I’m talking about deeply held beliefs you have that many might disagree with here or deem to be incompatible with Marxist ideology. I’m interested because I doubt everyone here is an ideological robot who all share the same uniformity in belief
I’m talking about deeply held beliefs you have that many might disagree with here or deem to be incompatible with Marxist ideology. I’m interested because I doubt everyone here is an ideological robot who all share the same uniformity in belief
This is the best explanation I’ve read of dialectical materialism in natural science (specifically biology): http://ashipunov.me/shipunov/school/books/na_perelome_1997.pdf#page=13
“The so-called dialectical world view is by and large also the world view of the naturalists, as opposed to that of the physicalists. Naturalists have always been opposed to reductionism and to the other physicalist interpretations of the Cartesians. I would not be surprised to learn that Engels got this world view in part from reading the writings of Darwin and of other naturalists. Dialectical materialism was for Engels and Marx a general philosophy of nature. It was achieved primarily by an elimination of physicalism and Cartesianism. Would that be a philosophy of science that fully accounts for the autonomous characteristics of biology? The viewpoint I have presented in my recent book “This is Biology” is that it is necessary to develop the characteristics and principles of the various “provincial” sciences, such as physics and biology, in order to construct eventually a comprehensive Philosophy of Nature, which does equal justice to all sciences.”
You can also read the works cited by Meyr in the essay of Levins and Lewontin. Also, JBS Haldane writing in “Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science”.
Yeah, see, no offense to the comrades who take that view, but that all just sounds like bullshiting and nonsense to me. I guess in this debate i come down on the side of the physicalists. I just don’t see any reason why dialectics should be applied to physics. To me that’s too ad hoc.
Well…we were asked for unpopular opinions for a Marxist and mine certainly seems to fit the bill.
So, take biology as an example. Specifically how we organize organisms into taxonomies. It’s completely inadequate to the task. It’s a lossy heuristic. Dialectics shows us that life interpenetrates in a dialectic relationship. Wherever we see two things, they are actually one unitary complex being artificially divided by human cognition.
We see that in physics as well as we start to understand that particles are not impenetrable billiard balls but in fact are a “one divides into two” phenomenon based on the quantum foam unitary that gives rise to what we call fundamental particles.
Dialectics points us to the fact that reality is not, in fact, a bunch of impenetrable real objects coming into contact with each other but rather that reality is in fact a unitary whole system and that all divisions we conceive of are in fact lossy heuristics.
Eh…no, sorry. I don’t buy that. But as i said, no offense if you believe that. To me that just sounds too much like religious talk.
Wait, what? It is a matter of scientific fact that taxonomies are lossy heuristics. It is the current prevailing theory that fundamental particles emerge from quantum foam. What exactly do you not agree with?
Taxonomies are an attempt to categorize into neat little boxes something that exists on a spectrum. But we need those kinds of boxes. That is how we understand reality. It may be a flawed heuristic but is is very useful and the best we have.
As for fundamental particles, i don’t particularly like the expression “quantum foam”, but yes, according to our current understanding particles are best described as quantized excitations in their respective fields. I know. I took about two years of graduate courses where I had to do a bunch of those calculations, drawing Feynman diagrams, evaluating path integrals, etc. I’m not disagreeing with the facts, i just don’t see what this has to do with dialectics. You’re making a leap of logic that for me just doesn’t follow.
Also i think sometimes people take the language used by scientists to describe nature too literally. I mean have you ever thought about the fact that these are ultimately just models? They are useful for describing reality but they are not necessarily what reality IS. For instance the probability density functions that we use in quantum physics are very accurate at making predictions, but are they really physical? And does it even matter? So long as the models are useful and practical and the math works should we even care?
Do you get what i mean? Reality and the language or the math that we use to describe reality are two different things. My view is that i don’t really care what the actual “reality” is so long as the model works.
Trying to interpret some kind of metaphysical “yin-yang” type duality in everything seems forced and unscientific to me. Maybe there is duality in some things and maybe there isn’t in others. Maybe what we interpret as duality only looks like that because of the way we describe things. Maybe we are seeing what we want to see…“shapes in the clouds” and all that.
