Abstraction Part Two: Science On The cheap
This Part of Essay Three has been written and re-written more times than any other; the first half of it still contains far too many mixed metaphors and stylistic monstrosities. I am in fact experimenting with new ways of expressing ideas that have been raked over countless times in the last 2400 years by traditional thinkers.
It will require many more re-writes before I am happy with it; so the reader's indulgence is needed here even more than elsewhere.
Readers will also need to make note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final view on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.
If you are viewing this with Mozilla Firefox you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.
This Essay is over 48,000 words long; a summary of its main ideas can be found here.
Quick Links
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections:
(1) The Traditional Approach To Abstraction
(a) Dialectical Traditionalism
(b) How Not To Solve A Problem
(c) Empiricism And The Anthropomorphic Brain
(e) How Not To Solve Insoluble Problems
(f) Intelligent Ideas Versus The Little Man In The Head
(2) More Problems For Dialecticians
(a) Induction And The Social Nature Of Knowledge
(c) Reality: Abstract, Concrete -- Or Both?
(d) Collective Error Over General Terms
(3) Abstractionism -- Bury It, Or Praise It?
(a) Public Criteria Versus Private Gain
(b) Particular Problems With Dialectical Generality
(a) Does Reality Contradict Appearances?
(i) Contradictions Supposedly Generated By Science
(ii) The 'Contradiction' Between Science And 'Commonsense'
(iii) 'Contradictory' Capitalism?
(b) Adrift In A Sea Of Appearances
(i) Are All Appearances 'False'?
(ii) Dialectics Goes Into Auto-Destruct Mode
(c) Why Science Cannot Undermine Common Sense
(i) Ordinary Language Confused With Common Sense
(ii) Why Scientists Cannot Afford To Undermine Common Sense
(a) 'Mental Strip-Tease'
(b) Do Scientists Use Abstraction?
(ii) The Young Marx And Engels
(iii) Ollman's Traditionalism
(6) Notes
(7) References
Abbreviations Used At This Site
In this Part of Essay Three, traditional answers to the 'problem' of generality and their deleterious effects on DM will be critically examined. In addition, the distinction between "appearance" and "reality", which dialecticians have also inherited from traditional thought, will also be subjected to hostile scrutiny.
[DM = Dialectical Materialism; DL = Dialectical Logic.]
The Traditional Approach -- Rationalism And Original Syntax
As Part One of this Essay showed, and as Part Two will confirm, beyond superficialities, dialecticians bought into the traditional view of abstract 'general' ideas.
Radical they are not.
In Metaphysics, reference to abstract 'general' ideas was intimately connected with the so-called 'problem' of "Universals".1
Rationalist Philosophers tended to argue that general words/concepts were either anterior to experience or were apprehended (somehow) by means of generalisations drawn (or "abstracted") from, or even applied to, an unspecified number of particulars (i.e., individual objects of a certain sort) given in experience. The concepts so derived -- or deployed -- were supposed to represent the formal or 'essential' properties of these (and all such) particulars -- qualities which the latter either instantiated, or in which they were said to "participate".
Naturally, this made material objects seem less 'real' than the abstractions that lent such objects their substantiality, or which constituted their "essence". Because of this, the general (the rational) came to dominate over the particular (the material) in all subsequent thought in the Rationalist tradition.
Hence, in view of the fact that such abstractions were ideal objects -- i.e., they were abstract particulars --, this meant that reality was essentially Ideal. The material world was thus a shadow world, not fully 'real' and governed by contingency and brute fact. The rational structure that lay 'behind' appearances was the real world, and that world was accessible to 'thought' alone. If general terms constituted the essence of material objects, then the latter were only material because of the Ideal Particulars that underpinned them. This meant that material reality was only real because it was in effect ideal, too -- an abstraction in its own right. [We will see Engels and Lenin express similar ideas (in Essay Thirteen (summary here))].
To be sure, Descartes believed there were two substances, Mind and Matter, but it soon became apparent (in the work of Spinoza, and in a different way in that of Leibniz -- and later still that of Hegel), that there was, on this view, really only one rational/real substance: Mind. All else was merely part of 'appearances', and hence 'accidental' or 'ephemeral'.
This approach, which particularises general terms, has in different guises, dominated Western thought --, and now dialectics --, for 2500 years. Its logical conclusion, in the work of Leibniz or Hegel (and their latter-day disciples) merely underlines the claims made in these Essays: that all ancient, medieval and early modern forms of traditional Philosophy are Idealist. And as we will see, this approach to generality has spread its tentacles to all subsequent traditional forms-of-thought --, so much so that it is quite clear that all areas of traditional Philosophy (Metaphysics) are thoroughly Ideal.1a
The "ruling ideas" invented by Greek thinkers thus found a new home in these novel Bourgeois surroundings, albeit with fresh content to mirror the new social and economic conditions.
Moreover, even when this 'theory' is flipped "upside-down", in DM, material reality still remains secondary, derivative, dependent and not fully real. The material world, as see by dialecticians, requires the rational principles encapsulated in DL to give it life and form.
As the Book of Genesis noted, in an Ideal world it takes the word of 'God' (or something analogous) to give life and form to matter; without it, all would be lifeless and chaotic:
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.... And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God called the firmament Heaven.... And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so...." [Genesis Chapter One, verses 2-11.]
In like manner, the 'dialectical Logos' is required not just to add form to formless matter, but to call it into existence (from 'Nothing'), to give it life and make it move. Matter, even for DM-fans, is not sufficient to itself.
Because of this, it is not possible to find a single physical correlate in nature for the abstractions dialecticians use --, and since these form the essential nature of material beings, the essential nature of physical objects must be Ideal, too.
And that is why the dialectical "flip" is no flip.
Furthermore, and worse: over the last 150 years, dialecticians have signally failed to say what they think matter is (the very most they will say is that it is an 'abstraction'(!) -- on this see Essay Thirteen, (summary here)), which is no surprise given the above.
In that case, it is hardly surprising either to find that DM-theorists have had to denigrate ordinary material language, and thus the experience of ordinary workers (branding it as 'commonsense'/'formal/'limited' -- aping a tactic perfected by ruling-class theorists), in order both to 'justify' their adoption of ideal Hegelian concepts and to make their theory 'work', and the world hold together. This is why they defend it so vehemently, and so emotively. [These accusations will be substantiated in Essay Twelve (summary here), and in Essay Nine Part Two.]
As we will discover throughout out this site, this reliance on traditional thought has created serious problems for dialecticians; it also helps explain why they all slip into a priori dogmatics at the drop of a copula --, and why one and all fail to notice when they have done it.
Moreover, as indicated above, their 'upside-down Idealism' holds the material world to be less real than the Ideal world that lends it its substance, and which determines what DM-theorists consider "concrete".
And now we can see why: for dialecticians material objects are only "concrete" in the Ideal limit. But since that limit is forever unattainable, this means that for DM-theorists there are in effect no concrete objects or processes!
How Not To Solve A Problem: Double It
Nevertheless, as Aristotle himself pointed out (in reference to Plato's Theory of Forms, in the so-called "Third Man Argument"), it is not a good idea to try to solve one's problems by immediately doubling them.
Hence, if there is a difficulty explaining the connection between particulars given in experience, there is surely a more intractable one accounting for the alleged link between these newly constructed abstract Universals and the particulars that supposedly instantiate them. Worse still, this alleged link merely connects material particulars with a something 'we-know-not-what' (i.e., these invented 'Universals'), which resides in a mysterious world anterior to experience, and hence inaccessible to it.1b
Thus, if an abstract term is required to account for the similarities that exist between particulars, then a third term would plainly be needed to account for the similarity between that abstraction and those particulars themselves. Otherwise the connection would not be rational, just fortuitous, undermining the whole point of the exercise.
Clearly, the addition of this new term, which was aimed at accounting for the latter connection, only re-duplicates the original problem. This is because questions would naturally arise over the link between this third term and the other two items it was introduced to connect.
Abstract Universals 'exist' in an Ideal realm, and they thus have connections with particulars in this world that are of a different sort from those that material particulars enjoy among themselves. Plainly, this just leaves the abstract side of this family of 'solutions' shrouded in total mystery.
Hence, if a Universal/Concept C1, say, is required to account for the common features shared by objects A and B, then a new Concept C2, a third term, will be required to account for the connection between C1 and A, and between C1 and B, and so on. The whole thing thus threatens to inflate into an infinite regress, leaving nothing explained.
Of course, it could be argued that since C1 belongs to a different category (to either A or B), the above argument is misconceived.
Well, it would be if 'Universals' and 'Concepts' had not already been turned into abstract particulars (or the names thereof) by the syntactical dodge exposed in Part One of this Essay. But, because theorists have been engaged in doing precisely this since ancient Greek times, Aristotle's point (suitably adapted) applies to every single theory in this tradition. Because of this dodge, 'Universals' and 'Concepts', as they feature in traditional thought (and in DM), cannot be general; they are particulars of a rather peculiar sort.
Hence, the question arises: which new general term is there that now links these material particulars with those abstract particulars?
This is one of the reasons why this 'problem' had to be addressed in the way it was in Part One of this Essay, which was aimed at exposing the crass syntactical error that lay behind it -- wherein predicate expressions were transformed into the names of abstract particulars. To be sure, Aristotle himself half spotted this problem (as we have seen), but the logic he developed was not sophisticated enough to account for it, and he ended up making the same sort of mistake in his early version of the identity theory of predication.
On the other hand, if the aforementioned "third term" (i.e., C2) is superfluous, if a new general term is not needed to connect abstract with material particulars, then it is not easy to see why particulars themselves need a second term (the Universal, or C1) to relate them to one another, to begin with. This is especially so if that 'general term' cannot do the job assigned it because it was earlier transmogrified into particular itself!
But, if objects in material reality do indeed relate to one another without abstract intermediaries, or if speakers manage to do this in other ways, what need is there for such abstractions?
[As we will see, in a later Essay, ordinary human beings (workers) solved this 'problem' long ago --, or rather they totally ignored it, since it isn't a problem.]
Alternatively, if the relation between Universals and Particulars is not one of resemblance (i.e., if C1 does not resemble A or B), then the relation between each particular and its Ideal 'exemplar' is entirely mysterious. If Universals and Particulars do not resemble each other, how can they possibly be connected, or how could the one connect the other?
Indeed, it is far from easy to see what a Universal could provide a particular that the latter could not supply itself -- and that worry is not helped when it is recalled once more that in traditional thought, Universals were depicted in ways that deprived them of their generality (once more: as we saw in Part One of this Essay).
Descent Into The Metaphysical Abyss
Unfortunately, this ancient logical error has passed down the centuries to later generations of traditional theories, as this ancestral fall from linguistic grace traduced the entire population of flawed 'solutions' that have descended from it by unnatural selection --, including that found in DM, the theoretical runt of this class-compromised litter.
Empiricism And The Anthropomorphic Brain
Philosophers of a more worldly and empiricist frame of mind approached this 'problem' from a different angle; they held that general terms were 'constructions' of some sort, cobbled together by the mind. [But notice, this also implied that the 'mental' came first -- mind holding primacy over matter.]
In fact, the mind was somehow able to 'apprehend' the common elements supposedly shared by particulars given in experience (which manifested themselves internally as "ideas", "impressions" or "sense data" -- and of late, as 'qualia').
Minimal agreement aside, such theorists tended to be divided over whether universal terms were genuine features of reality or were just a by-product of an overactive mind --, indeed, whether they were empty words and thus perhaps just "useful fictions".
As things turned out, it mattered not, for on this view general words were once again demoted and transformed into 'mental particulars' (i.e., they were the names of ideas in the mind or of processes in the brain). Even though Berkeley saw the need to escape from this theoretical cul-de-sac, his 'solution' merely sank the empiricist tradition deeper into the same old idealist quick sands.
Unfortunately, there were other problems over and above those that had been bequeathed to empiricist thought as a result of the syntactical sins of their philosophical forebears: if 'general' ideas were in fact particular to each mind (and, on this view, they had to be such, for no two individuals shared the same mind), they could not be general -- even in theory! This was all the more so if the empiricist process of abstraction created yet more abstract particulars, just as earlier forms of the same bogus exercise had done in ancient and medieval thought.
In that case, the empiricist tradition was quite happy to maintain and then elaborate upon these ancient misdemeanours. In that case, this particular class of "ruling ideas" (i.e., abstractions) merely colonised another set of willing brains.
To explain: assume thinker T1 has formed the allegedly general idea G1, and thinker T2 forms the 'same' general idea G2 of supposedly the 'same' things. Now, in order to say of these 'general ideas' (G1 and G2) that they were indeed ideas of the same things (or were the same general idea), a third term will be needed to connect them (i.e., because in that case G1 and G2 would presumably both be exemplars of the same general idea, say, G), so that it could truly be said that these two were instances of the same 'concept'. But, this falls foul of Aristotle's objection, which means that every solution in the empiricist tradition suffered from the same fatal defects that blighted those dreamt up by the Rationalists.
Naturally, this not only made it impossible for all traditional thinkers to account for human communication, representation and learning, it also emptied generality of all content, undermining the whole point of the exercise. [How the latter undermined the former will be examined briefly below, but in more detail in a later Essay.]
Of course, it could be objected that such ideas had intentional generality built into them --, whereby their inventors intended they should refer to general features of reality, But, as should seem obvious, 'intentional generality' is likewise trapped in its own little solipsistic universe, since it is itself a particular.
[To see this, just replace "intentionally general idea G1" with "G1" itself, and the rest follows.]
Naturally, this is just another way of saying that intentions cannot create generality any more than wishes can make beggars ride.
Moreover, simply gluing the word "general" onto the word "concept" (as perhaps part of the above 'intention' to refer to a "general concept") would merely saddle prospective users of that word with a term born of the same defective logic, for the phrase "general concept" is yet another particular --, or, at least, it is the title thereof.
In fact, any attempt to derive generality from the atomised conceptual fragments that (on this view) must now exist in each individual mind will always hit the same material brick wall: abstraction merely creates the names of abstract particulars --, whoever it is that indulges in the black art, and whenever it is practiced.
Fortunately for materialists, the logic of predication (in ordinary language) has already fixed the result --, and there is no leave to appeal its judgement. [Again, this was established in Part One of this Essay.]
It could be argued that inter-communication is not threatened by empiricist forms of abstractionism, since communication with others is not just possible, it is actual (because, manifestly, people can and do share their ideas).
But this response itself runs aground almost immediately. This is because it reproduces Aristotle's original problem -- only now greatly magnified. It is an even worse idea to multiply one's difficulties by a factor of several billion -- right across the entire human race -- in an endeavour to account for generality by an appeal to the abstractions forged and now trapped in each socially-atomised brain.
[To see this, just replace the "G1" above with "Gn", where "n" takes on every value from 1 to 6 billion, or more.]
In that case, we would not just have the two theorists mentioned above with their two supposedly general ideas, we would have billions of minds with countless individual ideas to interconnect.
To be sure, such a strategy is futile because any explanation of how the particular ideas of general terms located in separate heads actually resembled the same general features of reality they are supposed to express/mirror, or even the same particular ideas of these alleged general terms located in any one else's head, would each require its own linking term, on the lines detailed above. Accounting for these would, of course, make squaring the circle look rather easy in comparison, since this Herculean task would simply create yet more abstract particulars, locked in the individual mind of anyone foolish enough to try.
Hence, a 'general' silk purse cannot be made out of this atomised pig's ear.
So, in struggling to get out of the metaphysical quicksand, the trapped Philosopher only sinks in deeper. Given their view, Abstract Particulars loom out of the shadows at every turn, as more and more are required to account for the last batch they conjured into existence. And since none of them is capable of evolving into a higher general form on its own, this approach to knowledge/ontology simply creates a potentially infinite series of abstract dead ends.
Just as ancient rationalist ideas can be traced back to Aristocratic notions held and propagated by ancient Philosophers (concerning the 'natural' hierarchical (or divine) order underpinning the Universe, but ideologically linked to the need to justify social stratification and inequality), the origin of more recent Atomist theories of Universals can be linked to the rise of modern Bourgeois 'democracy', with its characteristic emphasis on "possessive individualism".
If this new social order was meant to be democratic (but only "within certain limits"), and based on the fabled Bourgeois Individual, then private ownership in the means of mental production made eminent good sense.
The fragmentation introduced into society by the development of Capitalism was thus mirrored in the analogous dissolution of the Universal into its particulars, now dispersed across countless million isolated bourgeois heads.
Just as Capitalism freed workers from the land, Empiricist Philosophy freed ideas from their formerly 'oppressive'/hierarchical Platonic Forms; the old ontological pecking-order crumbled as new market conditions took hold.
However, the justification of undemocratic power, and the need to rationalise these newly emerging class relations, meant that theorists had to concoct novel ways of conceptualising reality, in order to protect property.
As we will soon see, in this respect Empiricism could not cut mustard. A fresh wave of rationalist thought was needed to provide the unification the Bourgeois Nation State required, and to account for its sovereignty. The ideas of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel were thrown into the breach, as new waves of boss-class theory emerged from this latest batch of ruling-class hacks.
Even so, just as workers still got screwed in the new market economy (only now in novel ways), general ideas were likewise shafted (but in the same old way).1c
Once more, this turn to Rationalism was to no avail; the ancient fragmentation of general ideas cannot be reversed whoever tries to do it. Indeed, as the fabled soldiers found with respect to Humpty Dumpty, once in pieces, general concepts are impossible to put back together again.2
No surprise then that despite the many pretensions to the contrary, this 'modern' clutch of theories found it equally impossible to account for the very thing they had been invented to explain: generality.
If generality is simply an aspect of the mind's operation (and not a feature of 'things-in-themselves' -- as some rationalists claimed) --, it was far from easy to see what it was about each particular idea of the general in each individual head that made it general, or even appear to be general, now that one and all had been shipped-off and incarcerated in separate bourgeois skulls.
Given this 'modern' account, there would be nothing but individual ideas loosely tied together in ways that became increasingly difficult to fathom, floating about in each socially-atomised mind. At a minimum, even a general idea like that (i.e., that which apparently concerns "every individual", and seeks to tell us what is in his or her head) was, on this theory, itself devoid of any clear sense. If Philosophers could not explain generality (because they had killed it long ago), then they had no way of accounting for its appearance, or lack of it, anywhere else --, either in the general population, or in their own attempts to theorise about it in their own heads. How exactly is it possible to speak of "every head" with anything other than empty words if generality has been done to death?2a
As already noted, each abstract idea might indeed be accompanied by an unexplained term precariously attached it -- i.e., the word "general" glued-on (as in "general idea") --, but, if all meaningful words in circulation have to be backed by genuine mental bullion (i.e., cashed-out in terms of "ideas" in the mind, as this family of theories consistently claimed), then a phrase like "the general idea of..." would still be a particular to whoever thought it, whatever incantations had been uttered over it.
[The definite article, of course, gives the game away.]
As we saw in Part One, the words Philosophers used in this context were all abstract particulars, and as such their feigned generality meant that they were little more than epistemological 'promissory notes' -- of little real value if there was nothing in the bourgeois vaults to settle these ever-mounting 'semantic debts'.
Thus it was that several more centuries of a priori, abstract 'science-on-the-cheap' followed, this time backed not even by printed currency, but by yet more empty words.
Of course, to imagine otherwise (i.e., to imagine that the particular word "general" -- or any other term for that matter --, is quite up to the task of creating generality all of itself) is tantamount to thinking that words can determine, or project, their own meanings right across semantic space (with this feat miraculously coordinated from brain to brain), as if they were autonomous agents. But unaided, as a mark on the page --, or even as an "idea" in the head --, the individual word "general" seems entirely incapable of unscrambling this very real metaphysical egg.
