In a message dated 30/06/2004 11:04:18 GMT Standard Time,
gottlos752004@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Hi Gary!
Nice to see you back. I am sorry to heat that you have been ill - I trust
that you are as fit and well as you consider to be bearable in this funny old
life of ours? I have edited and transcribed your interesting piece: PRACTICE
MAKES THE ONLY PERFECTION Part 1 to both websites — it can be viewed at:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/practice01.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/practice01.htm)
I have a few comments below:
PRACTICE MAKES THE ONLY PERFECTION Part 1
When I have been sick for a while and finding it hard, as I slowly regain
concentration, I often go to Marxist texts to restart any interest in
philosophy because they always deal with undeniably important matters.
Jud:
The strange thing for me about Marxism or materialism in general for that
matter, is the absence of an 'official' ethical framework. What societal
concerns we have seem [and Christians often claim it to so] to spring from the
Christian tradition which has affected and infected us all. For example the 10
commandments below are fine and dandy for a Christian, but what if is an
unbeliever — why should we abide by such a series of rules? My own feeling is that
the 10 commandments, whilst they have a religious force behind them merely
reflect the sensible wishes of any human being of whatever persuasion who
wishes to live in a society free from constant strife and chaos. In that way, any
non-religious society would generate such laws as a matter of course. OK the
first three commandments are juvenile and a spurious load of old crap, but
the rest are essential for a stable society I would have thought.
The commandments number 6 and 9 don't seem to bother so-called Christians
like President Bush and the vomit-inducing Tony B-liar either
(1) "You shall have no other gods besides Me.
(2) "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
(3) "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
(4) "Six days you shall labour and do all your work,
(5) "Honour your father and your mother.
(6) "You shall not commit murder.
(7) "You shall not commit adultery.
(8) "You shall not steal.
(9) "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
(10) "You shall not covet you neighbour's house, etc.
Gary:
I also start dabbling with my coin collections because money, however it is
interpreted, is always the most serious indicator of ‘presuppositionless’
value whether as indicator or as undeniable value in itself. In fact, even as
indicator, as such it always remains stable whereas any indicated object
changes with practical situation or with mood. It also serves to illustrate Lenin’
s necessity of accepting materialism as something an “educated” or “sane”
person would do by “instinct”.
Jud:
This has struck me that way too - I don't have any 'intellectual respect'
for people who are not materialists - although I make 'like' them on a social
level and consider them friends.
Gary:
Anyone truly ignoring the value of money in all of their situations, I think
would legitimately be classified as insane or having despaired to the point
of or beyond suicide as I have written about Nietzsche. It fulfils what I
think is one of Lenin’s very most important philosophical statements about the
necessity of accepting materialism: “Materialism clearly formulates the as yet
unsolved problem and thereby stimulates the attempt to solve it, to
undertake further experimental investigation” (46). Money solves problems, all and
any kind of problem at least at some stage.
I made this statement first to make perfectly clear my commitment to
materialism, a commitment that Lenin so ardently evokes. The actual background
bringing out this comment is the impressively clear declaration of Marxism that
the main fundamental legitimate philosophical debate is only between the only
two truly self-consistent philosophies, subjectivist idealism and objectivist
materialism.
Jud:
I go further as you know — for much of materialist verbiage contains
abstractions which are reified into quasi-objects in a similar way that the loony
Heidegger carried on in his Fascist Alice in Wonderland.
Gary:
The main problem I have with Lenin, a productive problem in him, though,
because he maintains his insistence in a genuine dialogue with other thinkers
that does, on the one hand, bring out the real contradictions in idealism
while, on the other hand, implicitly but clearly showing what he is wanting to
force on the reader: a complete rejection of subjective idealism as a whole
which, as a whole, he undeniably accomplishes but while using an idealist
standard of ‘absolute certainty’ in an illegitimate way because he wants total
commitment when his own observations and even explicit declarations have rejected
any "certainty” as “absolute”.