Also, why two sides to everything? Why not three? Why not one? What is so special and magical about the number two? Again this all sounds like magical thinking…and it’s just not for me. And i will admit it can be useful at times to look at the natural world through a dialectical lens. But preconceptions can also sometimes blind us…
It’s even more than that they exist on a spectrum, they are constantly changing in relationship with their context. It’s systems theory. Every organism is a system, not an impenetrable entity. Each part of the system is also a system. Each system reacts to and influences its environment. Each species is a collection of systems grouped by subsets of properties of those systems. And those properties emerge from system dynamics. This is dialectical.
Right, again, not impenetrable entities but system dynamics.
Yes, I have. But dialectics are not about metaphysics. Dialectics is a methodology that resists models that propose impenetrable entities and instead requires treating all posited entities as systems in themselves, systems that themselves are composed of systems and participate in systems. It’s all models, dialectics just refuses to rest on models of impenetrable entities bouncing off each other.
The critique is that all models work and don’t work, but only dialectics is a methodology for managing the gaps and boundaries between models. Taking biological taxonomy as an example, the model doesn’t work for a lot of things and there is no alternative model to cover those things well. Dialectics would critique that the first model fails explicitly because it relies too heavily on impenetrable entities. It’s useful, but it has boundaries that dialectics can cross.
That is not what dialectical materialism is. That’s what the Hegelian dialectic is. Dialectical materialism is about causality in a universe qua system.
I don’t think there’s any requirement of “two”. Two is just one more than one. It’s quite clear to everyone that when you decompose a system it is not necessarily two things. Marx didn’t identify only two classes nor only two historical modes of production, etc. Two is easier to think about, it’s used instead of the word “many”.
Because there is only one one, and that is everything, or what we call the universe. If we prove the multiverse, than the one thing is the totality of the multiverse. Essentially, everything that exists is contained in the thing that is unitary. That’s the only logical unitary that exists. Everything is a component of “existence” and existence is a system composed of systems.
I think perhaps the problem is that you’re talking about attempting to do science within the framing of ontological models that posit impenetrable entities, and in this case, you’re correct, using dialectics is very difficult if not impossible. What dialectics does is show us that these lossy models leave gaps between them and that when we dig in further we find that the categories that we assumed are rigid are in fact porous and nothing is actually fitting into the categories except through social agreement. And its dialectics that can support us in navigating between models, developing new models, and critiquing existing models accurately.
I don’t disagree with anything you said there. It’s just that we seem to be working with different definitions of dialectics. Yours seems to be much more broad and all-encompassing. I am just wondering how useful it even is to call it dialectics at that point.
Anyway without getting too sidetracked, i guess what i’m taking from all this is that perhaps i should correct my original point to clarify that what i disagree with is the tendency i have seen from some Marxists to apply the Hegelian dialectic to nature.
Viewing everything in terms of contradictions, of thesis, negation and synthesis, seems unnecessarily restrictive and forced. Your more general take on dialectics in nature being about systems that interact and change is much more reasonable, but also sort of feels redundant…i mean that’s kind of just stating the obvious don’t you think? It’s a bit of a truism.
I actually think that the use of the Hegelian dialectic by Marxists is an error. My first introduction to dialectics was Hegelian but my reading of Mao and many secondary sources has disabused me of what I believe is an error of interpretation. Mao posed the debate as between 1-into-2 versus 2-into-1. 1-into-2 is Spinoza-like: the universe is the only unitary, everything else is part of the universe. You can divide the universe into conceptual parts, but those subdivide and subdivide and interpenetrate. 2-into-1 is Hegelian: there are two distinct things, they interact as wholes and they give combine to become a new thing.
My understanding of Marx and Engels is much better for recognizing these 2 interpretations and interpreting it all through the 1-into-2 lens. 2-into-1 is idealism: the idea that any two things exist in and of themselves, and act upon and are acted upon as units, is a lossy model, an ideal. The reality is the unitary whole of the universe and we divide the 1 into 2 when we examine it. Anything we choose to analyze can be broken down into contributory parts, and is itself a contributory part to a larger scope of concept until you get all the way up to the universe.
Mao made it clear with class analysis: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat do not exist as billiard balls that meet in a social context and come into conflict. Instead, humanity divides itself into groups in many ways that interpenetrate and we can conceptualize yhe emergence of classes of people that are useful for explaining the dynamic of systems.
I don’t think this a truism. I think this sort of thing has been hotly debated by philosophers for millennia. We’re talking about a debate that pits Aristotle against Deluze. It’s far from obvious, but I do think that if you’re steeped in systems theory, contemporary science, and Marxism, it might seem sort of obvious.