Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On 10 Jul, 21:18, stephen <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Jun 30, 9:31 am, rab <rogeralanblackw...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > It is only by taking a critical attitude to this 'formalising of
> > dialectics' that we can develop dialectical materialism today but this
> > work doesn't easily fit into the everyday consciousness because in the
> > struggle to grasp even works by Hegel the mind tends to 'formalise'
> > the content in order to understand the logic espoused.  It is
> > necessary to suspend 'judgement' for a time and just follow the
> > 'argument' in the order that this 'content' may stimulate new thought
> > through contradiction.  Whilst the work of some of those soviet
> > philosophers may be useful in presenting the 'bare bones' of
> > dialectical categories and their interconnections it is necessary to
> > understand the 'active' side of dialectics and the fact that it
> > develops through struggle.
>
> I think I may see your point now. In my terms, the "laws" of
> dialectics are permissive rather than prohibitive. A equals A, by
> contrast--like scientific laws--is prohibitive, in that a cannot be
> anything other than A. But is not calling dialectical principles
> "laws," then, somewhat misleading? Human laws may be permissive, an
> application that furnished the idea for this distinction. Natural laws
> are not. Dialectics may be said to be abstracted from nature, but they
> don't describe lawful natural patterns, since such description is
> necessarily prohibitive.
>
> srd

Certainly our understanding of what constitutes a 'law of nature' is
somewhat ambiguous because historically the concepts of law emerged in
what seems to us now in a muddled way with human laws and natural laws
all mixed up.  This process is of course ongoing but I do not regard
the laws of dialectics in the same ways as I would say the laws of
physics.  Dialectics is far more general than natural science and it
relates to our very logic which underpins every other aspect of
scientific reasoning.  Of course, as materialists we see the laws of
logic as derived from the laws of nature but this is a very long and
complicated historical process.  It is also a long and complicated
process to bring together the dialectical laws and the more empirical
laws of natural science.  Engels gave examples and others have
continued his work in the sciences but in many ways it is still in its
infancy.  Soviet scientists and philosophers tried to do this for
decades and with lots of resources but still made only very limited
headway.  Some of it is a start but the real breakthroughs are yet to
come.

As to the dichotomy of prohibitive and permissive laws I believe this
can also be viewed in a dialectical way rather than a Kantian one
which keeps the two opposites as fixed and immovable.

Roger