Jud:
All demagogues and rhetoricians [including myself] carry on like this. I
mean attempt to impose their interpretation of the world upon others. This
entails an engagements with those who hold differing views, for it is a waste of
time trying to convince the already convinced. That is why I keep away from
materialist lists — what's the point of constant agreement? People are either
repelled or attracted to someone like Lenin or Heidy/Hitler who come across
as being absolutely certain that they are right. The only thing 'certain' or
'true' in this world is of course that that which exists as what is known as a
stone — exists as a stone.
Gary:
Sartre points out part of the problem in Engels as a confusion of
abstraction with induction (31). Induction is the strength of the science Lenin holds
so highly in value. But induction is a gradual accumulation of knowledge piece
by piece which undeniably necessitates a materialist premise.
Jud;
That is what I call experientialism which I see as a prudent combination of
both. Reasoning from detailed facts to general principles and then [carefully]
deducing from the general to the particular.
Gary:
Induction has nothing in common with abstraction as the grasping of a whole
as any ‘undeniable reality’, which Lenin in detail recognizes but is far too
impatient not to use abstractions to make overall ideological points as if
absolutely certain laws of nature when in fact such ‘laws’ are accumulations
of facts revealing great areas of ignorance, a fact Lenin backhandedly
acknowledges.
Jud:
A general jettisoning of abstraction would be fatal. As I keep telling a
certain person on the heidy lists - Nominalists haven't got a 'down' on
abstraction
and employ it as a tool of convenience like anybody else — it's just that we
don't like to see ideas being reified into quasi-objects [abstract
objects]and used like real nouns - which is what the curse of religion and evil of
transcendentalism does.
Gary:
Lenin’s main endeavor, in MATERIALISM AND EMPIRICO-CRITICISM (1908) is to
demonstrate there can be no intermixture of subjective idealism and objective
materialism.
Jud:
I don't accept that — the arts, poetry — literature — being in love are too
important to me.
Gary:
He does demonstrate the absurdity of some basic premises of idealism,
destroying it as an ideological competitor to materialism, but also demonstrates
the insufficiency of his view of materialism. Idealism as an ideology needs a
subjective world of “the great I” versus an unknown external world.
Jud:
IMO that is the way 'nature' created us - ME FIRST means survival and a
chance of the DNA being passed on.
Gary:
That is adequately taken care of by NOT approaching objects as whole
realities but as accumulative accounts of experience that is never complete and
never absolutely certain because new knowledge could always be discovered that
will fundamentally change the concept of the object.
Jud:
This depends on the 'object' - Whilst it's fine to approach insensate
objects and even most of the biomass in this way — human beings are objects too and
one has to proceed with a certain amount of trust or you would have no
meaningful relationships at all — and meaningful relationships are [for me] what
makes the world bearable.
Gary:
And in such a situation, there are going to be factual observations that
propose problems that may possibly never be solvable so that there cannot be any
‘absolutely certain’ sense that all problems presented in the materialist
conception can be solved.
Jud:
I believe differently, and I am quite confident that a TOE [theory of
everything] will be discovered before I die. I hope that religion will just wither
away then or crawl into a corner somewhere and masturbate itself to death.
Gary:
All real knowledge is finite, therefore every solution of a problem is only
a solution in process, knowledge of any and every thing is always incomplete.
Jud:
You are right here Gary. Though I still believe that the physical questions
of the universe are answerable — and having been finally answered will REMAIN
answered. As to the other multitude of inter-human and societal problems
Yes, I agree — they'll go on for evermore.
Gary:
This is actually what motivated idealism – the ability to put all local
unsolved problems within fields or Ideas of certainty. It fails ingloriously in
doing that, but leaves the problem for materialism that the skepticism of
Descartes first put to the philosophical consciousness that certainty resides in
the self because the ‘self’, regardless of what it really is, regardless
whether it is an atomic whole or swarms of elements, is the only place of the
certainty of perception. The perception is certain as much as the certainty it
is always my point of view, and that materialistically I can deduce that all
other people share the same general situation and yet materialistically can
never share actual perception but only relative coincidence of experience.
Jud:
As you know - I don't believe that the 'self' or consciousness,' or any of
that old-fashioned stuff exists.