On the other hand, if general ideas actually do represent "things-in-themselves" (that is, if there are indeed "real universals" somewhere in existence, which 'correspond' to general words supposedly about them), it would surely prove impossible to explain either term --, as we will now see.
If each general idea/word refers to something, somewhere in reality, in Platonic heaven or Hegelian Hell, it could only do so as a name, or as name surrogate. In which case, as we saw in Part One, general ideas/words would not now be general, just particular.
Even if they were each grandiosely re-christened as a "General Name", one and all would stubbornly remain humble particulars (in this case, a particular phrase, for reasons outlined above). No matter what was done to each particular instance of the word "general", it would prove quite incapable of escaping from the atomised dungeon into which it had been cast.
Hence, if each bourgeois mind had its own individual idea of a given general name, one that was particular to each, then the universality post-Renaissance theorists sought would remain elusive forever, fragmented in the heads of all who wanted to play this futile game.
The bottom line is, of course, that if anything general is capable of being named, it cannot be general, it must be particular.
As is the case with virginity, once lost, generality cannot be restored.3
How Not To Solve Insoluble Problems
Empiricists attempted to solve this 'problem' by wisely diverting attention from it: they invented an irrelevant 'mental' capacity, an ability the 'mind' allegedly had of being able to spot "resemblances" between the ideas and impressions the senses sent its way.
But, once again, Aristotle's objection rears its annoying head: if there is a problem over the existence of such resemblances in the outside world, it is a bad idea to retreat from the real into the Ideal in an attempt to resolve it. Indeed, if this process takes place only in the 'mind', the difficulty the theory sought to resolve in external reality will now simply resurface in an occult form -- and in a completely intractable realm -- since an inner process of this sort would be beyond either objective or subjective confirmation.4
Generality thus driven inwards, is even more difficult to coax out of its individualist shell.5
Platonic Realism, Aristotelian Conceptualism and Bourgeois Empiricism (along with a host of other metaphysical doctrines) all run aground on these unyielding particularist rocks.
By way of contrast, the words we use in ordinary material language express generality (with ease) when left to social agents to breath life into them. However, they soon lose their semantic vitality when replaced by lifeless abstract singular terms, invented by work-shy 'thinkers' with more leisure time on their hands than is good for anyone.6
However, by placing all the emphasis on an individual's apprehension of generality (howsoever engineered), theorists found they could only explain it by re-employing it surreptitiously elsewhere.
This unfortunate turn-of-events arose largely because traditional Philosophers tended to conceive of this 'problem' epistemologically. The logical fall from grace that created the original difficulty for Greek thinkers (explained in detail in Part One) was simply ignored, only now it became buried under centuries of irrelevant psycho-babble. And it largely remains entombed there to this day.
As Empiricists conceived things, if experience presents the mind with particular ideas, then generality must be cobbled-together from whatever resemblances the 'mind' notices in each alleged exemplar. This made the whole 'problem' seem one of recognition, as if the fragmented contents of the mind were like the faces of long lost friends who wandered fortuitously into the same room, in strict order.
Friends one can recognise; but how could anyone recognise an idea they had never seen before?
Worse: if not one of these impromptu 'visitors' resembled the next without the use of the very general terms this 'theory' was meant to explain.
No good doing a Police photo-fit.6a
Anyway, given this family of theories, general terms had to be distilled painstakingly from a manifestly finite batch of examples, and those that serially confronted each lone abstractor/observer in random order.
But, if each lone 'mind' is to extrapolate successfully from the few particulars that fortune tossed its way, then, in order to create the relevant abstract general ideas, these each atomised fragment would have to be coaxed out of its lonely shell, and given a radical make-over.
In order to do that, the 'mind' would have to re-connect these inner atoms (these 'ideas') with others of the 'same sort', using whatever similar features it noticed in each. But, not only does this make it hard to explain how any two abstractors could ever form the same idea of anything, it makes the whole process dependent on similarity.
However, this new twist simply introduced yet another general idea through the back door, while failing to explain either the general or the particular that had just slipped out the front. If two things are similar then plainly this must be with respect to some feature they hold common, which feature (of necessity) cannot itself be another particular (or it would not be held in common).
Nevertheless, just as theologians discovered with respect to their ideas of the Trinity (in, for example, the Athanasian Creed: "Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance"), so empiricists found with regard to their fragmented ideas of generality: it was impossible for them not to confound the particular without dividing the Universal.6b Hence, if each individual shares exactly the same universal of resemblance (say C1, from earlier), then that term must be particular to that individual. The general, having thus been dispersed over the entire flock of trainee abstractors, cannot now fail to partake of their fragmented nature.
Conversely, if the re-distribution of generality has not been carried out in a perfectly egalitarian manner, the relevant individuals would not be collected under the same general term, shared equally between all.
On the other hand, if generality is shared equally, it would be hard to tell individuals apart.
And how might either of these be accurately ascertained across an entire population of lone abstractors? No good doing a Gallup poll.7
In that case, the choice between confounding the individuals, or dividing the substance plagued Empiricists (and Rationalists), as it had done Trinitarians -- and for the same basic reason, since all these doctrines had been sired by the same batch of ancient errors.
[All of which helps explain the continual oscillation in traditional Ontology between Monism, Dualism and Pluralism.]
Intelligent Ideas Versus The Little Man In The Head
However, if the 'ideas' of particulars are to be sorted correctly (reputedly, because they partake of the same general term/concept), a prior grasp of general words in public use is plainly required. Without this pre-requisite, inter-subjective 'objectivity' is an empty notion.
That is, of course, just another way of saying that ideas cannot be expected to sort themselves neatly into groups, since they have neither the wit nor the motivation to do so. They clearly need regimenting.
In the age-old battle between the One and the Many, the Many have always proved to be too rebellious to marshal themselves in strict order, and the One too Ideal to crack the whip.
But, if this task is achievable -- and if 'objectivity' is to be preserved --, then principles external to the said (Many) ideas must be found to lend the mind (the One) a helping hand.
Care in the community of ideas was never more needed than here. And yet, if the latter is to become more than a fragmented heap of conceptual dust (that is, if there is in this bourgeois community of ideas no such thing as "society", to paraphrase Mrs Thatcher), such care must be sought elsewhere.
However, as seems plain, the above sortal principles cannot be self-explanatory, nor can they be self-regulatory. If they were either of these, then there would seem to be no reason why particular ideas could not troop unaided in like manner into the right metaphysical categories -- certifying their own inter-subjective resemblance without an inner drill-sergeant on hand to whip them into shape.
On the other hand, if ideal principles such as these are capable of self-activation, and are entirely autonomous, why this cannot be true of the ideas they supposedly seek to corral would be no less mysterious.
Alternatively, once more, if all ideas are self-regulating, and self-disciplined, that would remove the need for a 'Mind', with its attendant goons, to do the regimenting.
Clearly, the first option would see the 'mind' as a sort of drill sergeant (thus anthropomorphising it); the second would put it out of work with a compulsory redundancy notice.
[There are echoes of both of these in Cognitive Psychology and Behaviourism, of late.]
Of course, Empiricists claimed that the 'Mind' was somehow capable of extrapolating beyond sets of particulars to general ideas. This handy 'solution' left unexplained how this "extrapolation" could be carried out without the 'Mind' already having some notion of the general to guide it.
And where on earth might that notion come from?
Nevertheless, if particulars must be corralled by the 'Mind' into the correct sortal groups, there seemed to be only two ways this could come about:
(A) The first involved an appeal to specific 'mental faculties' (these days called "modules"), which all novice abstractors supposedly possess -- mental "bodies of armed men", as it were -- to do the marshalling.
Bourgeois Ideas born free would everywhere have to be put in chains.
(B) The second appealed to the "natural properties" that ideas and/or "concepts" were suppose to have, which meant that they could regiment themselves 'voluntarily' into the right sortal categories with no outside assistance.
This was the mental equivalent, perhaps, of an Anarchist Utopia.
Taking each in turn:
(A) One version of this alternative postulated the existence of so-called "innate ideas" of resemblance 'programmed' into the mind, activated or guided either by the "laws of thought" or the "natural light of reason".
[Its modern analogue has these 'hard-wired' into the brain as a sort of "transformational grammar" or "language of thought."]
An older version of this theory saw these innate ideas capable of enabling each aspiring abstractor to classify particulars under the relevant general terms. Naturally, that seemed to place this option in the Rationalist camp, and perhaps because of this, the temptation became irresistible to push the source of these innate principles back into the mists of time -- spruced-up of late with a handful of neo-Darwinian fairy-tales.
If so, original syntax is based on Genetics, not on Genesis.8
Other versions of (A) were not even remotely Empiricist: these were to be found in the Leibnizian/Kantian/Hegelian tradition, for example.
Nevertheless, each variant shared the same fundamental premiss: abstract concepts or ideas were alive and well, and were either living in a skull near you -- or were camped out nearby in 'objective' reality, waiting to be enlisted (presumably, by merely being 'thought-about').
Even more convenient: although abstract ideas were held to be real, they also transcended actual or possible detection by any real or imagined materially-based technique -- rather like the gods of yore, once more. And, as was the case with the latter, such abstractions underpinned, or even created reality.
In fact, on this view abstract ideas were more real than material objects, which were themselves merely contingent beings hardly fit to mention in such ideal company.
But clearly, since abstractions had been named, they must exist; linguistic reification in fact made them SuperReal (since they were somehow above and beyond unreliable 'appearances'), in order to match the Superscientific truths they supposedly contained -- and this doctrine was helpfully programmed into some of our predicative sentences (but, alas, only in an Indo-European tongue).
Science-on-the-cheap like this has dominated practically all forms of abstract thought since Greek times -- it is indeed a ruling ideology.
(B) The second of the above options implied that ideas 'naturally' coalesced of their own 'free will', as it were, into their 'correct' sortal groups. But, if ideas are capable of assembling themselves into classes under their own steam, this suggested that they possessed some sort of 'natural herding instinct'. Clearly, in order for them to congregate together correctly, such ideas must either (B1) possess an intellect of their own, or (B2) obey other natural/logical laws of some sort.
As far as (B1) was concerned, ideas were presumably not only capable of 'recognising' those of like kind, they were bright enough (and political enough) to flock together with no further ado. This implied that they were able to 'detect' the resemblances they shared with others of their sort -- which surely meant once more that such naturally 'intelligent' ideas were really surrogate minds, skilled at identifying their own close 'mental relatives' correctly and unerringly.
Alternatively, spontaneously gregarious ideas like these were 'programmed' to behave as if they could act this way.
In short these two sub-options (of B1) collapsed into the belief that: (a) Minds were thus little more than incarnate ideas; or, (b) Ideas were just minds writ small.
The first of these options found secure lodging in Leibniz's own mind (whether it was his idea, or he was programmed to think it was, is unclear) -- wherein everything in reality is 'really' composed of pre-programmed, inter-reflecting 'minds' (or "Monads").
The second, in a much grander form (and no doubt out of spite), parasitized Hegel's brain; there Mind was self-developing Idea, the Supreme Controller of this Metaphysical Mystery Tour. To be sure, Hegel certainly thought he was the engineer of his own ideas, but if he was right, he was just the oily rag.
In connection with (B2) above, the idea seemed to be that natural 'laws' operating on the contents of the 'Mind' could account for their regimentation in strict battalion order. Once again, this merely reduplicated the very problem it was meant to solve, for this meant that an externalised will ran both the inner and the outer universe, as everything in this unified Mental Cosmos obeyed orders. as if one and all were law-abiding citizens.
Clearly, in order for something to be capable of obeying orders it must be intelligent (otherwise, the word "obey" must change its meaning), But, in like manner, this must apply to 'inner ideas' supposedly governed by 'the laws of thought'. They weren't simply the passive occupants of the human brain, but active citizens in this, by now, internal cosmic/cognitive state. In that case, the inner Microcosm once again mirrored the outer Macrocosm (and vice versa), as mystics continually remind us.
Small wonder then that traditional accounts of causation (and of physical law) are shot through with anthropomorphism, mysticism and animism of this sort, and can only be made to work if inappropriate modal terms (like "necessity" and "must") are press-ganged into service.8a
Naturally, this in turn suggested that 'objective laws' and the objects that 'obeyed' them were just a reification of the subjective mental capacities and dispositions of the one indulging in all this armchair reification.9
Conversely, this implied that the human mind was intelligent because the universe was -- which conclusion itself was just a reflection of the mangled Logic, used to mirror the thoughts of the superhuman alter-ego that allegedly ran the entire show, which we met in Part One.
In this scheme of things, not only was the Real Rational, and the Rational Real, there was in fact only the Rational. Either or both readily collapse into both or either Subjective or Objective Idealism -- depending on the determination and inner fortitude of the one inducing that collapse.
In short, each of these options had to anthropomorphise the brain, the outside world -- or both -- in order to work.10
Yet More Problems For Dialecticians
These attempted 'solutions' to these bogus philosophical 'problems' ("bogus" because in the West, they were based on a class-motivated misinterpretation of a tiny section of Indo-European grammar, as was pointed out in Part One, but detailed in Essay Two) created two further difficulties.11
Oddly enough, both of these re-surface in a modified form in the DM-account of abstract ideas.
Induction And The Social Nature Of Knowledge
The first of these later came to be known in traditional Philosophy as "the problem of induction", wherein the theoretical possibility is raised that future contingencies in nature might not readily fit the conceptual straight-jacket the 'mind' had prepared for it.12 If the mind is capable of experiencing only a limited range of exemplars (from which it has to cobble-together its general ideas), subsequent experience could always refuse to play ball, metaphysically rebelling, as it were.
In that case, the future might not resemble the past in any meaningful sense. Not only might the Sun not rise tomorrow, but cats could refuse to walk about on mats, and annoyingly turn into them. Worse still, fire might no longer burn books on Metaphysics, as Hume had hoped, but write them --, and Hegel might even begin to make sense.
Of course, some philosophers thought it possible to neutralise such sceptical conclusions if the mind could find a way to gain direct knowledge of 'abstract' ideas (or real universals, or general concepts, etc.), which were fully capable of regimenting the contingencies of nature, so that the future was guaranteed to resemble the past.
But, in order to control such potentially rebellious events/ideas, something a little more convincing than Locke's Social Contract, or Hume's laughably feeble habitus, was called for. Ancient Greek ideas about the ordered Cosmos, a limited Whole --, devised at a time when an Aristocratic theory like this seemed to make some sort of sense to ruling-class theorists --, did not translate well into this fragmented bourgeois world, one threatened daily by such unruly material particulars.12a
In such surroundings, not only must controlling concepts/abstractions be robust enough to run things behind the backs, as it were, of their producers (these traditional theorists), they must exist prior to, and be independent of, experience -- or suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune themselves.
Initially, for supposedly "crude materialists", at least, it wasn't easy to account for the source and effectiveness of disciplinarian concepts like these -- those that would countenance no dissent, past, present or future. The rescue for materialists (if such it may be called) arrived from an unexpected source: German Idealism. But more specifically, and even more revealingly, this 'rescue' was a just convoluted Germanic version of ancient Greek Hermeticism.
The Seventh Cavalry had thus arrived in the nick of time, but it was, alas, blowing a very indistinct note, possibly none at all. Errol Flynn replaced by Esoteric Flannel.
The supporters of Epistemologically Imperialist Utopias, wherein every infant idea is a wanted infant idea, are forced to conjure up super-concepts with enough metaphysical clout to control things with an iron hand (aka, "natural necessity", "conceptual-", or "ontological-necessity"), otherwise the semi-house-trained ideas that the senses send their way might revolt, and set up their own Anarchist Collective, where fire cools, fish sing and Dialectical Marxism is a ringing success.13
Such concepts, laws and principles would therefore have to be logical (or quasi-logical) -- or indeed 'dialectical' --, if they were to exercise sufficient control over the future to make sure that every single idea/object was assigned to the correct general term, or 'obeyed' the right law, and never stepped out of line.
As noted earlier, every free-born bourgeois idea was now clapped in chains. The 'free market' revolution in ideas was over; this rationalist takeover was a veritable Thermidor for these infant bourgeois 'ideas'.14
One question remained: How could something, even as powerful as a 'logical principle', guarantee that future contingencies will always 'obey' orders? Surely such principles are particulars themselves if they merely reside in individual minds?
Clearly, such 'logical principles' could only coral unruly ideas/particulars if they themselves controlled the future and were thus intelligent -- if, they existed in reality, and if they were those very ideas in self-development. Thus was sundered the distinction between Mind and Matter -- control of future contingencies thus became an aspect of self-control, self-discipline for these self-developing concepts, or this evolving 'Mind'.
Indeed, these concepts controlled the future because they controlled themselves, and with a glitzy new logic, a dialectical logic, to go with it -- one that was itself based on a displaced metaphor about how arguments edge toward their conclusions. This new logic laid down the law, and everything in nature had to bend the knee in its direction.
Law was thus compatible with freedom: these ideas were free because they were a law unto themselves.
Rousseau thought he could justify social control in this way, but only with this Ideal Thermidor behind him. Similarly Hegel found his own ideas controlled his own thought by projecting social being internally: so, for him, what had once been the product of the relations between human beings (argument and dialectic) now controlled thought, and thought ran the world.
On this basis, Feuerbach got things completely the wrong way round; Hegel's 'God' is the projection of humanity inwards, not outwards, as he supposed. Our ideas thus 'reflect' the world --, but only if we allow this god-soaked logic to take over the development of our thought.
However, this 'solution' merely created another problem, soon to be born. If autocratic principles of this sort are required to control unruly material reality and our ideas about it, and knowledge is still dependent on frail human cognition, then this doctrine cannot fail to undermine itself. Indeed, if order could be restored only by anthropomorphising reality and our ideas about it, then that anthropomorphisation cannot fail to self-destruct.
The Owl of Minerva, in that case, takes flight too late, for it is Xmas, and Owl is on the menu.
Hence, if external human beings cannot be relied on (i.e., if the material language they invented is untrustworthy, and their experience unreliable --, suspicions that originally prompted this 'theory'), then these 'inner human beings' (these self-developing ideas) and their shadowy internal relations (modelled on their outer cousins), must be equally, if not more, suspect.
If normal, material human beings cannot be trusted not to rebel, then what confidence can we place in these inner spectres?
This worry arises because it is a difficult enough problem to account for the social nature of knowledge in the individual case, but it becomes completely intractable when generalised to take account of the innumerable minds supposedly able to perform the same trick, and arrive at the same conclusions, from their limited experience and finite stock of ideas.
Not only is it conceivable, it is probable that every amateur abstractor, and every Hegel scholar, is playing a different dialectical tune in their socially-atomised heads, and from different song sheets, but they could all be performing this abstract musical under the direction of a totally different conductor in each case -- i.e., their own individualised and quintessentially bourgeois mind.
The problem we met earlier (connected with the fragmentation brought about by the market economy) simply re-surfaces here; the bourgeois psyche disunited will, it seems, never be re-united.
So, in the realm of ideas alone, it proves impossible to undo the earlier bourgeois revolution in epistemology. If each of us has to abstract away in our socially-atomised heads, then there can be no socialised knowledge, and no shared ideas.
This helps account for the last 200 years of failed theories of knowledge to add to the previous 2200. [Read on for the reasons...]
