Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 11:46:08 -0500 (EST)
From: "Chris M. Sciabarra" <sciabrrc-AT-is2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Negri, Spinoza


On Fri, 16 Feb 1996, J Laari wrote:
> Duality of ('known') attributes isn't a sign of dualism, because 'under' 
> these attributes is fundamental monism of substance. There's difference 
> between duality and dualism. 

	Yes, it is true that there is a difference between duality and 
dualism.  But there is also a difference between dialectical approaches 
and MONISM.  Monists usually accept the distinctions made by dualists, 
but often reduce one of the poles of an opposition to an epiphenomenon of 
the other pole.  This is most true of reductionist monists.  The 
reductionists express the basic "stuff" of the universe in terms of a 
single attribute.  There are also "neutral monists" who argue that there 
is one basic "stuff" in existence of which the mental and the physical 
are attributes.  And there are many different variations between these 
positions.  
	I think that often, debates about what constitutes the ultimate 
"stuff" of the universe are unnecessarily cosmological.  Quite honestly, 
science simply doesn't know yet, what the ultimate "stuff" is, and for 
that reason, it is a scientific question primarily, rather than a 
methodological one.  

> > Philosophy is a struggle between materialism and idealism  -- the
> > distinction between materialism and idealsim is basic to philosophy and
> > cannot be abandoned. The ideal/material opposition, on the other hand, is
> > idealist, and for Marxists, must be abandoned. 
> There's nothing idealist in it.
> Besides, let's not call it opposition, but distinction: distinction 
> between ideal and material.

	This is true... it is not an opposition.  But thought of in 
dialectical terms, it is an organic unity, an internal relationship.  
Simply put, the ideal-material opposition is a by-product of the 
Cartesian (and earlier, the Platonic) opposition of mind and body.  Such 
a dualism is not within the realm of possibility for those in the 
dialectical (and earlier, Aristotelian) traditions -- who argue that 
there is an inseparability between the mind and corporeality.  And just 
as the mind itself functions through the senses, so too, the body is 
deeply influenced by the mind.  There is an internality here, such that 
one cannot be fully understood apart from the other.  

					- Chris
=================================================Dr. Chris M. Sciabarra
Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Politics
INTERNET:  sciabrrc-AT-is2.nyu.edu
http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc


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