I only accept 'that which is conscious' and 'that which is capable of being
selfish' or referring to itself as 'myself' as existing.
Gary:
Sartre sums up the problem, “If dialectical reason is to be possible as the
career of all and the freedom of each, as experience and as necessity, if we
are to display both its total translucidity (it is no more than ourself) and
its untranscendable severity (it is the unity of everything that conditions
us), if we are to ground it as the rationality of praxis, of totalisation, and
of society’s future, if we are then to criticize it as Analytical Reason has
been criticized, that is to say, if we are to determine its significance,
then we must realize the situated experience of its apodicity through
ourselves the experience of the dialectic is itself dialectical: this means that it
develops and organizes itself on all levels. (39)
Jud:
For me 'apodicity' means that which exists and can be demonstrated ['proved'
to exist.
Gary:
Idealism arose because it identified a real problem but cannot succeed as an
over all ideology whereas materialism can include partial, specific elements
of idealism to maintain its own materialistic continuity. That this was
identified early on is found in Marx and Engls debate with Max Stirner in THE
GERMAN IDEOLOGY where in their private correspondence concluded Max Stirner’s
position of absolute idealism as self was, though impractical, logically
unassailable in itself.
MERE OFFHAND NOTES
History is an accumulation that can either build up quantity or be torn down.
Jud:
For me that which existed may be referred to as History [an account of what
used to exist], and that which didn't exist wasn't and isn't anything at all
but hot air.
Gary:
Marx, Engels and Lenin believe in a historical progress and therefore
materialist providence. They believe in “higher” states of matter and that the
purpose of philosophy is the development of “change”.
Jud I agree there too.
Gary:
Lenin believes the materialist philosophy sets up scientific problems that
cannot be dealt with in idealism.
Jud:
I have never met a Heidyite yet who can hold a candle to materialism.
Idealists haven't got a dialectic leg to stand on.
Gary
Materialism is a standard to judge education and mental health.
Jud:
Unless you live in some of the loonier states of America who insist on
teaching creationism.
Gary:
It is something obvious and instinctual. However, he regards idealism as the
only other serious and self-consistent philosophy whose main weakness is
that it ends up as “the great I” or solipsism. Lenin refuses to believe
idealism has any sort of valid standpoint because it either must resolve in
solipsism or a God to support any notion of existence. The explanation of temporal
development from the past into the present situation such as the development of
conscious matter from unconscious matter can only have a valid ground in
materialism. He repudiates an abstract line of causality for a dialectic of
action that is able to reconstruct from the present situations before the present
that explain how things came to be the way they are in the present.
Jud:
I disagree with lenin here. Communism doesn't bring with it a disregard of
self and brotherly sacrifice — it merely introduces new types of social strata
— self perpetuating and oligarchic. My own observation of communism during
my many visits to the Soviet Empire and the 'Iron Curtain' states was that
everybody treated everybody else like shit.
Gary:
Lenin’s handling of Berkeley is excellent but extremely disappointing when
coming to Hume whom he uses as a straw man, ignoring even the problem he finds
in Huxley’s book as to whether he can even be classified as materialist or
idealist.
Jud:
I feel 'cumfy' with Hume and acknowledge his as probably the most
progressive of all philosophers — yet he didn't quite make it — he was not a
nominalist.
Gary:
Lenin here violates his own position that only by going back to and going
thoroughly through the classic thinkers of idealism can you understand the
blunders of modern thinkers who mix their categories illogically. Even more
embarrassing, Lenin ignores Hume’s actual career that is highly relevant to Marx’
s own development. Both start out as primarily philosophers but soon give up
philosophical endeavors as their primary aim and take on politics, economics,
and history as their major concerns for the rest of their lives. Many
scholars are disappointed in Hume that he did not continue to produce philosophical
texts, but I find it very plain in reading the later Hume those materialist
concerns outweighed in importance any philosophical endeavor he could
possibly get involved with, that is, politics, economics, and history WERE the
legitimate continuation of what his actual philosophical endeavor truly was
Jud:
As usual gary your text is penetrating, relevant and a pleasure to read.