Nevertheless, in one way, the individual was able to strike back and dwell among us: this time disguised as a dialectical guru, for only he/she (originally in the shape of Hegel himself) was 'qualified' to interpret the necessary development of thought, and thus the course of history for the benefit of the rest of us benighted souls.14a
Nevertheless, on this view, no matter how robust the metaphysical coercion operating inside each individual brain, coordinated knowledge across a whole population would be nigh on miraculous --, unless imposed on all by the will of the Leader. For not only would each lone abstractor not have access to the ideas of any other, they would have no way of checking if they were prodding their own ideas in the same direction, and in the same way -- or even with the same instruments --, as anyone else.
In this free market in ideas, Adam Smith's invisible hand cannot leave even so much as a smudged fingerprint. On the contrary, a very visible mailed fist, belonging to the Dialectical Magus (sometimes in the shape of Gerry Healy, at others, that of Mao -- or even the Great One Himself, Stalin), is required to maintain epistemological order.
However, the fact that inter-subjective agreement actually takes place countless times everyday in ordinary life, suggests that this fanciful bourgeois picture is wildly inaccurate. Indeed, once the daily requirements imposed by the material world on all socially-active agents are factored in, this myth falls apart faster than a WMD dossier.
This is not just because it is highly unlikely that each mind will form the same general idea of the same objects and processes from its disparate but limited stocks of data -- which is problematic enough in itself in view of the fact that no two people share exactly the same experiences or draw the same conclusions from them. It is because appropriation of the word "same" reproduces the very same difficulties by involving an idea that looks suspiciously general in itself. If no two minds can check another's 'similarities', howsoever dialectically orthodox they are, then there is no way that a social process could even begin. This is because questions would naturally arise as to whether the 'same' ideas of anything (abstract, particular, concrete, general, or even dialectical) had actually taken root in separate minds -- and these worries would persist until it had been established whether or not the mind of each enquirer had the 'same' ideas about the word "same", let alone about anything else.
And how on earth might that be accomplished for goodness sake?
However, given the 'dialectical' view of identity, this problem cannot even be stated, let alone solved. The peremptory rejection of the LOI returns now to haunt DM-epistemology; by confusing a logical issue with an epistemological red-herring, the DM-quest for knowledge is trapped forever in this solipsistic dungeon.
[LOI = Law of Identity.]
This is because it has yet to be explained how any two dialectically-distracted minds could frame the same general or particular ideas about anything -- even before the dialectical bandwagon begins to roll --, or how a check could be made that either one of them had accomplished this correctly, or not. And this is not so much because none of us has access to the minds of any other novice abstractor, but because it has yet to be established what the word "correct" means, or whether one and all understand it the same way, and corectly!15
Once more: how on earth might that be accomplished?
Moreover, it is unclear how even this minimal worry (about the generality of general ideas) may be communicated without making use of the very same notions that originally required explanation: generality, and the application of the LOI as a rule of language.16
More problematic still: how might it be ascertained whether or not the same ideas about anything (whether they be abstract, concrete, general, or particular) had been inherited correctly from former generations of pioneer abstractors? Without access to a time machine, mind probes -- and a prior grasp of the very things they had supposedly bequeathed to us (i.e., general ideas) -- no one would be able to determine the accuracy of a single item belonging to this allegedly common inheritance.
But, on this account, no start could be made building knowledge. Not only would this intentional edifice have no foundation, no two prospective labourers would have the same plot of land to work on, the same plan to guide them, the same materials to factor in -- or even the remotest idea about what could count as the same brick. [Except, of course, by sheer coincidence.]
This is because (to change the image) dialecticians unwisely threw their hand in before the cards were even dealt -- for they are the ones who deny that anything could be exactly the same as anything else (except in the most tenuous and abstract of terms).
This means that, based on the strictures dialecticians place on the material application of the LOI, no two people could have the same general (or particular) idea about anything -- ever. Nor could they even have the same idea about approximate identity (so that anyone could conclude that their ideas only roughly coincided with those of anyone else; if the dread word "same" cannot be the same in two minds, the phrase "approximately the same" stands no chance), nor would anyone have a handle on partial or total disagreement -- or about anything else inside or outside the mind -- no matter how dialectically-sound its derivation might seem to some.
Worse still, no dialectician would or could have the same (or approximately the same) general (or particular) idea as he or she once entertained about anything, so that they could say even of their own opinions that they were so much as approximately stable from moment to moment.
In that case, the process of abstraction itself cannot even begin.
[It should hardly need pointing out, abstraction cannot make a start where there is nothing common to abstract, or no shared concepts to work with from moment to moment, or no 'law of cognition' that remains the same from second to second. (The 'relative stability' response is pulled apart in Essay Six.)]
In this way, the theory of abstraction not only destroys each and every dialectical proposition (this was argued in detail in Part One of this Essay), the entire project strangles itself before birth -- just as it helps mangle the thought of anyone foolish enough to give it so much as the time of day.
Of course, that is why an earlier claim was made (at the end of Part One) that the assumed activities of heroic ancestral abstractors cannot have taken place, since no sense can be made of the possibility that they had.
In that case, this 'theory' does not even make the starting grid.
The above points might be regarded by some as a grossly unfair misrepresentation of DM. As TAR notes:
"…[A]ll science 'deductively anticipates' developments –- what else is an hypothesis tested by experimentation?" [Rees (1998), p.131.]
This appears to contradict the claim made above that DM-epistemology cannot cope with future contingencies. If scientists actually use abstractions -- and legitimately so -- why can't DM-theorists do the same? And why can't they project their ideas into the future in like manner (especially if these are subject to constant check)?
Even though the assumptions underlying this particular query are themselves questioned in other Essays posted elsewhere at this site, their overall legitimacy will not be challenged here. However, it needs pointing out that based on DM's own principles this neat picture would only work if reality itself were Ideal. This is because, even if the author of TAR were correct that science "'deductively anticipates…' developments", it could only do so if reality already had an underlying logical structure, and nature was 'externalised thought', no different in form from that posited by Objective Idealism. [Why this is so seems pretty obvious (but reasons for concluding this were given at the beginning of Part One of this Essay), and this topic will be examined in more detail in Essay Twelve (summary here).]
As Part One showed, the motivation to try to extrapolate from finite, 'partial' knowledge to infinitary conclusions was originally prompted by an ideologically-motivated, but syntactically inept interpretation of general words as the names of abstract particulars. To compound this error, such abstractions were then projected back onto a sort of 'shadow-reality' which supposedly underpinned the material world, and yet was more real that the physical universe.
However, as far as dialecticians are concerned, buying into this tradition completely compromised their epistemology. This is because the above moves are based on a limited set of linguistic malapropisms, and not on evidence derived from the sciences.
Worse still: as Part One also showed, this move destroys the capacity language has for expressing anything whatsoever -- particular or general.
Indeed, quite apart from the fatal consequences noted above, if general ideas were just the names of abstract particulars, no general conclusions could be drawn from them -- and certainly not by means of another set of abstractions that merely reduplicate the very same mistake.17
Reality: Abstract, Concrete -- Or Both?
The second difficulty (mentioned earlier) is connected with the first, but has somewhat different implications. As we have just seen, traditional solutions to the 'problem' of Universals only appeared to succeed because they anthropomorphised the brain and/or its ideas --, or they fetishised language (so that the products of social interaction were reified into real relations between things, or those things themselves).
As we have also seen, in order to explain the operation of the mind, Empiricists found that they had to postulate the existence of 'intelligent ideas', which were either spontaneously gregarious, or were somehow capable of obeying rules intelligently as they went about their lawful business.
On the other hand, Rationalists held that (seemingly) contingent events in the outside world could not account for the ideas we had of them. In fact, as they saw things, the reverse was the case: it was the nature -- or later the development -- of our ideas that explained 'outer' processes, which in the end implied that reality was Ideal. All this is pretty obvious. The next bit isn't.
On the basis of world-views like these, although theorists constructed (or 'discovered') what they took to be nature's "laws", they did not suppose their theories were true merely because nature was law-governed. On the contrary, many held that the connection was much tighter than this; it was because the mind was structured in a special way that certain laws or properties could be read back into nature.18 If indeed the world was a reflection of 'God's Mind' -- and the human mind was in turn a pale reflection of that 'Mind', too --, the 'inter-reflection' between mind and world, mind and world, guaranteed that thought left to its own devices was somehow able to penetrate below the surface of 'appearances' and into to the heart of 'Being' itself, thus uncovering its 'essences'. General laws seemed to be either the result of the self-directed concepts which accurately captured or mirrored nature's inner secrets, or their cause.
As Hermetic Philosophers had surmised, the Microcosm of the human mind reflected the Macrocosm of 'God's' creation because both were Mind, or the product of it. Thus, union between the 'Knower and the Known' was thus guaranteed by the application of just enough Divine Logic to engineer this mystical wedding. Union with 'God' was thus one with union with Nature, which helps explain the origin of what we are told was the main problematic of German Idealism: Subject-Object Identity.18a
Empiricist theories arrived at analogous conclusions but from a different direction, albeit sometimes expressed atheistically.19
Either way -- as Hegel himself pointed out -- every branch of traditional Philosophy sooner or later found its own way back to the Ideal home from whence it sprang.20
Nevertheless, serious problems associated with this approach to knowledge simply re-surfaced in DM, only in a more acute form. Dialecticians claim that their system somehow reverses the above process of cognition (albeit after its "mystical shell" has been removed, leaving only the "rational kernel") in order to neutralise its Idealist implications. They declare that their theory has been rotated through 180 degrees to stand on its own materialist legs -- hardly noticing that the Ideal backside is now where the materialist head used to be, and vice versa.
At least that explains all the hot air.
["Arse over tit", as they say up North.]
However, psycho-logical machinery like this was not designed to operate in reverse; Ideal forward gear always seems to reassert itself.
As Essay Two has shown, dialecticians proceed as if it is quite natural -- nay, hardly worth mentioning -- to extrapolate from words or concepts to necessary truths about the world. Not only do they argue as if they think that their laws and a priori theses are applicable to all of reality for all of time, in order to make them work this way, they have to talk like this.
And now we can see why; it comes with the territory. The Dialectical Macrocosm meshes with the Dialectical Microcosm because this entire world-view was inherited (in a modified form) from aristocratic Greek thinkers who designed it to work this way. These ruling-ideas rule because they seem so natural, and to DM-fans they appear quintessentially 'philosophical'.
If abstractions provide the glue that binds knowledge together (as Lenin argued), what else could they indicate about nature except that it is just one Big Idea?
Or, more accurately: that Hegel Junior (DM) looks just like his dad?
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation." [Lenin (1961), p.208.]
Perhaps now we can understand why Lenin argued this way. DM is the Ideal offspring of an Ideal Family.
And this family tree stretches right back into the mists of ruling-class time.
Of course, dialecticians pretend that these abstractions have been derived from the world (or from some sort of 'law of cognition', and then imposed on it) and tested in practice, but the above considerations cast serious doubt on the accuracy of that claim.
Presently, these infant doubts will mature quite alarmingly.
Collective Error Over General Terms
Nominalism excepted, legendary accounts of the origins of abstract general ideas all shared the belief that the mind was somehow capable of ascending from particulars (given in experience) to the general (not so given) -- or sometimes the other way round, unifying particulars under an 'objective law' --, as it progressively disregarded their unique ("accidental", "inessential") features, or as it looked for wider connections in order to uncover the 'essences' that supposedly lay behind material 'appearances'.21
That alone should have made erstwhile materialists pause for more than just a thought; what on earth could be so materialist about a theory that has to withdraw from the material into the Ideal in this provocative manner?
The pay-off was supposed to be the greater explanatory power (etc.) this approach brought in its train; but if this is gained at the expense of populating the world with nearly as many abstractions as there are material bodies, and which turn out to be more real than material bodies themselves (and, what is more, as a consequence dialecticians regard matter itself as an abstraction!), one wonders what sort of victory has been won over Idealism.
Of the same order, perhaps, as that of the Church over 'sin'? Or that of Social Democracy over Capitalism?
In fact, the reverse appears to be more likely. Indeed, this whole approach looks for all the world to be based on the belief that material reality is insufficient of itself, inadequate and not fully real, and that nature requires the background operation of Ideal principles to make it work. For dialectical materialists, matter (would you believe!) seems to be far too crude or lifeless to do anything on its own -- even if it is all that nature has to offer. It needs a 'Logic' to make it tick.
Well, we all know which religion is based on the Logos.
[Answer: the vast majority...]
And that explains why Lenin could declare that he preferred intelligent Idealists to "crude materialists".22
By nailing their colours to this particular ruling-class masthead, dialecticians in general have found themselves to be on the side of the Gods.23
Abstractionism – Bury It, Or Praise It?
Unfortunately, unlike Capitalism, Abstractionism has attracted few effective gravediggers; those that it has managed to accrue have proved to be even less successful in the overthrow of the latter than workers have been with that of the former. This is largely because these failed undertakers were more often content simply to point out the psychological impossibility of the entire abstractionist process rather than reveal its logical (and hence ideological) flaws. So, these ruling ideas live on to rule another day, and another dialectician.
More recently, however, abstractionism has been subjected to a series of effective critiques, even though this ancient theory still lumbers on. This is partly because many of those who avowedly came to bury it but, unlike Mark Antony, they ended up praising it (by emulating it). In so doing they helped breathe new life into its cadaver by inventing brand new, glitzy 'essentialist' theories of their own.24
Public Criteria Vs Private Gain
In the event, as seems obvious, an ability to talk about, say, dogs depends on a prior grasp (in use) of the relevant general terms found in language. This fact does not need an explanation -- nor could one be provided that did not employ the very things that required explaining in the first place, i.e., general words.25
If the above observations possess one advantage, it is that of re-directing attention away from occult, inner processes and private, individualised abilities -- allegedly possessed by expert lone abstractors -- and back toward socially acquired and publicly checkable skills and abilities if we are to account for language, socially-constituted knowledge and, of course, generality itself.
Naturally, only non-materialists will think to complain at this point.
Indeed, this is why emphasis has been placed in these Essays on our capacity to use material language in the public domain. This is also why serious questions have been raised about the ability we are all supposed to possess of being able to squeeze abstract epistemological juice out of a few pages of desiccated discourse, and in the privacy of our own minds.
In contrast once more, the approach adopted here means that the scientific aspects of human cognition are open to view, subject to public scrutiny -- unlike the mysterious inner rituals that underlie the process of abstraction, a process, it is worth recalling, that fails to deliver what was promised of it.26
Particular Problems With DM-Generality
It has been argued at length above, and in Part One, that instead of beginning with the general as a way of advancing to knowledge of the particular, the DM-process of abstraction in fact turns general words into the names of abstract particulars, and then proceeds to go nowhere with them. This not only distorts the way language functions, it demolishes the dialectical circuit before it can even be tested.
The remainder of this Part of Essay Three is aimed at widening and providing further substantiation for the above allegations.
The Underlying Essence Of Being
A cursory reading of earlier sections might prompt the idea that they ignore the fact that scientists actually use the method of abstraction (and have done so for centuries) in their search for knowledge. According to this legend, they do this so that they can discover, or 'uncover', the underlying "objective" nature of reality.
[The first part of this counter-claim was examined in Note 24; both will be examined in detail in an Essay to be published in the 'Additional Essays' section at a later date.]
However, this objection invites the consideration of two further sets of notions that DM-theorists have inherited from traditional Metaphysics: (1) the distinction between "appearance" and "reality", and (2) the difference between "essence" and "accident".
Once again, we see that dialecticians have (naively) fallen for these Aristocratic distinctions, and have meekly accepted the class-motivated idea that 'appearances' are not 'fully real', and that 'abstraction' is able to penetrate the outer 'shell' of the former in order to gain access to the underlying 'rational order'.
In this connection TAR makes the following series of points:
"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187.]
But, according to Rees, a commitment to scientific knowledge also involves the belief that:
"There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Ibid., p.188.]
And this is where abstraction enters the picture:
"[K]nowledge requires an active process of abstraction capable of discriminating between essence and appearance." [Ibid., p.189.]
However, abstraction cannot simply function by itself:
"[A]bstraction can be a method of seeing reality more clearly…[but] consciousness must issue in practical activity, which will furnish the proof of whether or not our conceptions of the world are accurate….
"In conscious activity, human beings overcome the abstractness of thought by integrating it with concrete, immediate reality in all its complexity -– this is the moment when we see whether thought really does assume an objective form, whether it really can create the world, or whether it has mistaken the nature of reality and is therefore unable to enter the historical chain as an objective force which, in the case of the class struggle, seizes the masses….
"[F]or Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective and objective and the gap between essence and appearance." [Ibid., pp.190-91.]
There are several points here that are worth examining, but for present purposes attention will be confined to the alleged contradiction between "appearance" and an allegedly "deeper reality" in the natural world. [Issues connected with "social contradictions" will be examined later, in Essay Eight Part Two.]
Does Reality Contradict Appearances?
Contradictions Supposedly Generated By Science
Despite the fact that dialecticians assert that appearance and reality (or, 'essence' and 'appearance') contradict each other, they seldom illustrate what they mean by this with examples drawn from the natural world (those that allegedly occur in the social sphere will be examined presently). And even if they were to do this, it still wouldn't be easy to see in general what the alleged contradiction between appearance and reality was supposed to be.26a
However, if we examine a volunteered example we might be able to make sense of the wider claim that there is a clash of sorts between the way things appear and the truths that scientists and/or Philosophers uncover. This example has been deliberately chosen both for its triteness and its familiarity. Something more abstruse would have obscured the issues involved. Other examples will be considered as the argument unfolds, but mainly in other Essays posted at this site.
This particular example concerns the apparent incongruity that exists between the way that sticks look bent, and the fact that they do not really bend, when partially immersed in water. Of course, it could be objected that this example does not illustrate a process in nature, and so is not relevant. However, it easy to adapt this example so that the objection itself becomes irrelevant (in R1a and R2a, and later in R3 and R4).
[Further examples of this alleged incongruity can be altered in like manner, but I will refrain from doing this for obvious reasons. Hence, these other examples should be read in the same way to prevent this section descending into obscure, legalistic pedantry.]
Nevertheless, this illusion could be expressed as follows:
R1: This stick appears to be bent in water.
R2: It is not the case that this stick appears to be bent in water.27
R1a: This stick appears to bend when immersed in water.
R2a: It is not the case that this stick appears to bend when immersed in water.
R1 and R2, and R1a and R2b form apparently contradictory pairs, but this type of incongruity is clearly not what Rees and other dialecticians are alluding to, which was the alleged contradiction between appearance and reality. R1 and R2 are plainly about appearances only, hence, they will not do as relevant examples. Perhaps then, the following will work?
R3: This stick bends when put in water.
R4: It is not the case that this stick bends when put in water.
Again, these two seem to be contradictory, but, unfortunately, they are not what Rees had in mind either since they fail to contrast appearance with reality. R3 and R4 merely express two contradictory propositions relating to possible states of affairs; neither is about appearances. However, the following pair of sentences does attempt to contrast appearance and reality:
R5: This stick appears bent in water.
R6: It is not the case that this stick is bent in water.28
The problem with these two is that they are not contradictories, since they can be (and are) both true at once, and they can both be false at once; there appears to be no logical connection between them. The truth of one does not imply the falsehood of the other, nor vice versa.
It could be objected to this that the fact that sticks appear to bend in water prompts the naïve belief that they do just that, which contradicts the fact that they do not really bend when partially immersed. This clash could lead to a rejection of such unscientific beliefs, as indeed it does. In that sense, therefore, it could be argued that reality does indeed contradict appearances.
