Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 9, 8:13=A0am, Tom Cod <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The question for me is what background do any of these characters have
> that makes them experts on physics and the philosophy of science?
> advanced degrees in physics, chemistry or biology? =A0peer reviewed
> articles? =A0etc. etc. =A0It just seems that they are spouting forth
thei=
r
> own lay, albiet somewhat educated opinions in the manner of creation
> science experts. =A0As far as "In Defense of Marxism", I recall that
> excellent work which to my recollection dealt with the nature of the
> Soviet Union, not vulgar expositions of philosophy. =A0 It seems to me
> that as is sometimes said about the law, these individuals "know just
> enough to be dangerous" meaning to give a scientific rationalization
> to their views that can sound somewhat convincing-and mystical-to the
> uninitiated.
>
> Engels and Trotsky were great political leaders, not scientists,
> although they, particularly the latter, were influenced by Darwin and
> developments in science which they sought to popularize and defend,
> drawing certain inferences to social history from these conclusons.

On Jul 9, 8:13=A0am, Tom Cod <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The question for me is what background do any of these characters have
> that makes them experts on physics and the philosophy of science?
> advanced degrees in physics, chemistry or biology? =A0peer reviewed
> articles? =A0etc. etc. =A0It just seems that they are spouting forth
thei=
r
> own lay, albiet somewhat educated opinions in the manner of creation
> science experts. =A0

You had written:

"Yeah, while we're at it, isn't a lot of this "dialectics" so much
mumbo-jumbo or bunkum
espoused by theologians, most of whom don't know what they're talking
about except to say that things
can get reaallly complicated or that there is this mechanical process
of conflict between opposites, but if things
don't really turn out the way we thought or we can't explain
something
then it's "dialectical", see, like so much mysticism like the Holy
Trinity or Transubstantiation or some other obscure doctrine we
common
folk need priests to safeguard and explain to us."

I think you were talking about dialectics as used in Marxist political
practice, not _just_ the dialectics of nature. The orthodox position
is that dialectics is politically useful because matter behaves
dialectically. It is the natural assumtion for a materialist, if
dialectics works, it is because dialectics mirrors the material world,
but the natural assumtion isn't always the best assumtion. In fact, it
is just for those situations that the natural assumtion is NOT the
most epistemically warranted that dialectics proves most valuable.

Probably the main reason that has inclined Marxists to think
dialectics are inherent in matter is that dialectical thinking "works"
politically, and the effectiveness of dialectics would be exlained, if
you assume matter itself is dialectical. The dialectics of nature is
something of an afterthought. Engels (who I think was as qualified as
a philosopher of science as anyone) did not comlete or publish his
work on the subject.

The comparison with creation science is inapt, because dialectics does
not pretend to provide a testable scientific theory. On philosophical
matters at the periphery of science, an educated layman can accomplish
much. But to me the untestability of dialectics, the fact that its
laws are permissive rather than prohibitive like scientific laws,
suggests that the notion that matter itself is dialectical isn't quite
right. Trotsky gives the best description of what dialectics is _for_
here (the essay can also be found at
http://www.themilitant.com/1997/6120/6120_32.html):

"Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar thinking in the same way
that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion
picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of
them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the
syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to
bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality.
Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity
into quality, development through contradictions, conflict of content
and form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into
inevitability, etc., which are just as im****tant for theoretical
thought as is the simple syllogism for more elementary tasks... The
fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the fact that it wishes to
content itself with motionless imprints of reality, which consists of
eternal motion. Dialectical thinking gives to concepts, by means of
closer approximations, corrections, concretizations, a richness of
content and flexibility, I would even say a succulence, which to a
certain extent brings them close to living phenomena."

I see "vulgar thought," perhaps to reductively, as the innate starting
point of al cognition. We cognize reality as static and then correct
our picture to bring in motion. Dialectics systematizes the corrective
steps we must take to have a dynamic view. It generates an open-ended
catalog of false assumptions that must be questioned when starting
from the static picture we are innately cursed with as finite beings
and moving toward a truer account. One assumption holds, for instance,
that any trend can be extrapolated indefinitely. The denial of vulgar
evolutionary extrapolation one exression of the interpenetraton of
opposites, or more narrowly, the transformation of things into their
opposites.

Dialectics demands some ontology's underpinning, but that isn't
necessarily simply (undialectically) asserting that the laws of
dialectics apply to matter itself. One underpinning is the truistic
existence of change. But there's little reason why or even as easy way
how the path toward augmenting a static view, to the extent it is
augmentable, would match the laws governing the actual movement of the
universe.

srd