Glad you are back with us and I hope you stay that way!
regards,
Jud.
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gottlos752004@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Hi Gary!
Nice to see you back. I am sorry to heat that you have been ill - I trust
that you are as fit and well as you consider to be bearable in this funny old
life of ours? I have edited and transcribed your interesting piece: PRACTICE
MAKES THE ONLY PERFECTION Part 1 to both websites — it can be viewed at:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/practice01.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/practice01.htm)
I have a few comments below:
PRACTICE MAKES THE ONLY PERFECTION Part 1
When I have been sick for a while and finding it hard, as I slowly regain
concentration, I often go to Marxist texts to restart any interest in
philosophy because they always deal with undeniably important matters.
Jud:
The strange thing for me about Marxism or materialism in general for that
matter, is the absence of an 'official' ethical framework. What societal
concerns we have seem [and Christians often claim it to so] to spring from the
Christian tradition which has affected and infected us all. For example the 10
commandments below are fine and dandy for a Christian, but what if is an
unbeliever — why should we abide by such a series of rules? My own feeling is that
the 10 commandments, whilst they have a religious force behind them merely
reflect the sensible wishes of any human being of whatever persuasion who
wishes to live in a society free from constant strife and chaos. In that way, any
non-religious society would generate such laws as a matter of course. OK the
first three commandments are juvenile and a spurious load of old crap, but
the rest are essential for a stable society I would have thought.
The commandments number 6 and 9 don't seem to bother so-called Christians
like President Bush and the vomit-inducing Tony B-liar either
(1) "You shall have no other gods besides Me.
(2) "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
(3) "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
(4) "Six days you shall labour and do all your work,
(5) "Honour your father and your mother.
(6) "You shall not commit murder.
(7) "You shall not commit adultery.
(8) "You shall not steal.
(9) "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
(10) "You shall not covet you neighbour's house, etc.
Gary:
I also start dabbling with my coin collections because money, however it is
interpreted, is always the most serious indicator of ‘presuppositionless’
value whether as indicator or as undeniable value in itself. In fact, even as
indicator, as such it always remains stable whereas any indicated object
changes with practical situation or with mood. It also serves to illustrate Lenin’
s necessity of accepting materialism as something an “educated” or “sane”
person would do by “instinct”.
Jud:
This has struck me that way too - I don't have any 'intellectual respect'
for people who are not materialists - although I make 'like' them on a social
level and consider them friends.
Gary:
Anyone truly ignoring the value of money in all of their situations, I think
would legitimately be classified as insane or having despaired to the point
of or beyond suicide as I have written about Nietzsche. It fulfils what I
think is one of Lenin’s very most important philosophical statements about the
necessity of accepting materialism: “Materialism clearly formulates the as yet
unsolved problem and thereby stimulates the attempt to solve it, to
undertake further experimental investigation” (46). Money solves problems, all and
any kind of problem at least at some stage.
I made this statement first to make perfectly clear my commitment to
materialism, a commitment that Lenin so ardently evokes. The actual background
bringing out this comment is the impressively clear declaration of Marxism that
the main fundamental legitimate philosophical debate is only between the only
two truly self-consistent philosophies, subjectivist idealism and objectivist
materialism.
Jud:
I go further as you know — for much of materialist verbiage contains
abstractions which are reified into quasi-objects in a similar way that the loony
Heidegger carried on in his Fascist Alice in Wonderland.
Gary:
The main problem I have with Lenin, a productive problem in him, though,
because he maintains his insistence in a genuine dialogue with other thinkers
that does, on the one hand, bring out the real contradictions in idealism
while, on the other hand, implicitly but clearly showing what he is wanting to
force on the reader: a complete rejection of subjective idealism as a whole
which, as a whole, he undeniably accomplishes but while using an idealist
standard of ‘absolute certainty’ in an illegitimate way because he wants total
commitment when his own observations and even explicit declarations have rejected
any "certainty” as “absolute”.