But, does all this make it false to say that sticks look bent in water? Clearly not. And yet if these two sentences were contradictory (and no two contradictory propositions can be true together), and given that R6 is true alongside R5, it would be false to say that they are contradictory.29
In connection with this it is also worth recalling that, according to physical theory, light rays are deflected as they pass between the air and water, creating the 'illusion' of bent sticks. However, if sticks did not really look bent in water (or if it were false to say that they appeared to bend when immersed) this would refute the scientific belief that light rays themselves bend upon entering or leaving the relevant media. Tinker around with such beliefs too much and far more serious problems would arise that would threaten to undermine at least this part of Optics.
So, even in this sense, appearances are not contradicted by reality -– far from it, they play an essential part in the verification of scientific theory. Hence, the scientific truth that light bends when passing between media is confirmed by the appearance recorded in R5! So much for the alleged contradiction.
Again, it could be argued that this is an entirely specious response. The fact is that scientific knowledge is inconsistent with the belief that sticks bend in water. No amount of re-interpretation can minimise the significance of this.
However, that would have been an effective rebuttal if the argument above were about beliefs and not about appearances, and if it could be shown that anyone actually believed that sticks bend in water -- since this version of that counter-response specifically mentioned what might plausibly be believed by naïve observers. Undeniably, such a belief would be incompatible with what we know to be true, but the DM-claim is that appearances contradict reality. It says nothing about beliefs doing this.
Indeed, the point made above is that, far from reality contradicting appearances, scientists themselves need appearances to be correct (to confirm such things as Snell's Law) and record this 'seeming' bend in sticks. Clearly, this is because scientists have to look at things, and if they saw sticks in water that did not appear to bend they would either question whether the liquid was indeed water, or wonder if they were hallucinating.
Hence, the above objection only seems to work by confusing appearances with beliefs. Now, it is certainly not being questioned here whether propositions drawn from science contradict certain beliefs about the world and what it contains. But, beliefs are not the same as appearances.
It could be argued that the argument above is inconsistent, for while it alleges that there can be no contradiction between appearances and reality there can be between scientific propositions and certain beliefs about reality. So, on the one hand, while these are contradictory:
B1: p.
B2: NN believes that not p.
On the other, these are not:
B3: p.
B4: It appears to NN that not p.
How can the former be deemed contradictory while the latter is not?
Of course, the wording of my earlier claim was specifically this:
B5: It is certainly not being questioned here whether propositions drawn from science contradict certain beliefs about the world and what it contains. But, beliefs are not the same as appearances.
Now the belief (i.e., not p) certainly is the contradictory of p, but p is not the contradictory of "to NN that not p". If B2 were instead:
B6: It believes to NN that not p
as case might be made against me, but it wasn't, and so one can't. In that case, B1/B2 and B3/B4 are not at all analogous.
It could further responded that if we re-word the above, they might still be contradictory; perhaps as follows?
B7: p.
B8: NN has a belief that not p.
B9: p.
B10: NN has an appearance that not p.
In response to this I will merely note that these two sets of sentences can only be made to appear to contradict one another (irony intended) by a meaningless use of language (in B10). People can no more have appearances than they can have seemings or lookings. Of course, if we had sentences in language like this (to mirror ones like B11a):
B11: It believes to me that not p.
[B11a: It appears to me that not p.]
then we might be able to make this response work, but we do not -- and it is not difficult to see why. We form our beliefs based on all manner of contingencies, but appearances are things we undergo like it or not -- we do not form them. As noted above, appearances are not beliefs.
Nevertheless, it could still be objected that while sticks might appear to bend in water, the fact is that they do not actually do so. In that sense, subjective appearance is contradicted by objective fact.
However, this latest objection itself labours under several misconceptions:
(1) Firstly, appearances are part of reality -– no one supposes, surely, that appearances are fictional or that they have been invented, or that they only exist in heaven. It is not as if our ancestors made this fable up and several millennia later we have finally rumbled it. In that case, appearances are just as 'real' as unbent sticks are. Moreover, and worse, since neither appearances nor reality are propositional, no contradiction is possible between them.29a
It could be objected that the issue in hand is the contradiction between essence and appearance not that between appearance and reality, which is an invention of the present Essay.
But, even if the term "essence" itself possessed a clear meaning, it is difficult to see how there could be such a contradiction, not unless appearances and essences were propositional, too. Hegelians might just get away with that idea (but as far as I know they haven't sought to do so yet), since everything is Ideal anyway; but materialists cannot.
Of course, that comment itself depends on a view of contradictions I do not expect dialecticians to accept, but until they tell us what they do mean by this word, no more progress can be made. After all, we have only been waiting for 150 years to be informed what dialecticians actually mean by "contradiction"; it would display a little too much impatience on my part perhaps to expect them to produce one in the next generation or so.
[This topic is discussed in more detail in Essays Four, Five, Eight Parts One and Two, and Eleven Part One.]
Moreover, it is worth recalling that the example under discussion features a stick that looks bent under water. In that case, unless dialecticians have a theory about the 'essence' of sticks that differs from their notion of real sticks, this objection must fail. And Novack it was who argued that:
"...A thing is truly real if it is necessary, if its appearance truly corresponds to its essence.... Materialists...locate the roots of necessity in the objective world, in the material conditions and conflicting forces which create, sustain and destroy all things. But, from the purely logical standpoint, both schools of philosophy [i.e., Idealism and Materialism -- RL] agree in connecting reality with necessity.
"Something acquires reality because the necessary conditions for its production and reproduction are objectively present and operative. It becomes more or less real in accordance with the changes in the external and internal circumstances of its development. It remains truly real only so long and insofar as it is necessary under the given conditions. Then, as conditions change, it loses its necessity and its reality and dissolves into mere appearance." [Novack (1971), p.86.]29b
Which more or less settles things; appearances are as much a part of reality as essences are, if they coincide. [How they do so in the case of bent sticks, I will leave those who like this of this way of talking to fathom out for themselves.]
(2) Secondly, the claim that it is merely a 'subjective' experience that sticks appear to bend in water is itself in error. Not only does everyone see the same appearance (i.e., bending sticks) -– which means it cannot be subjective (or only one person would be able to see it) -–, but this apparent bending of sticks forms a basis for the objective fact that confirms the scientific belief that light changes its path when passing between media. If the appearance of bending sticks were merely subjective, what should we make of the idea that light alters its course -– is that subjective too? Is the 'objectivity' of science based on such weak subjectivist foundations?
Again, exception might be taken to the claim that appearances are objective; quite the contrary, most Philosophers and scientists agree that they are subjective. Since objectivity relates to something called "observer independence", appearances must be subjective -- or so it could be argued.
First of all, I am not advancing any such claim, since I reject the use of metaphysical language like this. [It is merely being employed here to assist in its own demise.]
Secondly, if appearances are subjective then the apparent fact that Philosophers and scientists believe that appearances are subjective must itself be subjective, in that it is not "observer independent", either. In fact, as should seem plain, no observation made by scientists or Philosophers could be "observer independent".
But, this must mean that the belief that appearances are subjective must be subjective, too, since it is not "observer independent". In which case, we ought to demote this opinion from being an 'objective' fact about the real nature of 'appearances-in-themselves', and openly confess its subjective status.
In fact, if objectivity is understood to be whatever is "observer-", or "mind-independent", then we could form no objective opinions of anything -- let alone of 'subjectivity' itself -– that is, while we still possess minds and foolishly go about the place observing things.
Indeed, as we shall soon see, any attempt to classify appearances as 'subjective' (hence not fully 'real') would fatally undermine not only science, but the status of the opinions of those who hold to that rash belief. So, if objectivity is defined as "observer-independence" etc., then plainly the notion that light bends when it moves between media (and every other belief we have) cannot be 'objective'.
As seems undeniable, the truth of this and every other scientific idea depends on centuries of observation (and no little human thought), as much as it depends on the current beliefs of more than at least one human being. Exactly how the former can be held to be independent of the latter is a mystery few bother to explain. Eliminate the subjective element from science -- if that is what it is -- and everything we believe to be 'objective' must go with it, for if science dealt only with "observer-independent" realities we would be able to form no 'objective' view of anything.
Of course, all this will be music to dialecticians' ears, since they already accept the dialectical interplay between the objective and the subjective:
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Lenin (1961), p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]
In that case, we must abandon the idea that "objective" means "mind-independent".
However, if dialecticians are prepared to do that, then much of their epistemology must follow it out the window, for according to this latest turn of events, it seems that nature is 'objective' only if we know about it, and then only in certain ways!
It could be objected here (no pun intended) that this misconstrues Hegel's notion of objectivity; indeed, it confuses it with a much looser modern concept. Hegel drew many of his ideas from Kant's Critical Philosophy, and adapted them accordingly. In fact, his ideas on this score cannot be separated from his system as a whole. But, since this will be examined in Essay Twelve, no more will be said about it here.
However, Dialectical Marxists surely cannot accept Hegel's notion of objectivity, since it would mean they were Objective Idealists. So, until we are informed exactly what dialecticians mean when they say the sort of obscure things about 'objectivity' that Lenin does, little more can be done with it.
Nevertheless, it could be argued that an objective view of nature is one which attempts to picture it as it must be (or as it must have been) without observers, or as it would be if there were no minds -– that is, it aims to depict reality as it is in-itself, in its ever-changing essence.
Of course, this take on objectivity would undermine what Lenin has just said, since "nature in-itself" does not mean "nature-as-observed-by-some-mind-or-other".
Even so, the use of the world "picture" above is a give-away. Pictures are only such because of the observers who view them. Eliminate the latter aspect of science and its 'picturing' role must go with it. To be sure, the physical object that constitutes a picture (the canvas, the frame, the paint, and so on) will not vanish if humanity and all sentient life perishes, but the verb "to picture" is for us transitive; without our input, no picturing could take place.
That is, of course, why we find 'ideal observers' -- and/or the presence of terms that imply that actual observers exists (somewhere) to view events (even if only as part of a 'thought-experiment') -- cropping up all over the place in such quasi-objectivist accounts of nature. On that basis, the word "objective" would mean something like "observer-, but not ideal observer-independent". In other words, on that view, science would be objective only if we deliberately forgot it was meant to be observer-independent.
Again, it could be argued that the objectivity of science is based on the following sort of counterfactual:
R7: Even if there were no observers, light would still bend as it passed between media.
Naturally, sentences like R7 will not be controverted here, but it is worth pointing out that R7 is not relevant to the doctrine presently being challenged, for if there were no observers then appearances could not contradict reality -- for there would plainly be no 'appearances' to conflict with anything, and, indeed, no one to do the contradicting.
So, 'objectively speaking' (to adopt this confused mode of expression for the moment) appearances cannot contradict "things-in-themselves", if they are counterfactually depicted this way.
It might still be felt that there must be a contradiction between 'commonsense' -- or ordinary language -- and scientific knowledge if the latter is to make any progress. We no longer believe many things that once seemed obvious to 'commonsense', which means that most of our former erroneous ideas must have been corrected (or contradicted, and then eradicated) by scientific advancement.
However, this latest attempt to rescue the claim that reality contradicts appearances labours under another confusion, one that holds that 'commonsense' and ordinary language are somehow the same. They are not.
[This is a topic that is examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve (however, some of this material has been posted here temporarily). There it will become apparent that since no one seems to have a clear idea what the term "commonsense" means (in its philosophical sense, that is) it is difficult to make much of this objection.]
It is worth pointing out here that long before the scientific study of nature began, human beings were well aware of the fact that sticks do not bend in water. It hardly took a Newton or a Galileo to uncover that amazing fact. This is not to say that earlier generations were able to explain this phenomenon, but that fact is not relevant to the topic in hand.
[Several of the other alleged 'corrections' scientific advance has made to 'commonsense' are examined below, and again in other Essays posted at this site.]
As we will see, this entire topic revolves around the use of two obscure terms of art: "objective" and "subjective". Neither of these has a clear meaning or a fixed use -- even among those who think they know what they mean. Of course, this clearly implies that the distinction between these two words must be 'subjective' itself -- again, if we must accept this obscure way of talking. But, if the thesis that reality contradicts appearance really does depend on this vague pair of words, then it would be impossible to assess it until these terms have been given a clear sense -- and, incidentally one that does not itself depend on a single instance of human/observer-motivated input, or it would be subjective, too.
Finally, as noted above, this entire issue reduces the discussion to a consideration of contradictory beliefs -– those engendered in us by scientific advance, as opposed to those derived from 'commonsense'. If this is all it means then this too will not be controverted here, for there is nothing in the least bit puzzling about contradictory beliefs. Indeed, they are as common as mud.30
The 'Contradiction' Between Science And 'Commonsense'
In view of the above, perhaps we should consider examples that illustrate the alleged conflict between science and 'commonsense' (and those that many think have actually taken place), in order to try to understand what the supposed DM-clash between 'appearance' and 'reality' is meant to be. To that end, consider the following:
R8: The Sun appears to rise each morning.
R9: It is not the case that the Sun appears to rise each morning.
R10: It is not the case that the Sun rises each morning.
Again, while R8 and R9 might look contradictory they do not in fact illustrate the sort of conflict we seek since they are both about appearances again. And there is no obvious logical connection between R10 and either of R8 or R9. This is because R10 could be true whether R8 and R9 were true or false; indeed, the truth or falsehood of R10 has no effect on the truth-value of R8 or R9, nor vice versa. In fact, if the earth were stationary, and the Sun moved, things would appear no different than if the reverse were true. And we would surely not conclude that R10 had been contradicted if sunrise could not be seen one morning because it was foggy, say; that is, if it did not appear to rise. Nor would R8 become false if, in the future, scientists changed their minds about the truth of R10.31
Clearly, this recurring problem is the result of a difficulty that John Rees and every other DM-theorists seem to have overlooked: it is not possible to form a contradiction by concatenating a proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports appearances, as we saw above.
In short, the following schematic sentences:
R11: It appears to be the case that p.
R12: It is not the case that p.
cannot form a contradictory pair when interpreted in the manner specified, and then conjoined.
Moreover, unless we subscribe to the view that facts and appearances are intelligent and/or belligerent -– that is, that they pick arguments with one another -- it would make no sense to suppose that appearances could literally contradict (i.e., "gainsay") true propositions. Not only are appearances non-linguistic and non-sentient, but as far as propositions and appearances are concerned, they do not seem to oppose each other in any obvious way. They do not turn into one another (which is something that dialectical opposites are supposed to do, so we are told), nor do they cause each other to change. So, as such, this alleged contradiction makes little sense even in DM-terms.
Furthermore, solar appearances are the same today (with respect to the sunrise) as they were thousands of years ago. To be sure, we interpret things differently today, but that does not affect how things still appear. In that case, a DM-contradiction here would have to be figurative, at best (or perhaps merely terminological).
Nevertheless, it could be argued that there are aspects of scientific knowledge that do in fact contradict appearances: it is surely true that those who relied on 'commonsense' at one time imagined that the earth was stationary, whereas scientists now know that our planet moves. Hence, the following pair of propositions could illustrate the intended contradiction:
R13: The earth moves.
R14: It is not the case that the earth moves.
But, even this pair is not what we are looking for, since neither of them is about appearances.
Moreover, Rees seems to be interested in contradictory pairs where both halves are true, ones involving seemingly 'correct' appearances contradicted by genuinely 'objective' underlying realities -– otherwise the alleged superiority of DL over FL would be illusory. This is because, as already noted, DM-style contradictions must both be true at once (or, they must both 'exist' at once, to use the jargon), unlike their less contentious FL-cousins. Unfortunately, however, R14 is false.32
This means that we still do not have a DM-'contradiction', even in this relatively clear case. Nor are we ever likely to get one --, and that for the reasons stated above.
Even if a case could be made out to show that scientific propositions contradicted indicative sentences expressing appearances, that still would not achieve all that dialecticians require of them. This is because (as noted in Essay Five) propositions that might look contradictory -- and which are both held to be true -– would normally be disambiguated or they would be given a background against which they might be understood, which would resolve the apparent contradiction.
This latest assertion is no mere 'bourgeois' prejudice or diktat. Consider the following examples, which are analogous to the previous pair:
R15: The strikers moved.
R16: It is not the case that the strikers moved.
This pair certainly looks contradictory (especially if both relate to the same strikers at the same moment) -- but that would cease to be the case once it was discovered that the said strikers were sat on a train that was travelling at 80 miles per hour. On the train, these militants could be sat perfectly still, but to an observer on a platform they would appear to be moving at speed. Since all motion is relative to an inertial frame, the beliefs engendered by one set of observations would merely appear to contradict those motivated by another. But, as soon as a frame of reference is supplied the 'contradiction' disappears.
And it will not do to point out the trite nature of R15 and R16 --, not, that is, unless and until DM-theorists tell us what they mean by the obscure phrase "dialectical contradiction". Since this is dealt with fully in Essay Eight Part One and Two, no more will be said about it here.
All this is quite apart from the fact that DM-texts themselves contain little other than trite examples (boiling water, contradictory seeds, anecdotes from The Arabian Nights, characters who speak "prose all their lives", the differential fighting ability of Mamelukes, cone bearings and "Yea, Yea"/"Nay, Nay") -- this is Mickey Mouse science, after all.
As seems clear, apparent 'contradictions' are not presented to us by nature/society totally 'naked', as it were; they arise either from ambiguities inherent in language or from a lack of clarity (etc.) in the original 'problem' (or so it is claimed in these Essays). In the above case, the 'contradiction' arose because of a (suppressed) change in reference frame.
Naturally, this would make such contradictions sensitive to choice of reference frame, not dependent on reality. However, that was certainly not the point DM-theorists wanted to make about their 'contradictions'. Those mentioned above were either artefacts of a conventionalised choice of inertial frame or they are a consequence of confused thought -- they are not based on reality (whatever that means).33
Putting the natural sciences to one side for the moment, Rees and other DM-theorists in fact use examples drawn from HM to illustrate the alleged clash between "essence" and "appearance". [Several examples are considered at length in Essay Eight Part Two, here, here and here.] Perhaps an examination of these will help make the point clearer?
Rees argument, for example, goes as follows:
"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187. Bold emphases added.]
This passage makes it plain that while Capitalism appears on the surface to be fair, its underlying 'essence' is thoroughly exploitative. Hence, in that sense it could be claimed that appearances contradict reality.
But, unfortunately, Rees's example is not a contradiction, however much we might deplore the things it reveals. [Why that is so is explained more fully here. On the misleading nature of the metaphor that certain truths, or even "essences", somehow lie "below the surface", see here.]
Perhaps this is too hasty? Maybe we can rephrase Rees's claim so that the alleged contradiction becomes more obvious:
R17: Capitalism appears to be fair.
R18: It is not the case that Capitalism appears to be fair.
This pair of sentences certainly looks contradictory, but as we saw above, because both sentences are about appearances, they are not what Rees intended.34
Well, maybe then the following are?
R19: Capitalism is exploitative.
R20: It is not the case that Capitalism is exploitative.
This pair certainly seems contradictory, too, but once again, since these two sentences do not contrast appearance with reality they will not do either.
A more helpful guide to Rees's intentions is contained in the relation he says exists between "essence and appearance" and "subjective and objective" views of the world:
"[F]or Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective and objective and the gap between essence and appearance." [Ibid., pp.190-91.]
This could mean, therefore, that these hard-to-pin-down DM-'contradictions' actually arise between "subjective" and "objective" views of the world. But, again, what precisely is the contradiction here, even if what he says were so?
Perhaps the following 'argument' might help bring it out:
R21: Capitalism appears to be fair.
R22: This appearance leads people (including workers) to think that it is fair.
R23: Hence, Capitalism is fair.
R24: But, revolutionary theory and practice convinces some that Capitalism is not fair.
R25: Therefore, Capitalism is not fair.
R26: Consequently, Capitalism is both fair and not fair.
