myself.

> The second is that the dangers of barbarism become a lot more
> comprehensible. The destruction of the highest levels of organized human
> endeavour would involve the destruction of the social institutions
> validating such important things as the cultural and scientific conquests
> of humanity.

Well, sure, although I don'ts ee how this relates to our discussion about
reality and knowledge of our own minds.

> Revolutionary Marxists have the perspective of socialism or barbarism.
> Others don't.

Yes.
> 
> For instance, Justin is aware of the risks of barbarism, but since he and
> others of his persuasion think the civilizing institutions that have
> embodied the progress of humanity are dependent on the bourgeois state,
> they defend this state to the last against what he sees as "barbarian"
> Bolshevism.
>
Actually I don't think this. At least I don't think thatcivilization
depends on the bourgeois state, an institution I would like to see
overthrown. As to the choice between Bolshevism and the bourgeois state,
it's rather idle, since Bolshevism is a spent force, no more threat to the
bourgeois state than any other minor religious cult. In the days when
Bolshevism was a thraet to the bourgeois state, in 1917, say, I would
guess that I would probably have thrown in my hand with the Bolshies: it
would have seemed a reasonable bet at the time. If I had somehow been
prescient and known then what we know now, I probably would have ended up
in some libertarian communist grouplet with Pannekoek or some such and
have been excoriated by the Bs or shot by the Stalinists. That's all idle
now, though. Bolshevism has shot its bolt. 

> PS A digression on Latin.
> 
> The Latin was necessary because it reads better. Translation isn't easy to
> make natural.

It's only helpful if you _can_ raed it. Sure, Lucretius was a literary
master. But while  _I_ can read it, who else on the list can? Come on, Hugh,
that's just showing off. 

> Justin should by all means find us a better translation. Or polish up his
> own skills and do us a really good job. But the important thing is the
> *idea* of boundaries falsely staked out and infinite regression.
> 
> Using Latin is also a little nod in the direction of Marx himself, who used
> Latin (and Greek) as easily as most of us use English.

Yeah, well, the benefits of a classical education, thoroughly bourgeois, btw.

 Not that he used it
> to write in, as say Milton and Spinoza did during the first great
> blossoming of the bourgeois revolution (around the English revolution of
> 1640), but to read and think.

In their day, Latin was still the international language of scholars, as
it had been since the early middle ages. Today, English is.

--Justin




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