Jud:
All demagogues and rhetoricians [including myself] carry on like this. I
mean attempt to impose their interpretation of the world upon others. This
entails an engagements with those who hold differing views, for it is a waste of
time trying to convince the already convinced. That is why I keep away from
materialist lists — what's the point of constant agreement? People are either
repelled or attracted to someone like Lenin or Heidy/Hitler who come across
as being absolutely certain that they are right. The only thing 'certain' or
'true' in this world is of course that that which exists as what is known as a
stone — exists as a stone.
Gary:
Sartre points out part of the problem in Engels as a confusion of
abstraction with induction (31). Induction is the strength of the science Lenin holds
so highly in value. But induction is a gradual accumulation of knowledge piece
by piece which undeniably necessitates a materialist premise.
Jud;
That is what I call experientialism which I see as a prudent combination of
both. Reasoning from detailed facts to general principles and then [carefully]
deducing from the general to the particular.
Gary:
Induction has nothing in common with abstraction as the grasping of a whole
as any ‘undeniable reality’, which Lenin in detail recognizes but is far too
impatient not to use abstractions to make overall ideological points as if
absolutely certain laws of nature when in fact such ‘laws’ are accumulations
of facts revealing great areas of ignorance, a fact Lenin backhandedly
acknowledges.
Jud:
A general jettisoning of abstraction would be fatal. As I keep telling a
certain person on the heidy lists - Nominalists haven't got a 'down' on
abstraction
and employ it as a tool of convenience like anybody else — it's just that we
don't like to see ideas being reified into quasi-objects [abstract
objects]and used like real nouns - which is what the curse of religion and evil of
transcendentalism does.
Gary:
Lenin’s main endeavor, in MATERIALISM AND EMPIRICO-CRITICISM (1908) is to
demonstrate there can be no intermixture of subjective idealism and objective
materialism.
Jud:
I don't accept that — the arts, poetry — literature — being in love are too
important to me.
Gary:
He does demonstrate the absurdity of some basic premises of idealism,
destroying it as an ideological competitor to materialism, but also demonstrates
the insufficiency of his view of materialism. Idealism as an ideology needs a
subjective world of “the great I” versus an unknown external world.
Jud:
IMO that is the way 'nature' created us - ME FIRST means survival and a
chance of the DNA being passed on.
Gary:
That is adequately taken care of by NOT approaching objects as whole
realities but as accumulative accounts of experience that is never complete and
never absolutely certain because new knowledge could always be discovered that
will fundamentally change the concept of the object.
Jud:
This depends on the 'object' - Whilst it's fine to approach insensate
objects and even most of the biomass in this way — human beings are objects too and
one has to proceed with a certain amount of trust or you would have no
meaningful relationships at all — and meaningful relationships are [for me] what
makes the world bearable.
Gary:
And in such a situation, there are going to be factual observations that
propose problems that may possibly never be solvable so that there cannot be any
‘absolutely certain’ sense that all problems presented in the materialist
conception can be solved.
Jud:
I believe differently, and I am quite confident that a TOE [theory of
everything] will be discovered before I die. I hope that religion will just wither
away then or crawl into a corner somewhere and masturbate itself to death.
Gary:
All real knowledge is finite, therefore every solution of a problem is only
a solution in process, knowledge of any and every thing is always incomplete.
Jud:
You are right here Gary. Though I still believe that the physical questions
of the universe are answerable — and having been finally answered will REMAIN
answered. As to the other multitude of inter-human and societal problems
Yes, I agree — they'll go on for evermore.
Gary:
This is actually what motivated idealism – the ability to put all local
unsolved problems within fields or Ideas of certainty. It fails ingloriously in
doing that, but leaves the problem for materialism that the skepticism of
Descartes first put to the philosophical consciousness that certainty resides in
the self because the ‘self’, regardless of what it really is, regardless
whether it is an atomic whole or swarms of elements, is the only place of the
certainty of perception. The perception is certain as much as the certainty it
is always my point of view, and that materialistically I can deduce that all
other people share the same general situation and yet materialistically can
never share actual perception but only relative coincidence of experience.
Jud:
As you know - I don't believe that the 'self' or consciousness,' or any of
that old-fashioned stuff exists.
I only accept 'that which is conscious' and 'that which is capable of being
selfish' or referring to itself as 'myself' as existing.