R27: But, the contradiction in R26 implies that R23 cannot be true (based on the truth of R25).
R28: Therefore, Capitalism is not fair.35
Ignoring the fact that the above argument in hopelessly invalid, its message looks reasonably clear: it is the 'objectivity' of revolutionary theory (expressed in R24) that makes plain the contradiction in R26.
However, even if that were the case, the contradiction is still not between appearance and reality, but between certain beliefs held about both, and the inferences made from each.
Anyway, few people (and certainly no revolutionaries) believe that capitalism is both fair and not fair at the same time. Anyone who gives the matter sufficient thought will agree with R23 or R25, but not both at once. Indeed, that is why R28 would be held true by socialists. However, DM requires both R23 and R25 (and hence R26) to be true at once. But, we have been here already.36
It could be objected to this that the above appearances lead to the false belief that Capitalism is fair, which is contradicted by the fact that it is not, and it is this which yields the required contradiction. But, no one is questioning the fact that there are all sorts of contradictory beliefs in people's heads. What is at issue here is (1) whether any two can be (unequivocally) held true together and (2) whether appearances contradict reality --, both of which have yet to be established.37
Hence, it does not look like we can construct a clear example of the sort of contradiction Rees had in mind -- even when we use his own choice of candidate!
Nevertheless, this latest impasse introduces yet another problem facing DM-epistemology: if appearances are finally acknowledged to be (in some way) deceptive, not entirely or fully accurate, or they are said to be limited or misleading to some extent, how can anything of value be learnt from them or by means of them? Worse still, if revolutionary practice itself takes place at the level of appearances how can it serve as a test of the objectivity of Marxist theory?
The next few sections are aimed at resolving these unexpected difficulties.
Adrift In A Sea Of Appearances
I propose to examine the contribution revolutionary practice makes to the validation of theory in more detail in Essay Ten Part One, and Essay Nine Part Two, but for present purposes it is worth pointing out that practice cannot in fact test 'objectivity' in the way imagined -- and this is not just because the word "objective" is itself hopelessly vague. As noted above, it is because practice clearly takes place at the level of appearances, which according to DM cannot be anything other than 'subjective'.38
Admittedly, some Marxists claim that there is such a thing as "theoretical practice", but even here the deliverances of the latter can only surface in the world of appearances.
Unless we are committed to the bizarre idea that theoretical propositions live an abstract world of their own, accessible only to the 'mind', and are not embodied or expressed in anything material -– that is, that they cannot ever be written down or spoken out loud, or even whispered in soliloquy -– the deflationary conclusion that theoretical propositions are as material as sticks and stones must stand.
Plainly, this is because abstract objects (or the words used to express them) must appear in the phenomenal world at some point or forever be unknown to us. In the real world, even theoretical propositions have to be written down or uttered in a public language, and that immediately places them in the grip of these 'unreliable appearances'.
Exception might be taken to the above since it seems to imply that DM-theorists regard appearances as unreliable, misleading or false. On the contrary, it could be maintained that dialecticians do not believe this of appearances. Indeed, the following passage from TAR underlines this fact:
"…[T]his does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187. Bold emphasis added.]
"There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Ibid., p.188.]
But if, as these passages say, superficial appearances are not only no sure guide to deeper "essences", they "contradict" them, then they must be deceptive at some point, especially if most human beings misread them or are misled by them, and it takes clued-in Marxists to disabuse them of their false beliefs. If the exploitative relations in Capitalism are not really as they seem, and if on this view they "appear in a form different from their real nature", then what they reveal cannot be anything other than misleading. There is no other way of reading this passage. [This topic is discussed more thoroughly in Notes 33 to 35.]
Again, it could be argued that DM-theorists do not adhere to such a simple-minded view of the relation between appearance and reality; they hold that there is a dialectical interplay between theory and practice. This means that even though thought depends on appearances for its immediate content, it nevertheless ascends by means of abstraction and critical analysis/synthesis (subsequently confirmed in practice) to a more adequate theoretical and concrete understanding of reality (rooted in past theory, but not set in stone). In the long-term, this process leads to a more accurate account of the real processes at work in Capitalist society. At each stage, thought returns to the original world of experience where, after again being tested in practice, its content may be viewed in a more all-rounded, concrete manner --, which renders its conclusions objective (even if still only partially true). Hence, appearances need not be regarded as merely subjective, as suggested above; their connection with underlying reality allows them to be viewed in a different, more complex, inter-connected, all-round light, allowing revolutionaries to understand why things seem the way they do.
Or so it might be claimed.
Despite the fanfare, the fact is that the old conservative adage, "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work", for instance, could not serve as a guiding principle for revolutionaries writing agitational leaflets, no matter how many dialectical hoops sloganeers force it through.
This is because at no stage in the execution of elaborate dialectical antics would it be correct to say, think, or imply that Capitalism is not exploitative. No matter how many dialectical somersaults are performed, only the most naïve of militants would believe a boss who said that he or she could not afford the latest pay demand from a strike committee because it was "unfair" (etc.).
If so, and in practice once more, no revolutionary would take the beliefs engendered by the superficial appearances of Capitalist society as anything other than false, or self-serving. Certainly, no Marxist -- this side of a major sell-out, that is -- believes Capitalism is "fair" and acts according to that belief.39
Anyway, the rejoinder (a few paragraphs back) seems to rely on the assumption that thoughts and theories are not themselves 'appearances' -– i.e., that they do not surface in a public language, in an open arena. In fact, in reading DM-texts on the "dialectical method" one gets the distinct impression that familiar dialectical acrobatics -- like the ones that Rees mentions above -- take place in a sort of inner psychic sports arena, as it were, where concepts and abstractions are put through their paces in camera. And not just that; it very much looks like these dialectical gyrations must be performed afresh in each individual head.
That was one of the main themes of the first half of this Part of Essay Three: the idea that DM-epistemology, for all its pretensions to the contrary, is trapped in a bourgeois individualist dungeon. [The general principles underlying the social nature of language and knowledge will be addressed again in much more detail in Essay Twelve, Part One.]
Hence, as was noted earlier, it is difficult not to interpret the process of abstraction as a skill that adepts learn to perform in their own private inner auditorium. As seems plain, we have yet to witness teams of synchronised dialecticians all chanting in unison the latest verbal application of their most recent dialectical flip, under the direction of the Absolute as it Notions its way into glory, or, indeed, under the militant baton of a Gerry Healy or a Bob Avakian in full sectarian cry. So, how DM-fans imagine they are capable of coordinating their separate dialectical antics (if, as they imagine, these are all carried out in some sort of inner mental gymnasium) is somewhat unclear. Given the truth of DM-epistemology, no two dialecticians would ever be able to determine whether or not their individual feats of abstraction ever converged on the same target, let alone the right target. [On that, see here and here.]
And, as if to rub it in, HCDs are, to all appearances, petty-bourgeois intellectuals (without a collectivist atom between them), and LCDs are by-and-large petty-bourgeois martinets (who arrived at the same individualist destination, but by a less salubrious route).
In short, the superficial gestures DM-theorists make toward their belief in the social nature of knowledge are at odds with the theoretical pronouncements they regularly produce. Given the latter, knowledge could not be a social product. Conversely, if knowledge is a social product, Abstractionism cannot work. [More on this in Essay Twelve, Part One.]
Here essence and appearance nicely coincide; a genuine unity of non-opposites.
To be sure, we see dialecticians reporting to the rest of us the results of their own 'inner' gyrations (this they do verbally, or in print --, indeed they have no choice, they have to do both in this 'world of appearances'), but short of a hot-line connecting each dialectical brain to the next, there is no way that the contents of one such inner gymnasium could be made available to any other member of the same 'dialectical team', for validation, or even for comparison.
Hence, in order to compare their ideas (etc.), dialecticians have to record their deliberations in this material world, in some form or other, where those nasty appearances reign supreme.
If so, no DM-proposition could be "objective" in any sense of that word.
Furthermore, even if it were true that abstraction takes place in the 'mind', unless DM-theorists are prepared to accept a quasi-Cartesian account of thoughts (one in which the latter guarantee their own veracity, as opposed to merely appearing to do so), the inner dialectical detour they advocate cannot succeed in accomplishing all that is required of it, or anything at all. Hence, without postulating the existence of abstractions that are self-authenticating, and thoughts that are self-certifying (and thus in need of no support from practice or evidence), these 'inner phenomena' cannot by-pass the need to make a validating entrance into the world of appearances.40
Even in the mind's alleged inner chamber, a 'thought' is no less of an appearance than is any deliverance of the senses. Even to the most solipsistically-incarcerated comrade, his or her thoughts merely appear to him/her to be thus and so.
And even if such ideas and concepts were 'self-certifying', they would still only appear to be so.41a
If, on the other hand, the existence of self-interpreting and auto-confirming thoughts were part of DM-epistemology (there is an echo of this in Hegel, but as far as I can determine, no Marxist dialectician has gone the whole hog here and agreed with Hegel, or even so much as a gone half-hog), but which thoughts were not deemed to be part of the world of appearances, then they would be no different from the 'intelligent ideas' we met earlier.
However, as seems plain, if DM-theorists were to do this, it would make a mockery of the materialist flip they were supposed to have inflicted on Hegel's system, for such thoughts would then be little different from Hegelian ideas in fragmented self-development. So, if thoughts are to be excluded from the world of appearances, then there seems to be no way to distinguish them from Platonic/Cartesian/Hegelian self-developing, self-certifying ('semi-divine') ideas. And if that is so, their subsequent referral back to the empirical world for testing and verification would be an empty gesture. Why bother to test a god-like thought? Did Moses check the Ten Commandments?
Moving higher up the cosmic pecking-order: did Gerry Healy check a single thing he ever said?
Of course, we know Bob Avakian does not need to.
But things are worse than even this might suggest: not even 'God' can by-pass how things appear to 'Him'. Even to the 'Absolute Idea', at the end of time, things merely appear to be as history has delivered them to 'Him/Her/It'.
And we can console ourselves with the further thought that whoever denies these deflationary conclusions must do so in this world of appearances, or stay silent.
So, even Hegel's system is accessible only to those who can read, speak or listen. This is because Hegel's writings (indeed, anyone's writings) confront us now as phenomenal objects, and in that realm material appearances hold the whip hand.
Any appearance to the contrary, is just misleading.
Dialectics Goes Into Auto-Destruct Mode
Furthermore -- and this should not need pointing out --, thoughts and theories can be just as mistaken as beliefs based on appearances can.41 For example, the thought that sticks bend when put in water is no less potentially misleading than is the analogous appearance that they do. [That was partly what lay behind the point made above about contradictory beliefs.]
Indeed, the history of science is littered with erroneous and radically mistaken theories. However, with respect to DM, the situation is far, far worse. Given the DM-thesis that knowledge depends on an infinite asymptotic convergence on an ever-elusive absolute, DM-epistemology is little different from radical scepticism. [This allegation is substantiated at length here.] If so, there is an extremely high probability that even the soundest of DM-theses only looks correct, and the very latest and best DM-abstraction merely appears to be valid, when neither are, or even remotely are.42
Unfortunately, once the virus-like distinction between appearance and reality is introduced into thought, the downfall of the theory that invited it in is all but guaranteed. Indeed for that theory, the hour of its birth will be the hour of its death.
Now, this is one idea that does self-develop, but not in a healthy direction, or in a direction DM-theorists would welcome. In fact, it rapidly goes into self-destruct mode. For if nothing is indubitable in epistemology (save we revert to comforting Cartesian certainties --, which anyway only seem to be secure, and then only to those who think signs/ideas can interpret themselves), then the superiority of thought over phenomena, essence over accident, and reality over appearance is illusory -- given this crazy way of seeing things.
In which case, alongside misleading phenomena we now have to contend with even more dubious DM-theories and abstractions. And, like it or not, these latterly suspect theories cannot form a secure basis for any subsequent explanation of the "true nature" of those equally shaky appearances. An apparently correct theory is clearly incapable of providing the required certainty for the safe interpretation of those suspiciously misleading phenomena. A radically suspicious one (such as DM) thus stands no chance.
Oscillate dialectically as much as you like -- between thought and appearance, essence and accident --, loop the dialectical loop all day long, it matters not: traditional philosophical notions like these (i.e., "essence", "reality", "appearance", "theory", and "objectivity", and their ilk), are now irredeemably lost in a shadowy world of mere semblance.43
So, it now seems that the already suspect dialectical circuit locks DM in permanent orbit around these eternally shaky appearances. In that case, for any DM-theorist using these problematic concepts, the planned escape route from the former that leads into abstract theory -- and then back again (via practice) as a way of delving behind phenomena to uncover their hidden "essences" --, is forever blocked. For just as soon as a single DM-abstraction is penned, typed, thought or spoken, it enters and remains trapped in this world of faded simulacra.
Despite -- and contrary to -- this, it could be argued that dialecticians actually locate abstraction in thought, and this associates it with theory and with essences, not with appearances.
But, this rebuttal will not do, for thought (according to DM) only becomes objective in practice. Thought does not become objective if it is confined in a mental/abstract domain; it has to enter the phenomenal world through practice (minimally, it has to be spoken or written down, if it is to be acted upon, or tested) in order for it to mature into 'objectivity'. Unfortunately, given this terminally-unwise way of depicting things, in the phenomenal world appearances reign supreme, and any material representation of thought (and any attempt to resolve anything whatsoever in practice) must negotiate its peace with them.
Given this view of things, they are unforgiving taskmasters.
Moreover, if the further restrictions DM places on thought are taken into account (i.e., those related to practice once more), there would be no way of corroborating a single DM-proposition -- at least not one that was not itself compromised by doubts initiated by the reality/appearance distinction, and even more so with the 'asymptotic approach' metaphor. Moreover, as with thought, confirmation is not self-certifying; it too has to find a secure home in this vale of appearances. Practice is, alas, situated here; hence any test of theory must take place in this allegedly unreliable world. If so, practice cannot supply the DM-epistemologist with a handy 'get-out-of-a-need-to-appeal-to-appearances-free' card. [And there are no cheats that allow DM-theorists to by-pass this level.]
Negotiate this rusty old DM-banger around as many dialectical bends as you like, it matters not: it still winds-up wrapped around the same old material tree of appearances.
And this is just one more reason why genuine materialists distrust the Idealist non-sense most comrades have unwisely imported into Marxism, from Hegel.
Indeed, as we have seen, this hopeless muddle is a direct result of their borrowing a set of ideas from Traditional Metaphysics: those connected with the appearance/reality dichotomy.
It may easily be avoided by rejecting this historically regressive clanger in its entirety.
Naturally, this does not mean that an HM-analysis of Capitalism, for example, is incapable of distinguishing between the latter's genuinely exploitative relations and the false beliefs workers (and others) form of them --, nor of accounting for the contradictory ideas people develop.44 But, it does mean that we may only construct both successfully (in HM) if the confused categories of traditional Metaphysics and DM are completely abandoned.
[HM = Historical Materialism.]
And good riddance to such aristocratic rubbish.
[Over the course of the rest of this site, the DM-remains will be cremated.
Send no flowers...]
1. A clear introduction to this topic can be found in Staniland (1973). See also here, here and here.
1a. As we saw in Part One of this Essay, and as we will see in Essay Four, this syntactical segue was 'achieved' by altering the way general words work in indicative sentences (i.e., by turning predicative expressions into the names of abstract particulars). These misbegotten forms were then projected onto the world -- or rather, material reality was made to conform to them; the Ideal became the arbiter of the material.
In this way, the 'rational world' of the Greeks (and thus of subsequent Philosophers) was nothing more than a reflection of deformed grammar.
[The ideological motives behind this are exposed in Essay Twelve (summary here).]
1b. Naturally, this immediately demotes the 'evidence' that sense experience delivers, making it of secondary importance (or of no consequence) in comparison to that delivered by 'thought'.
Indeed, if the real is rational, but inaccessible to the senses, the outward appearance of things cannot match their real form, since only the mind is rational, and material things are not mind. Or, at least, the latter can only be reconciled with the former if material beings come to be seen as aspects of mind, or as mental entities themselves. The logical conclusion to all this is that despite appearances to the contrary, one implication of this is that everything must be Mind, or an aspect of it.
[This accounts for the way that dialecticians themselves speak of matter as an 'abstraction'. More on this in Essay Thirteen Part One (summary here).]
This means that appearances are misleading, at best. At worst, they are 'contradicted' by underlying 'essences'. In any such clash between the evidence the senses deliver and that produced by the 'mind', traditional thought always preferred the latter over the former. But, as we will see in Essay Ten Part One, not only was this in the end a fruitless endeavour (in that this ploy cannot deliver what had been promised of it), it destroys the capacity the mind has to frame ant ideas at all. [We saw this in Part One of this Essay.]
Even worse, dialecticians have shown that they are quite happy to adopt this anti-materialist, and hence ruling-class, view of physical reality. Such 'ruling ideas' certainly rule these (now) non-radical minds. Again, the sad truth is that they do so to no avail. It gained them no knowledge at all.
This means that dialecticians have hocked the 'materialist cow' -- but haven't received even a handful of beans in return.
Figure One: Jack Negotiates A Far Superior Deal
This also helps explain why DM-theses collapse into incoherence so alarmingly quickly, as the next ten Essays show.
On the "Third Man Argument", see Vlastos (1954, 1956), Geach (1956), and Cohen (1971).
It is important to note that Plato himself does not make the sort of mistake I attribute to others here. He hypostatises the Forms in other ways (and not as the references of predicates), but as exemplars -- rather like, say, the Standard Metre in Paris. [I owe this point to Peter Geach, who, according to him, got it from Wittgenstein himself; on that see the article referenced above.]
1c. This might not seem an important point; that misconception will be laid to rest in Essay Twelve (summary here), where this philosophical move will be linked to age-old themes in ruling-class thought.
2. The ideological background to "Possessive Individualism" is set out in detail in MacPherson (1964). An outline of the philosophical context can be found in Hacking (1975). Unfortunately, despite it other strengths, Hacking's work is largely a-historical --, i.e., in the sense that it fails to link changes in philosophical fashion to ambient social forces and/or Modes of Production -- which is no surprise, since Hacking does not claim to be a Marxist.
A clearer Marxist account -- restricted to philosophical ideas connected with scientific change -- can be found in Freudenthal (1986), and a more sophisticated one in Hadden (1994). The latter is itself based on ideas found in Borkenau (1987), Grossmann (1987), and Sohn-Rethel (1978).
A Wittgensteinian slant to all this can be found in Robinson (2003), especially chapters 9, 10, 12 and 14.
More details can be found at Guy Robinson's website, here.
2a. As should be clear, if the traditional analysis of predication turned general terms into the names of abstract particulars, then the sentence "This is a general idea of F" must suffer the same fate, with the term "general idea of F" now naming yet another abstract particular.
The bowdlerised and corrupted 'Term Logic' employed by early modern Philosophers (and this includes Kant and Hegel) even interpreted quantifiers (such as "every", "all" and "some") as special sorts of names. This serious error was not corrected until Frege's revolutionary logic hit the philosophical streets a century later. On this, see Geach (1972b). See also here.
This ancient syntactical error resurfaces too in the way that concepts are interpreted by DM-fans: just like names, they are held to refer to, or are said to reflect' certain aspects of reality. Such 'concepts' are thus capable of being true (or relatively true) on their own. This makes the unit of meaning (so to speak) the individual word/concept, not the sentence, or proposition. In this way, naming, not saying, became the model for understanding meaning in language. [On this, see Hacking (1975).] That, of course, allowed Hegel to see the self-development of concepts as central to his system; on this, see here.
Acres of Idealist verbiage from such a seemingly insignificant logical error! [More on this in Part Three of this Essay, and in Essay Twelve.]
3. A natural response to this would be to argue that general names are not like Proper Names, they have a different "mode of signification". This is undeniable, but while it is clear that Proper Names name particulars (or individuals -- but even then, our use of names is complex; on this see Baker and Hacker (2005, pp.227-249), it is entirely unclear what general names actually name. Even to ask this sort of question is to give the game away, for it trades on the idea that general terms name something, clearly. Hence, in order to remain consistent with the use of ordinary names, general names have to be viewed as referring expressions, too, denoting an individual of some sort -- be it a Universal, a class, group, natural kind, set or concept. So, even though some might want to speak of "the set of…", or "the class of…", or "the natural kind…", named by the relevant general name, the use of the definite article nullifies the generality that such ostensively general terms once enjoyed.
In this way, these 'abstract individuals' (i.e., "the Universal", "the set of…", or "the class of…", or "the natural kind…") become the referents of these general names, nullifying their generality. Plainly, they now work just like Proper Names.
Of course, giving such abstract things a name begs the question --, which is: Is there indeed one thing here to be named?
Despite an ancient grammatical and logical tradition that treats general nouns as general names (an approach that was itself based on the metaphysical views being questioned here), as we have seen, we may only concur with it if we want to destroy the facility we have in language for using general terms to express generality.
It could be objected that classes, for example, are not necessarily or even typically singular, but compound and can have (literally!) countless members. In that case, when a predicate designates the extension of a class, it is not naming it, nor referring to it.
Of course, it is not too clear whether predicates designate anything; if someone says "The boss is a crook", the use if "...is a crook" is not to designate, but to describe. [On this see Slater (2000).]
Turning a description into a designation would, however, be to repeat the errors analysed in Part One of this Essay, that is, it is to model all meaningful discourse on the naming relation, but in this case using an euphemism (i.e., "designate") as a fig-leaf.
On this see Ryle (1949). This error Ryle called the "Fido-Fido Fallacy", the idea that to every word there must correspond something in reality (abstract or concrete). This is well summarised here. [That link is to an article by Yorick Wilks (a one time student of Wittgenstein's), available as a PDF here.]
4. Why this is so will be revealed presently.
5. It is arguable that, for all their apparent sophistication, modern 'scientific' theories of the mind and of language (cybernetically-, cognitively-, or physicalistically-based, etc.) have not advanced much beyond this point. This contentious claim will not be defended here (although it will be defended in depth in a later Essay).
This whole approach to the Philosophy of Mind is closely questioned in Bennett and Hacker (2003).
6. We saw that happen in Part One of this Essay with those lists.
6a. No wonder Plato had to appeal to the alleged pre-existence of the soul to account for such recognitional powers: according to Plato, we know (by acquaintance) the Forms since we were all introduced to them before we were born. Knowledge was thus recollection, and recognition worked because the Forms were really rather like long lost acquaintances, but of a rather peculiar sort. More on this here.
It is perhaps in this doctrine we see yet another pernicious side-effect of traditional theories of meaning; if meaning is based on isolated words, concepts or ideas, then isolated thinkers must relate to them as one individual does to another (or, as one mind does to one concept, and so on), just as they do with all their acquaintances.
But, these 'acquaintances' are in reality total strangers, and featureless ones at that. And since ideas do not carry around with them their metaphysical ID cards, or even their own security badges, how anyone could cognise, let alone re-cognise, these faceless spectres is somewhat mysterious. There are echoes of this problem in modern Nativist theories of language, derived from Chomsky.
[On this, see Cowie (1997, 2002), and Sampson (2005). Also see a summary of Sampson's criticisms here. (I hesitate to refer to Sampson's work, since he is a right-wing Tory, but that has not affected his thought in this area, it seems.)]
Indeed, the article by Wilks (mentioned in Note 3, above) takes Jerry Fodor to task over rather similar errors.
6b. In fact, the insurmountable 'problems' encountered by the doctrine of the Trinity arose directly from Plato and Aristotle's attempts to account for generality, that is, in the 'Forms' and 'Substances' they invented. This fact has, of course, been known to anti-Trinitarian Christians for some time.
7. This is not to suggest that there aren't countless 'solutions' to these brainteasers, only that this puzzle has resisted them all for nigh on 2400 years. A new approach is long overdue, therefore.
Fortunately, one such was suggested a generation or so ago, the central point of which being that philosophical 'problems' like this may be resolved by dissolving them, by identifying the syntactical (etc.) blunders that gave birth to them, and which even now keep them alive.
This return to ordinary language at least has the following merit: for Marxists it situates knowledge in the public domain, and on home turf, basing it on the material language of the working class. [This topic is examined in more detail in Essay Twelve, Part Two (summary here).]
8. This gnomic comment will be expanded on in a later Essay.
8a. Again, this idea will be developed extensively later on at this site (along the lines suggested by Bertrand Russell [in Russell (1917b)], but developed here, and here -- the first of these refers to Swartz (2006), the second to Swartz (1985)). How this view emerges from a misuse of language is explored in Essay Twelve Part One.
More details can be found in Price and Corry (2007), but the line I will be taking (but with a less theoretical slant) can be found in Hacker (2007), pp.57-89.
9. We shall meet this option again later in connection with the RRT in Essay Twelve (summary here).
[RRT = Reverse Reflection Theory.]
10. That explains an earlier aside: traditional Philosophy is based on alienated thought-forms and on the fetishisation of language. More on that in Essay Twelve.
11. Again, more details will be given in Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).
12. The so-called "Problem of Induction" centres on the idea that generalisations about the future course of nature -- based on a finite number of observations of how it has behaved in the past (etc.) --, cannot provide a deductively valid basis for an inference that events (of a certain type) that have not yet happened will always resemble those (of that type) which have. So, for instance, just because water has always frozen at a certain temperature, that does not mean that it always will.
This is brought out well in the following passage:
"But there is a price to be paid for this new methodology. About a hundred years after Bacon, Hume (1711-1776) pointed out the problem.
'The bread, which I formerly eat, nourished me; that is, a body of such sensible qualities was, at that time, endued with such secret powers: But does it follow, that other bread must also nourish me at another time, and that like sensible qualities must always be attended with like secret powers? The consequence seems nowise necessary.'
"If we want to be very careful and not lump things into the same category, if types are not real, if the only real things are particular individuals, then there are no general truths about bread. We can describe the color, shape, texture, taste and so on of this piece of bread, but if the general kind 'bread' isn't real, then whatever I learn about this piece of bread won't help me learn anything about the next piece of bread. That is the crucial usefulness of real types: if 'cat' is a real type, and not simply a nominal type, then whatever I learn about this particular cat will help me understand all cats. I can learn and know something about how to cure a problem with your cat if I have studied other cats, as long as they are identical in nature. If there is no reality to their unity as cats, then every new particular is just a new thing, and we can learn about it only by studying it; nothing else we study can possibly help us. So the existence of universals turns out to have a very profound impact on scientific methodology and epistemology." [Quoted from here. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
However, as we have seen, the traditional approach merely translates the answer to this 'problem' into another of the same form, expressed in yet more Abstract Particulars --, which, of course, may or may not behave the same way tomorrow. Abstract Particulars may be heavenly creatures, but even they can come off the rails; on that see here.
Of course, any theory wedded to Heraclitean flux (such as DM) has sunk much deeper in the mystical mire than any other branch of traditional thought --, for, given universal flux, the future cannot resemble the past! Indeed, the word 'resemble' cannot even resemble itself!
This 'problem' partly derives from the mistaken view that scientific theories are special sorts of truths. Once that is rejected, a solution to the 'problem' of induction soon suggests itself. [These allegations will be substantiated in a later Essay.]
Nevertheless, let us pose this 'problem' more acutely, pushing it a little further than is usually attempted: Since the flow of ideas in the mind (even those of Über-Rationalists like Hegel) and the sensations that accompany them are also events, subjective experience cannot avoid being thrown into irredeemable doubt about the future, too.
In that case, our experiences of anything that has yet to occur (and even that of our own future thoughts) might not 'resemble' what they had once seemed to be in the past. Even the nature of our experience of sensations and ideas could alter from moment to moment. If we experience an idea now as an idea of a certain sort, tomorrow it could be experienced as something totally different, even though it might be impossible to say right now what that is.
Worse still: any 'solution' to this 'problem' could itself be experienced as a non-solution (or as anything whatsoever) at some point in the future.
Naturally, expressed in this sort of language, the analysis of how the present binds the future has already lost its way. In fact, as should seem obvious, phrases like "The present" and "The future" are particulars too (or they 'refer' to them), and as such they possess neither the brain nor the brawn to do anything in general to lift the beleaguered, traditional thinker out of this sceptical hole.
And herein lies a clue to the solution to this entire family of insoluble 'problems': ditch this whole way of talking.
Not even the anti-materialist, Aristocratic thinkers who invented it could make head or tail of it.
Since we now know -- because I at least have exposed it -- the source of these 'difficulties' is the syntactical blunder committed by Greek metaphysicians (examined in Part One of Essay Three), the above solution to 2400 years of wasted effort recommends itself.
And that is why Wittgensteinians do not need a philosophical theory in their bid to deflate the hot air balloons ruling-class thinkers have inflated down the centuries; these theories self-deflate when the source of the hot air is switched off, and a materialist pin is introduced into the equation.
12a. David Hume attempted to solve this 'problem' by an appeal to habits of mind (hence the use of the word "habitus"), which induce in us certain expectations. Clearly this watery-thin notion is susceptible to the challenges laid out in the previous Note, at the very least.
However, the abandonment of the 'logical' or necessary connection between a universal and its particulars (in the High Middle Ages) introduced radical contingency into nature (which development was, of course, not unconnected with the decline of the power of the Papacy, as Feudalism began to give way to early forms of the market economy). Rationalist Philosophers (like Spinoza and Leibniz) thus had to try to undo the damage this 'retreat' inflicted on the 'rational order' imposed on nature (in the previous Mode of Production) with new theories of their own, but those that were still based on the same old "ruling idea" that reality was rational. [There is an excellent summary of some of these issues in Osler (2004). On the general background, see for example, Copleston (2003).]
I will publish an Essay on this in the Additional Essays section at a later date.
13. Anyone who objects to the anthropomorphic terminology used here should recall that it is only being employed in this Essay in order to show how unbelievable traditional theories like this are when this sort of language is pushed to its limit, and applied more consistently -- and its class roots exposed.
Anyone who still objects should rather take issue with those who first invented such theories -- or with those who genuinely adopt this style --, not with those who lampoon it.
"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." [Rousseau (1952), p.3.]
An online copy of Book One, Section Chapter One, can be found here.
14a. This also helps account for the rather odd fact that the more 'dialectical' the party, the more autocratic it is. And when it comes to imposing order on comrades, the dialectically-mailed fist soon replaces the invisible hand of reasonableness. [This is especially true of Stalinists and Maoists when they actually manage to gain power. Their parties do not split or fragment, their leaders merely liquidate all dissenters.]
Well, one would expect this of a movement with such a Bonapartist theory.
15. In a world solely populated by particularised ideas, the belief that there are other minds (plural) cannot even be formulated.
Some may think to extrapolate from their own experience of their own minds to the conclusion that others are like them and have minds, but any theory based on only one (self-) observation (like this) is no better than a guess, and since the language of such a theory is hopelessly impoverished, it would not be possible to say what any such guess was directed toward. [This is because belief in other minds requires the use of general words, which this theory lacks -- or, better, which it has just destroyed.]
However, the details surrounding Wittgenstein's dissolution of these and other 'problems' will not be entered into here. I will say more on this in a later Essay.
Those new to his thought should begin with Glock (1996), Kenny (1973), and Sluga and Stern (1996); also see here.
16. This topic is discussed fully in Essay Six.
17. It would be no use appealing to the 'relative' or 'partial' nature of knowledge here, since, as we shall see later, one of the implications of this is that a DM-view of reality is indistinguishable from Kant's Noumenon.
18. This doctrine is up-front in Kant, even if it is less clear in previous thinkers. However, since Hegel adapted Kant's view to suit his own ends, the passage in the text only needs to be true of post-Kantian thinkers for it to apply to DM.
18a. This terminally obscure 'intellectual' pursuit (i.e., the study of 'Subject/Object Identity') has dominated much of what passes for thought in the work of HCDs, just as it has formed a central concern of 'Continental Philosophy' for the last 200 years or so. Its origin in mystical thought (indeed, this union is the main aim of all mystical systems) hardly raises a single eyebrow in either tradition, but especially not in ideologically-compromised HCD-caballeries. In fact, I have lost count of the books and articles written (in both traditions) about this mystical union.
An excellent example of this sort of thing can be found here.
A summary of the background to this sorry affair can be found in Beiser (2005), and in more detail in Beiser (2002). Its mystical provenance is detailed in Benz (1983), and Magee (2001); a summary of the latter can be found here.
One unfortunate HCD critic of these pages has fallen under its spell too, here. See also here, where the same Hermetic virus can be found in a more concentrated form. There will be more on this in Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).
[HCD = High Church Dialectician.]
19. If the 'mind' knows only its own ideas and impressions (etc.), then the outer world cannot fail to be a back-reflection of what that mind contains, and since the world is not just a mere idea, but the subject's own idea, there is on this view no real difference between the objective and the subjective.
Naturally, empiricists will want to deny this; but if they are right, each one of them is merely arguing with him/herself.
Others may object that this confuses Empiricism with Solipsism, but this is not so. In fact, it goes further; it identifies them. This is not just to pick on Empiricism; the logical outcome of the criticisms levelled here is that all metaphysical theories of knowledge collapse into some form of Solipsism.
That controversial claim will be defended in a later Essay.
20. As Hegel put things:
"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; § 316.]
Of course, this means that even an upside-down and eviscerated version of his system (i.e., DM) must likewise be Ideal.
21. The comments in the text do not imply that Nominalism is my preferred option, nor even that it is 'correct'. Why this is so will not be entered into here.
In fact, as the Introductory Essay pointed out, I reject all philosophical theories as non-sensical. [Why this is so is explained in detail in Essay Twelve Part One.
22. As Lenin noted:
"Intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism.
"Dialectical idealism instead of intelligent; metaphysical, undeveloped, dead, crude, rigid instead of stupid." [Lenin (1961), p.274.]
It is quite clear from this that Lenin meant "Dialectical idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than crude materialism...".
And now we know why: Lenin's fatal compromise with ruling-class theory undermined his materialist good sense. [How this happened (and what its ideological concomitants were) will be the subject of Essays Nine Parts One and Two, and Essay Twelve (summary here).]
On this, see the next Note, too.
23. Diodorus Siculus is, in think, the originator of this phrase:
"When the Gigantes about Pallene chose to begin war against the immortals, Herakles fought on the side of the gods, and slaying many of the Sons of Ge he received the highest approbation. For Zeus gave the name of Olympian only to those gods who had fought by his side, in order that the courageous, by being adorned by so honourable a title, might be distinguished by this designation from the coward; and of those who were born of mortal women he considered only Dionysos and Herakles worthy of this name." [Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.15.1.]
But, this might itself be a reference to an image in Plato's Sophist, one of his more profound surviving works. Indeed, the it is the well-spring of much of subsequent Idealism.
The part reproduced below features a conversation between an Eleatic "Stranger" (who appears to be a follower of Parmenides) and a character called Theaetetus:
"Stranger. We are far from having exhausted the more exact thinkers who treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to leave them, and proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and we shall find as the result of all, that the nature of being is quite as difficult to comprehend as that of not-being.....
"...There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence.
"Theaetetus. How is that?
"Stranger. Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and trees; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body.
"Theaetetus. I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they are.
"Stranger. And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these matters.
"Theaetetus. True.
"Stranger. Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of that which they call essence.
"Theaetetus. How shall we get it out of them?
"Stranger. With those who make being to consist in ideas, there will be less difficulty, for they are civil people enough; but there will be very great difficulty, or rather an absolute impossibility, in getting an opinion out of those who drag everything down to matter. Shall I tell you what we must do?
"Theaetetus. What?
"Stranger. Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this is not possible, let us imagine them to be better than they are, and more willing to answer in accordance with the rules of argument, and then their opinion will be more worth having; for that which better men acknowledge has more weight than that which is acknowledged by inferior men. Moreover we are no respecters of persons, but seekers after truth." [Sophist 246a-246d.]
A modern translation of this work can be found in Plato (1997), pp.235-93. [The above passage occurs on pp.267-68.]
The battle itself is described in Hesiod's Theogony (lines 675-715), available here.
From this it is clear that dialecticians are far closer to the Gods than they are to the materialist Giants.
[To be fair to John Rees, he does try to defend a DM-view of concepts that are not somehow 'fully material', in his examination of "friendship", on pages 109-10, of his book. This passage will be examined in detail in Essay Three Part Four.]
24. The views of some of these will be examined in a later Essay.
One of the more bizarre aspects of this mysterious process of abstraction (at least the Empiricist version (but also that of certain dialecticians), and one that is rarely noticed) involves the drawing of an unintended analogy between the properties an object is supposed to have, and clothing. Hence, in the abstractive process, as each outwardly unique distinguishing feature of a particular is 'peeled off' (or "disregarded") by the intellect, the true form of the 'object' underneath gradually comes into view -- but only in the 'mind's eye'. This is, of course, a disrobing ceremony accessible only to those capable of 'metaphysically undressing' things like tables, chairs, cats, dogs, atoms, electrons and galaxies. And these 'conceptual strippers' must be capable of deciding what must be true not only of all the many examples of 'the same sort' that have not been ideally fleeced like this (by anyone, and not just them), but also of the many more that no human will ever experience in the real world -- based solely on a brief 'internal' inspection of a highly limited sample of these metaphysical spectres.
However, and this should hardly need pointing out, the properties of objects do not resemble apparel in any meaningful way. If this had ever been an apt analogy then these metaphysical garments (i.e., an object's properties) would be just as shareable as items of clothing are. On that basis, dogs should be expected to be able to sing like larks, kettles recite the Gettysburg Address, and dialecticians accept criticism.
Nevertheless, the analogy with clothing is not at all apt, and never was. For one thing, it is surely abnormal to imagine clothing as causally related to -- or physically connected with -- the body of the wearer. Yet, the properties of an object are normally regarded as linked in some way to its constitution. For another, while clothing may perhaps serve to hinder the appreciation of underlying form, an object's properties advertise it, they do not mask it. They are 'metaphysically transparent', so to speak.
Furthermore, and most absurdly, properties cannot be peeled away from objects in such an 'internal strip show'. Or, if they can, one would expect that the nature of each underlying 'object' should become clearer in all its naked glory as the proceedings unfold. In fact, we find the opposite is the case as each metaphysical burlesque advances.
If, for instance, a cat were to lose too many of its properties (as it is mentally skinned), it would cease to be a cat. Clearly, this philosophically flayed 'ex-cat' (now 'non-cat') would serve rather badly in any generalisation based upon it. Indeed, strip the average moggie of enough of its properties and it would be impossible to decide whether or not the rest of the abstractive process had been carried out on the same mammal, the same animal, or, for that matter, on the same physical object -- let alone the same idea of one and all.
Moreover, in the absence of any rules governing the process of abstraction (such as where to begin, which feature to abstract first, which second -- which never) one person's abstractions would surely differ from those of the rest of the abstractive community.
For instance, Abstractor A might begin by ignoring Tiddles's engaging purr, whereas B would begin with her four legs, while C might disregard her shape. But, do we/should they ignore first a cat's colour, fur, fleas, whiskers, tail, intestines, age, number...?