Gary:
Sartre sums up the problem, “If dialectical reason is to be possible as the
career of all and the freedom of each, as experience and as necessity, if we
are to display both its total translucidity (it is no more than ourself) and
its untranscendable severity (it is the unity of everything that conditions
us), if we are to ground it as the rationality of praxis, of totalisation, and
of society’s future, if we are then to criticize it as Analytical Reason has
been criticized, that is to say, if we are to determine its significance,
then we must realize the situated experience of its apodicity through
ourselves the experience of the dialectic is itself dialectical: this means that it
develops and organizes itself on all levels. (39)
Jud:
For me 'apodicity' means that which exists and can be demonstrated ['proved'
to exist.
Gary:
Idealism arose because it identified a real problem but cannot succeed as an
over all ideology whereas materialism can include partial, specific elements
of idealism to maintain its own materialistic continuity. That this was
identified early on is found in Marx and Engls debate with Max Stirner in THE
GERMAN IDEOLOGY where in their private correspondence concluded Max Stirner’s
position of absolute idealism as self was, though impractical, logically
unassailable in itself.
MERE OFFHAND NOTES
History is an accumulation that can either build up quantity or be torn down.
Jud:
For me that which existed may be referred to as History [an account of what
used to exist], and that which didn't exist wasn't and isn't anything at all
but hot air.
Gary:
Marx, Engels and Lenin believe in a historical progress and therefore
materialist providence. They believe in “higher” states of matter and that the
purpose of philosophy is the development of “change”.
Jud I agree there too.
Gary:
Lenin believes the materialist philosophy sets up scientific problems that
cannot be dealt with in idealism.
Jud:
I have never met a Heidyite yet who can hold a candle to materialism.
Idealists haven't got a dialectic leg to stand on.
Gary
Materialism is a standard to judge education and mental health.
Jud:
Unless you live in some of the loonier states of America who insist on
teaching creationism.
Gary:
It is something obvious and instinctual. However, he regards idealism as the
only other serious and self-consistent philosophy whose main weakness is
that it ends up as “the great I” or solipsism. Lenin refuses to believe
idealism has any sort of valid standpoint because it either must resolve in
solipsism or a God to support any notion of existence. The explanation of temporal
development from the past into the present situation such as the development of
conscious matter from unconscious matter can only have a valid ground in
materialism. He repudiates an abstract line of causality for a dialectic of
action that is able to reconstruct from the present situations before the present
that explain how things came to be the way they are in the present.
Jud:
I disagree with lenin here. Communism doesn't bring with it a disregard of
self and brotherly sacrifice — it merely introduces new types of social strata
— self perpetuating and oligarchic. My own observation of communism during
my many visits to the Soviet Empire and the 'Iron Curtain' states was that
everybody treated everybody else like shit.
Gary:
Lenin’s handling of Berkeley is excellent but extremely disappointing when
coming to Hume whom he uses as a straw man, ignoring even the problem he finds
in Huxley’s book as to whether he can even be classified as materialist or
idealist.
Jud:
I feel 'cumfy' with Hume and acknowledge his as probably the most
progressive of all philosophers — yet he didn't quite make it — he was not a
nominalist.
Gary:
Lenin here violates his own position that only by going back to and going
thoroughly through the classic thinkers of idealism can you understand the
blunders of modern thinkers who mix their categories illogically. Even more
embarrassing, Lenin ignores Hume’s actual career that is highly relevant to Marx’
s own development. Both start out as primarily philosophers but soon give up
philosophical endeavors as their primary aim and take on politics, economics,
and history as their major concerns for the rest of their lives. Many
scholars are disappointed in Hume that he did not continue to produce philosophical
texts, but I find it very plain in reading the later Hume those materialist
concerns outweighed in importance any philosophical endeavor he could
possibly get involved with, that is, politics, economics, and history WERE the
legitimate continuation of what his actual philosophical endeavor truly was
Jud:
As usual gary your text is penetrating, relevant and a pleasure to read.
Glad you are back with us and I hope you stay that way!
regards,
Jud.
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