And in the latter case, which number relevant to each cat is to be put to one side: the one cat, the two ears, the four legs, the dozen or so whiskers, or the several thousand billion atoms of which it is composed?
And where do we stop? Are we to whittle-away its position on the mat, the last dozen or so things it did, its present relation to the Crab Nebula…?
It could be claimed that this does not really matter, the results will be the same anyhow. But how do we know? Where is the rule book to guide us? Is there a sort of abstractionists' script we all unconsciously follow, programmed into us perhaps as a set of tried and trusted instructions? Are we all instinctive abstractors, or do we need training? And if there are metaphysical disrobing protocols determining the order in which Tiddles's qualities are to be paired away (if this cat is to be ontologically skinned correctly, that is), when and where did we all learn them? And, how might an intrepid abstractor know if he or she had abstracted Tiddles the same way each time?
Do we all keep a secret abstractor's dairy?
And even if there were clear and plausible answers to these questions, the fact that (in principle) no one could check on any one else's abstractions to see if they tallied -- or if they had got them right (in fact the word "right" can gain no grip in such circumstances) -- means that this process cannot form the basis of an 'objective' science. Plainly, this is because no one has access to the results of anyone else's 'mental whittlings', and because there are no rules governing this process.
On the contrary, in the real world, agreement is reached by the use of publicly accessible general terms that were already in common use long before each of us was a twinkle in an abstractor's eye.
[This is, of course, just a roundabout way of saying that "abstraction" is a highly misleading euphemism for subjective/idiosyncratic 'classification'.]
One obvious reply to all this might be that we abstract by concentrating only on those factors that are "relevant" to the enquiry in hand. But what are these, and who decides? And how might these be specified before an enquiry has begun?
Again, in response to this it could be argued that past experience guides us here. But, how does it do this? Can any of us recall being made to study the heroic deeds of intrepid abstractors in days of yore? Does past experience transform itself into a sort of inner personal Microsoft Office Assistant, if we hit the right internal 'help' key? But, what kind of explanation would that be of the allegedly intelligent power of abstraction if it required such a guiding hand? And where on earth did this 'inner PA' receive its training?
Once more, it could be objected that in the investigation of, say, the biology of cats, it is important for scientists to find out what these animals have in common with other members of the same species, family, order, class or phylum, so that relevant generalisations might be made. In order to do this, zoologists disregard certain features common to cats and concentrate on those they share with other mammals, vertebrates, living things, and so on --, be they morphological, ecological, genetic or biochemical (etc.). Clearly, in each case, greater abstraction is required. Or so the argument might go.
Nevertheless, if this is what "abstraction" means it is surely synonymous with a publicly accessible performance, similar in all but name to description, analysis and classification (etc.). It has nothing to do with a private, 'internal' skill we are all supposed to possess, of being able to polish rough and ready particulars into smooth general concepts. If abstraction were an occult inner process then, as noted above, no two people would ever agree over the general idea of, say, a mammal, let alone that of a cat. All would have their own idiosyncratic inner, and intrinsically un-shareable, un-checkable exemplars.
Again, one response to this could be that while we might use language to facilitate the transition from a private to the public arena, this does not impugn our abstractive skills.
However, this objection introduces topics discussed in more detail in a later Essay. Nevertheless, a few comments are worth making here.
Human beings generally manage to agree on what they consider, say, mammals to be -- i.e., those who possess the relevant education/linguistic skills -- but, this does not include those who supposedly have unspecified abstractive powers. Zoologists do not gain their scientific qualifications by demonstrating to their teachers or colleagues their expertise with the inner dissection of mental images, ideas, or concepts. On the contrary, they have to show a mastery of highly specific techniques, vocabulary and theory, which they must demonstrate publicly that they are capable of applying in appropriate circumstances, etc., etc.
The widespread illusion that we are all experts in the internal dismemberment of ideas is encouraged by another confusion that also originated in traditional Philosophy: the belief that the intelligent use of general words depends on some form of internal, mental naming, representing or processing ceremony. In effect, this amounts to the belief that despite appearances to the contrary, all words are names, and that meaning something involves an inner "act of meaning" or 'representation', matching words to images, sensations, processes, or 'representations' in the brain/'mind'.
At work here is another inappropriate set of metaphors, which trade on the idea that the mind functions like an inner theatre, TV or computer screen -- now refined with an analogy drawn against Microsoft Windows perhaps, wherein 'the mind' is described as "modular" (and operated, no doubt, by the internal analogue of a computer geek, skilled at 'clicking' on the right inner 'icons' at the right moment, filing things in the right folders and setting-up efficient 'networks', etc.). Given this family of metaphors, understanding becomes modelled on the way we now look at pictures (or "inner representations"), using the equivalent of an inner eye to appraise whatever fortune sends its way.
This is a faint modern echo of Plato's theory of knowledge by acquaintance, and his allegory of the Cave. [It must be added that the former and the latter were intended to make different points for Plato himself.] Both of these picture knowledge as the passive processing of 'representations' -- even if this was later beefed-up with a gesture toward practice (by dialecticians). Even so, this view of knowledge turned it into a form of acquaintance: we know our friends by acquaintance, so we know the contents of our minds by acquaintance. This underlines why traditional theory emphasised knowledge as a relation between a knower and the known. [More on this in Essay Three Part Four.]
Naturally, if this occult abstractive skill had ever been important in the history of science then we would find evidence to that effect in the work of great scientists. Alas there is none.
However, even the attempt to investigate the truth of that particular assertion would automatically bring into question the role abstraction is supposed to play in science. That is because such an inquiry would have to examine the documents and writings (etc.) of scientists -- not their brains. Indeed, any recognition of the relevance of the linguistic production of such scientists, their equipment and techniques (etc.), their social surroundings -- as opposed to the contents of their heads -- would show that in their practical activity no historian actually believes that abstract ideas underpin scientific knowledge -- whatever theoretical and/or philosophical views he or she might otherwise rehearse in public.
Here, as elsewhere, actions speak louder than abstractions.
[Again, a limited range of examples drawn from the work of great scientists -- which disprove the contention that they were/are abstractors extraordinaire -- will be given in a later Essay.]
Do Scientists Use Abstraction?
Admittedly, this way of putting things might differ from the way that scientists themselves theorise about what they do. But once more: their practical activity belies whatever post hoc rationalisations they might advance concerning the nature of their own work.
In seeking to advance scientific knowledge scientists report neither on the results of their processing of mental entities, nor on the contents of their heads -- and they certainly do not require the same with respect to the heads of others in their field, nor anywhere else for that matter. On the contrary, as far as their work is concerned, researchers develop new theories at the very least by extending the use and application of publicly accessible scientific language, theory and technique. And they do this by the use of analogy, metaphor and the novel employment of familiar general terms already in the public domain -- allied to the construction of specific models and 'thought experiments', alongside various other rhetorical devices.
[Naturally, this does not mean that these features are unrelated to advances in technique motivated by the development of the forces of production, etc. However, as noted above, these issues will be discussed in more detail in a later Essay.]
Despite this, it could be objected that the above comments thoroughly misrepresent the way that knowledge advances. In fact (but edited down) the objection could run as follows: scientists attempt to discover the underlying nature of objects and processes in the world in order to reveal the laws and regularities (etc.) that govern objective reality. To take just one example: an animal's essential nature -- arrived at by increased use of abstract terms -- turns out to be its DNA (or whatever). Another, but more general example could be the way that Physicists extend knowledge by developing increasingly abstract theories expressed in complex mathematical formulae.
But, this cannot be correct; scientists manifestly did not discover DNA by the use of greater or more refined abstractions. They used the theoretical and practical advances achieved by other researchers (which themselves were not arrived at by abstraction), and augmented them with their own ideas (often these were those of a team of scientists, or those of a research tradition) and the results of other innovative experiments. All of these were based on cooperative work and observation -- assisted by the use of models, yet more 'thought experiments', all expressed in a public language and subsequently reported in an open arena.
None of these (save the penultimate one) remotely looks like a mental process, still less an abstractive one. And as far as 'thought experiments' are concerned, these too are typically rehearsed in the public domain, too, and in a shared language. Any alleged 'mental processes' that accompany them are likewise connected with the innovative use of language -- but with the volume turned down.
['Thought experiments' will be discussed in more detail in a later Essay; some of the relevant literature devoted to analysing them is listed in Essay Four.]
Of course, it could be argued that no one supposes that abstraction is "done in the head", just as it could be acknowledged that scientists do indeed employ a theoretical/public language in their work. It might therefore be maintained that scientists still endeavour to form abstract ideas based on their use of resources such as these, and in this way.
Again, this is not what scientists actually do. The above is a myth put about by professional philosophers and amateur metaphysicians.
These somewhat controversial claims (that is, those relating to what scientists do, as opposed to what they imagine (or say) they do, or, indeed, with what certain philosophers think they do) will be substantiated (and illustrated) more fully in a later Essay. This will be posted in the "Additional Essays" section, at a future date.
Nevertheless, anti-abstractionist thought is of relatively recent origin. The first major thinker to subject it to detailed attack (outside the medieval Nominalist tradition, that is) was Berkeley. His arguments against abstract ideas are summarised in Dancy (1987), pp.24-40; a different approach linked to Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics can be found in Jesseph (1993), pp.9-43. On Berkeley in general see here and here.
His case against abstraction is expertly summarised here.
Berkeley's arguments in this regard revolve around the observation that it is impossible to form an abstract idea of anything since that would require it to possess and not to possess several (incompatible) properties at one and the same time. He asks whether anyone:
"…has, or can attain to have, an idea that shall correspond with the description that is here given of the general idea of a triangle, which is, neither oblique, nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once." [Berkeley (1975b), p.81.]
Based on his own inability to form such abstract ideas, Berkeley casts doubt on the capacity of others to do the same:
"I can imagine a man with two heads or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of a man that I frame to myself, must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall or low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described [of a general man]. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever." [Ibid., p.78.]
A somewhat similar argument can be found in Frege:
"By making one characteristic after another disappear, we get more and more abstract concepts…. Inattention is a most efficacious logical faculty; presumably this accounts for the absentmindedness of professors. Suppose there are a black and a white cat sitting side by side before us. We stop attending to their colour and they become colourless, but are still sitting side by side. We stop attending to their posture, and they are no longer sitting (though they have not assumed another posture) but each one is still in its place. We stop attending to position; they cease to have place, but still remain different. In this way, perhaps, we obtain from each one of them a general concept of Cat. By continual application of this procedure, we obtain from each object a more and more bloodless phantom. Finally we thus obtain from each object a something wholly deprived of content; but the something obtained from one object is different from the something obtained from another object -– though it is not easy to say how." [Frege (1980), pp.84-85.]
Frege's sharpest criticisms were reserved for those of his day who imagined that a process of abstraction underpinned mathematical concepts, in particular the views of the 19th century mathematician and mystical Platonist, Georg Cantor (and his followers; on the mystical aspect of Cantor's work, see Aczel (2000)):
"Many mathematicians react to philosophical expressions in a [magical] manner. I am thinking in particular here of the following: 'define' (Brahma), 'reflect' (Vishnu), 'abstract' (Shiva). The names of the Indian gods in brackets are meant to indicate the kind of magical effects the expressions are supposed to have. If, for instance, you find that some property of a thing bothers you, you abstract from it. But if you want to call a halt to this process of destruction so that the properties you want to see retained should not be obliterated in the process, you reflect on these properties. If, finally, you feel sorely the lack of certain properties in the thing, you bestow them on it by definition. In your possession of these miraculous powers you are not far removed from the Almighty…. The following dialogue may serve as illustration:
"Mathematician: The sign Ö-1 has the property of yielding -1 when squared.
"Layman: This pattern of printer's ink on paper? I can't see any trace of this property. Perhaps it has been discovered with the aid of a microscope or by some chemical means?
"Mathematician: It can't be arrived at by any process of sense perception. And of course it isn't produced by the mere printer's ink either; a magic incantation, called a definition, has first to be pronounced over it.
"Layman: Ah, now I understand. You expressed yourself badly. You mean that a definition is used to stipulate that this pattern is a sign for something with those properties.
"Mathematician: Not at all! It is a sign, but it doesn't designate or mean anything. It itself has these properties, precisely in virtue of the definition.
"Layman: What extraordinary people you mathematicians are, and no mistake! You don't bother at all about the properties a thing actually has, but imagine that in their stead you can bestow a property on it by a definition -– a property that the thing in its innocence doesn't dream of -– and now you investigate the property and believe in that way you can accomplish the most extraordinary things!
"This illustrates the might of the mathematical Brahma. In Cantor it is Shiva and Vishnu who receive the greater honour. Faced with a cage of mice, mathematicians react differently when the number of them is in question. Some…include in the number the mice just as they are, down to the last hair; others -– and I may surely count Cantor amongst them -– find it out of place that hairs should form part of the number and so abstract from them. They find in mice a whole host of things besides which are out of place in number and are unworthy to be included in it. Nothing simpler: one abstracts from the whole lot. Indeed when you get down to it everything in the mice is out of place: the beadiness of their eyes no less than the length of their tails and the sharpness of their teeth…. [And] one abstracts presumably from all their properties, even from those in virtue of which we call them mice, even from those in virtue of which we call them animals, three-dimensional beings -– properties which distinguish them, for instance, from the number 2….
"So let us get a number of men together and ask them to exert themselves to the utmost in abstracting from the nature of [a] pencil and the order in which its elements are given. After we have allowed them sufficient time for this difficult task, we ask the first 'What general concept…have you arrived at?' Non-mathematician that he is, he answers 'Pure Being.' The second thinks rather 'Pure nothingness', the third -– I suspect a pupil of Cantor's -– 'The cardinal number one.' A fourth is perhaps left with the woeful feeling that everything has evaporated, a fifth -– surely a pupil of Cantor's -– hears an inner voice whispering that graphite and wood, the constituents of the pencil, are 'constitutive elements', and so arrives at the general concept called the cardinal number two. Now why shouldn't one man come out with [one] answer and the other with another?…. But perhaps we got such varying replies because it was a pencil we carried out our experiment with. It may be said 'But a pencil isn't a set.' Why not? Well then, let us look at the moon. 'The moon is not a set either!' What a pity! The cardinal number one would be only too happy to come into existence at any place and at any time, and the moon seemed the very thing to assist at the birth. Well then, let us take a heap of sand. Oh dear, there's someone already trying to separate the grains. 'You are surely not going to try and count then all! That is strictly forbidden! You have to arrive at the number by a single act of abstraction!'…. 'What would happen to the infinite cardinals in that case? By the time you had looked at the last grain, you would be bound to have forgotten the first ones. I must emphasise, once more that you are meant to arrive at the number by a single act of abstraction. Of course for that you need the help of supernatural powers. Surely you don't imagine you can bring it off by ordinary abstraction?'" [Frege (1979), pp.69-71. Unfortunately, the manuscript breaks off at this point.]
Frege's parody of Cantor illustrates just how ridiculous the idea is that abstraction can create mathematical concepts out of mere signs, or, indeed, out of anything.
Frege's criticisms of Cantor are summarised in Dauben (1979), pp.220-25. A more detailed discussion of these matters can be found in Dummett (1991).
There are several remarkably similar passages to the above in Marx's earlier work:
"Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstraction…presents itself as a logical category? Is it surprising that, if you let drop little by little all that constitutes the individuality of a house, leaving out first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that if you leave out of account the limits of this body, you soon have nothing but a space -– that if, finally, you leave out of account the dimensions of this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical category? If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction the only substance left is the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians, who in making these abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the point of penetrating to their core…." [Marx (1978), p.99.]
However, in a passage that has already been quoted in Part One -- from The Holy Family (which reveals Marx and Engels at the height of their philosophical powers) -- we find the following acute observations:
"The mystery of critical presentation…is the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction….
"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy –- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -– 'Fruit'…. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -– 'Fruit'….
"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….
"The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind…. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….
"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975), pp.72-75.]
This quotation almost completely undermines the DM-theory of abstraction. It is a pity that both Marx and Engels later seem to have lost the philosophical clarity of thought they revealed in this passage. In many respects it anticipates Frege and Wittgenstein's approach to abstract ideas, even if phrased in a completely different philosophical idiom.
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]
It is worth underlining the fact that this passage exposes the sham nature of any 'dialectical circuit', not just Hegel's use of it. As they argue:
"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc…. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….
"When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit.'" [Ibid., pp.73-74. Bold emphases added.]
Marx and Engels are quite clear here: no amount of "careful empirical" checking can turn the creature of abstraction back into its concrete alter ego.
It is worth noting, too, that Marx and Engels also anticipated the claim made here that abstract general ideas are the result of a syntactically inept interpretation of ordinary general terms (outlined in detail in Part One of this Essay). As they themselves pointed out:
"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….
"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Ibid., p.75. Bold emphases added.]
Here, Marx and Engels quite rightly note that it is the distortion of the names of real things that gives life to metaphysical abstraction.
Marx underlined this approach to ordinary language (and the distortion it suffers in the hands of Philosophers) in The German Ideology (also quoted in Part One of this Essay):
"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.
"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis only added.]
The passage highlighted in the last paragraph of the above quote might well serve as the guiding motto of this site. [Indeed, Wittgenstein himself could almost have written it.]
In his perceptive analysis of Metaphysics, Fraser Cowley had this to say about abstract universals:
"In the traditional doctrine, according to which one can both refer to universals and predicate them of particulars and other universals, a general term like 'lion' would signify or designate a universal. This universal would be predicated of a particular in such a sentence as 'This is a lion' and referred to in such a sentence as 'The lion is a creature of the cat family.' The lion being carnivorous and subject, I believe, to melancholy in captivity, that universal would be carnivorous and subject to melancholy. And just as one can point to an animal and say 'this kind' or 'this species', so one should be able to point to one and say 'This universal comes from East Africa'…. But clearly 'universal' is not admissible in such contexts, and this shows that the logical syntax is quite different from that of 'kind,' 'sort,' 'type,' 'species,' and so on….
"Many people have tried in their metaphysical performances consciously or half consciously to avoid such nonsense by referring, for example, to the universal which is allegedly predicated in 'This beast is a lion,' by the expression 'lionhood.' Many similar malformations occur in philosophical writings -– doghood, thinghood, eventhood, and so on. They are formed by mistaken analogy with manhood, womanhood, girlhood, widowhood, bachelorhood, and of course not with neighborhood, hardihood, falsehood, likelihood, or Little Red Riding Hood." [Cowley (1991), p.92.]
Linguistic monstrosities like these -- and more, and worse -- litter the pages of traditional philosophical texts in their ancient, medieval and modern incarnations. For example, in a recent book on the nature of 'Time' we find the following rather bizarre phrases:
"Any property partly composed of presentness, apart from the two properties of pastness and futurity is not an A-property." [Smith (1993), p.6.]
Here we note with Frege that the powers of certain Far Eastern Deities have been resurrected in order to create the required temporal 'properties' out of thin air: "pastness", "presentness" and "futurity." There are countless other passages like this in recent metaphysical literature, and not just those concerning the nature of 'Time'.
Sustained criticisms of abstract general concepts/ideas and essentialism can be found in the following: Hallett (1984, 1988, 1991) and Kennick (1972). See also here. A more general refutation of abstractionism is outlined in Geach (1957). A broad attack on the nature of abstract objects can be found in Teichmann (1992).
Recently, Bertell Ollman has tried to outline what he takes to be Marx's use of abstraction (in Ollman (2003), pp.59-112; this material also appears in Ollman (1993), pp.23-83).
However, readers of the above book will be forgiven their sense of disappointment that, after the opening fanfare to the effect that 'abstraction' is centrally-important to Marx and Marxism, no account is given (beyond the usual superficial gestures) of the actual process itself:
"First and foremost, and stripped of all qualifications added by this or that dialectician, the subject of dialectics is change, all change, and interaction, all kinds and degrees of interaction. This is not to say that dialectical thinkers recognize the existence of change and interaction, while non-dialectical thinkers do not. That would be foolish. Everyone recognizes that everything in the world changes, somehow and to some degree, and that the same holds true for interaction. The problem is how to think adequately about them, how to capture them in thought. How, in other words, can we think about change and interaction so as not to miss or distort the real changes and interactions that we know, in a general way at least, are there (with all the implications this has for how to study them and to communicate what we find to others)? This is the key problem addressed by dialectics, this is what all dialectics is about, and it is in helping to resolve this problem that Marx turns to the process of abstraction." [Ollman (2003), pp.59-60. Bold emphasis added.]
We have already seen that neither dialecticians nor their 'theory' can explain change (on that see Essays Five through Eight Part Two, but especially here and here), and we have also seen in this Part of Essay Three that no sense can be made of the 'process of abstraction'. So, the question is, has Ollman anything new to add that might turn the tide of theory back in favour of this discredited piece of ancient Metaphysics?
Well, apparently not, for all he has on offer are a few pages of trite observations of what he thinks we all do when we allegedly engage in 'abstraction' (supported by no evidence at all), and what he thinks scientists engage in when they construct their theories (supported by a lively imagination, but no evidence, again).
Perhaps this is being unfair? In that case, it might be wise to examine what Ollman actually says to see if the above comments are as peremptory as they might at first sight seem.
"In his most explicit statement on the subject, Marx claims that his method starts from the 'real concrete' (the world as it presents itself to us) and proceeds through 'abstraction' (the intellectual activity of breaking this whole down into the mental units with which we think about it) to the 'thought concrete' (the reconstituted and now understood whole present in the mind) (Marx, 1904, 293-94; this is a reference to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy -- RL). The real concrete is simply the world in which we live, in all its complexity. The thought concrete is Marx's reconstruction of that world in the theories of what has come to be called 'Marxism.' The royal road to understanding is said to pass from the one to the other through the process of abstraction." [Ibid., p.60. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here, as they have been in the rest of the passages quoted from this source.]
Now, we have seen that the way this 'process' is depicted by traditional theorists (like Ollman) means that it is in fact viewed by them as an individualised skill -- and one that undermines the social nature of knowledge and language. Indeed, this is something Ollman himself admits:
"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a "private language," and any communication between him and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal with in a later work...." [Ibid., p.63. Bold emphases added.]
Well, it remains to be seen if Ollman can solve a problem that has baffled everyone else for centuries (that is, those who even recognise this as a problem), but it is to his credit that he is at least aware of it.
[In fact, he is the very first dialectician I have read who is! However, I have devoted Essay Thirteen Part Three to a lengthy analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for more details.]
Of course, none of this fancy footwork would be necessary if Ollman recognised the fact that even though Marx gestured in its direction, HM does not need this obscure 'process' (even where some sense could be made of it) -- or, indeed, if he acknowledged the fact that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and language undercuts abstractionism completely.
Nevertheless, the few things that Ollman does say about this 'process' do not inspire much confidence:
"In one sense, the role Marx gives to abstraction is simple recognition of the fact that all thinking about reality begins by breaking it down into manageable parts. Reality may be in one piece when lived, but to be thought about and communicated it must be parceled (sic) out. Our minds can no more swallow the world whole at one sitting than can our stomachs. Everyone then, and not just Marx and Marxists, begins the task of trying to make sense of his or her surroundings by distinguishing certain features and focusing on and organizing them in ways deemed appropriate. 'Abstract' comes from the Latin, 'abstrahere', which means 'to pull from.' In effect, a piece has been pulled from or taken out of the whole and is temporarily perceived as standing apart.
"We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with, and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually see?' (What came into your line of vision?). Likewise, in thinking about any subject, we focus on only some of its qualities and relations. Much that could be included -- that may in fact be included in another person's view or thought, and may on another occasion be included in our own -- is left out. The mental activity involved in establishing such boundaries, whether conscious or unconscious -- though it is usually an amalgam of both -- is the process of abstraction.
"Responding to a mixture of influences that include the material world and our experiences in it as well as to personal wishes, group interests, and other social constraints, it is the process of abstraction that establishes the specificity of the objects with which we interact. In setting boundaries, in ruling this far and no further, it is what makes something one (or two, or more) of a kind, and lets us know where that kind begins and ends. With this decision as to units, we also become committed to a particular set of relations between them -- relations made possible and even necessary by the qualities that we have included in each -- a register for classifying them, and a mode for explaining them.
"In listening to a concert, for example, we often concentrate on a single instrument or recurring theme and then redirect our attention elsewhere. Each time this occurs, the whole music alters, new patterns emerge, each sound takes on a different value, etc. How we understand the music is largely determined by how we abstract it. The same applies to what we focus on when watching a play, whether on a person, or a combination of persons, or a section of the stage. The meaning of the play and what more is required to explore or test that meaning alters, often dramatically, with each new abstraction. In this way, too, how we abstract literature, where we draw the boundaries, determines what works and what parts of each work will be studied, with what methods, in relation to what other subjects, in what order, and even by whom. Abstracting literature to include its audience, for example, leads to a sociology of literature, while an abstraction of literature that excludes everything but its forms calls forth various structural approaches, and so on." [Ibid., pp.60-61. Bold emphasis added.]
As far as can be determined, that is all Ollman has to say about this 'process' as such (as opposed to his comments on how Marx is alleged to have used it). Now anyone reading through the above passage will surely conclude that Ollman has omitted the social aspect of knowledge. Sure, he gestures toward it with a comment that we must factor in "group interests, and other social constraints", but how this helps turn an individualised 'aptitude' into a socially-conditioned skill is left entirely unclear (and this is not surprising, since this trick is impossible to pull-off). How is it possible for Abstractor A to ensure that he/she has abstracted anything at all in the same way as Abstractor B? On this theory, all they have to go on are their own subjective attempts to this end, but they have no way of comparing their results. [Since this line of objection was rehearsed in detail earlier, I will not enter into it again here.]
An appeal to a public language here as a way out would be to no avail, for this theory undermines the very possibility of there being such a language. This is because this theory bases language acquisition itself on the process of abstraction; if so, it can hardly appeal to language to bail itself out -- at least, not without arguing in a circle. As we have seen, this whole approach is entangled in, and compromised by the post-Renaissance, bourgeois view of language, cognition and knowledge, which pictures these as skills we all learn as isolated individuals that we later bring into society as social atoms in order to compare the contents of our minds with those of others in the same market place of ideas. Here, the social comes second, the individual first. But, by doing this, the social aspect of language and knowledge is fatally undermined. [More on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]
As Meredith Williams notes of Vygotsky (a theorist who is highly influential among DM-fans):
"Vygotsky attempts to combine a social theory of cognition development with an individualistic account of word-meaning.... [But] the social theory of development can only succeed if it is combined with a social theory of meaning." [Williams (1999b), p.275.]
However, Williams could in fact be talking about any randomly-selected Dialectical Marxist who has written on this subject (including Ollman).
Again, this might seem too hasty, so we will have to wait to see how Ollman digs himself out of this particular bourgeois hole in future work (if he does).
Independently of this, Ollman has surely confused the capacity we have for concentrating on certain features of the world with this artificial 'process' of abstraction. So, when we are at the concert he mentioned, we surely concentrate on the soloist, say, but we do not abstract him or her.
It may be argued that this is indeed where 'abstraction' kicks in, but after that has been said, what do we gain by saying this that the word "concentrate" has not already achieved for us? What extra feature does this alleged 'process' now add? Ollman does not say. In fact, this 'crucially important' 'process' stalls at this point. It has nowhere to go (as the earlier sections of this Essay sought to show).
Of course, none of us begins with these skills, we have to be socialised into them, and taught what our words mean (we can see this from the way that individuals from other cultures focus on different aspects of their surroundings, especially when it comes to listening to music (one area where we all have to develop 'trained ears')), so even if there were such a mythical 'process' of abstraction, it would not be needed, for we already have the skills necessary to advance knowledge using these socially-acquired capacities. Moreover, these follow from, but do not undermine, the social nature of language and knowledge.
Ollman notes that there are four senses of "abstraction" in Marx's use of this term: (1) in the sense of dividing the world into manageable "mental constructs"; (2) to refer to the results of this process; (3) as a way of characterising a deficient, or ideological use of concepts; (4) in a general way to refer to his own work in Das Kapital (pp.61-62).
Now it is undeniable that Marx uses this word, and he certainly imagines he has applied the 'process' to his studies, but there nothing in Marx's writings to show he actually abstracted a single thing. And this is not just because the 'process' itself is impossible to carry out. The famous passage that is usually quoted to show that Marx does in fact use abstraction, as we have already seen, actually fails in that regard:
"It seems correct to begin with the real and the concrete…with e.g. the population…. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest…. Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and I would then, by further determination, move toward ever more simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse." [Marx (1973), pp.100-01.]
As I noted in Part One of this Essay:
In fact, Marx does not actually do what he says he does in this passage; he merely gestures at doing it, and his gestures are about as substantive as the hand movements of stage magicians. This is not to malign Marx. Das Kapital is perhaps one of the greatest books ever written; but it would have been an even more impressive work if the baleful influence of traditional thought had been kept totally at bay.
What Marx actually did was set out to use familiar words in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling accuracy. Anyone who reads the above passage can actually see him doing just that. They do not need to do brain scans on Marx, nor apply psychometric tests to follow his argument (or re-create his 'abstractions'). And they certainly do not have copy his moves -- and they most certainly cannot do this, for Marx did not say what he had actually done with the concepts he used, or how he 'mentally processed' them (if he did!). Indeed, his 'instructions' on how to abstract the "population" are about as useful as John Lennon's famous remark that to find the USA you just turn left at Greenland. Hence, no one could possibly follow Marx here since there are no useful details, which suggests that Marx did not in fact do what he said he did --, otherwise, careful thinker that he was, he would have added those details. More significantly, no one since has been able to reconstruct these mythical moves, or show that their own weak gestures at copying this method are exactly the same as those used by Marx (or that they yield the same results -- as I noted earlier).
None of this is surprising. Abstractionists become very vague when it comes to the giving the details of this 'process'; that is why, after 2400 years of this metaphysical fairy-tale, no one can say what this 'process' actually is.
But, the actual method Marx employed (i.e., the intelligent use of language in novel ways) is precisely how the greatest scientists have always proceeded. In their work, they construct arguments in an open arena, in a public, language -- albeit accompanied by a new use of old words --, which can be checked by anyone who cares to do so. This cannot be done with Ollman's "mental constructs".
Marx and Engels's earlier words are, therefore, surely a more accurate guide to what he actually did in Das Kapital:
"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….
"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Marx and Engels (1975), p.75. Bold emphases added.]
"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.
"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis only added.]
Here the process of abstraction is shown up for what it is: a capitulation to philosophical confusion, and one based on a distortion of ordinary language (which is, oddly enough, exactly the view of traditional Philosophy adopted in these Essays).
Ollman now makes a clichéd comment about change:
"Beginning with historical movement, Marx's preoccupation with change and development is undisputed. What is less known, chiefly because it is less clear, is how he thought about change, how he abstracted it, and how he integrated these abstractions into his study of a changing world. The underlying problem is as old as philosophy itself. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, provides us with its classic statement when he asserts that a person cannot step into the same river twice. Enough water has flowed between the two occasions so that the river we step into the second time is not the same river we walked into earlier. Yet our common sense tells us that it is, and our naming practice reflects this view. The river is still called the 'Hudson', or the 'Rhine' or the 'Ganges'. Heraclitus, of course, was not interested in rivers, but in change. His point is that change goes on everywhere and all the time, but that our manner of thinking about it is sadly inadequate. The flow, the constant alteration of movement away from something and toward something else, is generally missing. Usually, where change takes place very slowly or in very small increments, its impact can be safely neglected. On the other hand, depending on the context and on our purpose in it, even such change -- because it occurs outside our attention -- may occasionally startle us and have grave consequences for our lives." [Ollman (2003), p.64.]
We shall see in Essay Six, that Heraclitus in fact got into a mess over the criteria of identity for mass nouns and count nouns. But he had an excuse: he lived at a time when little was known about this. This is no longer the case. So, Ollman's breezy conclusions (based on no reference at all to modern work in this area) are far less easy to excuse.
Now, had Heraclitus said that it was impossible to step into the same flowing water twice, he might have had a point, but, despite what he said, it is quite easy to step into the same river. Indeed, without that capacity, not even Heraclitus could test his own 'theory' (or even imagine such a test in his 'mind's eye'), for he would not be able to recognise the same river to test it on! [The 'relative stability' argument is neutralised in Essay Six.]
"In contrast to this approach, Marx set out to abstract things, in his words, 'as they really are and happen,' making how they happen part of what they are (Marx and Engels, 1964, 57 -- this is the German Ideology, RL). Hence, capital (or labour, money, etc.) is not only how capital appears and functions, but also how it develops; or rather, how it develops, its real history, is also part of what it is. It is also in this sense that Marx could deny that nature and history 'are two separate things' (Marx and Engels, 1964, 57). In the view which currently dominates the social sciences, things exist and undergo change. The two are logically distinct. History is something that happens to things; it is not part of their nature. Hence, the difficulty of examining change in subjects from which it has been removed at the start. Whereas Marx, as he tells us, abstracts 'every historical social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence' (My emphasis -- i.e., Ollman's emphasis) (Marx, 1958, 20 -- this is Capital Volume One, RL)." [Ibid., p.65. Spelling altered to conform to UK English.]
But, as we have seen (in Essay Three Part One, here), abstraction may only penetrate to the heart of things if reality were itself abstract (i.e., if it was Ideal). [What is more, the 'below the surface' metaphor explains nothing at all (on that, see here).] Moreover, no one doubts that social development and science may or may not be able to tell us how things "really are", or how they "actually change", but they certainly cannot do this by means of abstraction, for this 'process' deprives language of its generality. And even if they could, dialectics would be the last thing scientists would look to for assistance, for it cannot account for change, anyway!
So, all this labour has brought forth not even a mouse:
"The Mountain labor'd,
groaning loud,
On which a num'rous gaping crowd
Of noodles came to see the sight,
When, lo! a mouse was brought to light!" [Phaedrus,
IV, XXIV.]
Ollman spends the next few pages outlining some of the abstract terms he says Marx uses (whereas Marx does not appear to call them this), during which he makes this substantive point:
"Before concluding our discussion of the place of change in Marx's abstractions, it is worth noting that thinking in terms of processes is not altogether alien to common sense. It occurs in abstractions of actions, such as eating, walking, fighting, etc., indeed whenever the gerund form of the verb is used. Likewise, event words, such as 'war' and 'strike', indicate that to some degree at least the processes involved have been abstracted as such. On the other hand, it is also possible to think of war and strike as a state or condition, more like a photo than a motion picture, or if the latter, then a single scene that gets shown again and again, which removes or seriously underplays whatever changes are taking place. And unfortunately, the same is true of most action verbs. They become action 'things.' In such cases, the real processes that go on do not get reflected -- certainly not to any adequate degree -- in our thinking about them. It is my impression that in the absence of any commitment to bring change itself into focus, in the manner of Marx, this is the more typical outcome." [Ollman (2003), p.67.]
Ollman is absolutely right to point out that ordinary language contains many words that depict change (and yet he, like others, confuses discourse with "common sense"), but he merely asserts that "common sense" assumes that many of these words depict states or conditions (when no such 'assuming' goes on, or if it does, Ollman omitted the evidence/argument), which, naturally, seems to undermine that other feature of language he had just mentioned.
But this is, of course, the problem with abstraction and reification, and it is not obviously related to "common sense" -- or, once more, Ollman offered no proof that they are. And yet, if this does indeed happen with ordinary language, it would be a result of the same set of crass syntactic errors that fed into ancient Greek Philosophy (detailed in Part One of this Essay), and which now re-surface in dialectics! In that case, if "common sense" is at fault, so is DM! On the other hand, if ordinary language is not distorted in this way (and if we take seriously the advice Marx and Engels gave earlier), the action verbs to which Ollman refers will not be mangled in this traditional, metaphysical and Philistine manner.
However, since dialecticians like Ollman make a virtue out of abstraction, which freezes verbs and predicate expressions into the names of abstract particulars, we should be inclined to take his comments with a pinch of non-dialectical salt.
Ollman then meanders off into a consideration of "internal relations" (a topic that will be destructively analysed in a later Essay), which 'allows' him to make several wild and unsubstantiated claims about Marx's method. In the course of which he adds this:
"The view held by most people, scholars and others, in what we've been calling the common sense view, maintains that there are things and there are relations, and that neither can be subsumed in the other. This position is summed up in Bishop Butler's statement, which G. E. Moore adopts as a motto: 'Everything is what it is, and not another thing,' taken in conjunction with Hume's claim, 'All events seem entirely loose and separate' (Moore, 1903, title page; Hume, 1955, 85 -- see the References for details; the first reference is to Moore (1959), RL). On this view, capital may be found to have relations with labour, value, etc., and it may even be that accounting for such relations plays an important role in explaining what capital is; but capital is one thing, and its relations quite another. Marx, on the other hand, following Hegel's lead in this matter, rejects what is, in essence, a logical dichotomy. For him, as we saw, capital is itself a Relation, in which the ties of the material means of production to labour, value, commodity, etc., are interiorized as parts of what capital is. Marx refers to 'things themselves' as 'their interconnections' (Marx and Engels, 1950, 488 -- Briefwechsel Volume 3, RL). Moreover, these relations extend backward and forward in time, so that capital's conditions of existence as they have evolved over the years and its potential for future development are also viewed as parts of what it is." [Ibid., p.69. Spelling changed to conform to UK English.]
So, on the basis of a quotation from Butler, and a comment from Hume, Ollman is able to tell us what the "common sense" view is! [Now, I called this sort of 'evidential display', beloved of DM-fans, "Mickey Mouse Science" in Essay Seven; and now we can see why. However, there I merely accused LCDs of this, but here we have a card-carrying HCD indulging in the same sport. Ollman is not alone; many other HCDs do likewise. That allegation will be substantiated in Essay Twelve.]
[LCD = Low Church Dialectician; HCD = High Church Dialectician. Follow the links for an explanation.]
However, as we have seen in Part One, Ollman is only able to confuse relations with "things" because of a linguistic dodge (whereby nominalised relational expressions are taken to be the names of abstract particulars); in this way Ollman finds he can to blur the distinction between "things" and "relations", and it is the only way he is able to do this.
Here, Ollman merely adds the assertion (copied from Marx) that Capital (etc.) is a relation. Of course, what he means is that in order to understand Capitalism, it is not enough just to look at "things" but at their connections, their history (and so on -- no problem with that), and yet he fails to tell us why that makes Capital a relation. Naturally, if it were a relation, it could have no relations of its own; on the other hand, it could have relations of its own only if it were an object of some sort. [Note, I am not committing myself to either view here!]
Ollman (and other HCDs) may be happy with this syntactic slide, but his (their) only defence would be an appeal to this crass syntactical segue itself (which is based on a fetishisation of language) outlined earlier. We saw here that this slippery approach to the denotation of such terms was all that lay behind several of the dodgy moves Hegel thought he could pull to befuddle his readers (all the while imagining he was advancing logic!), moves that are on a par with the equally dodgy linguistic tricks that 'underpin' Anselm's Ontological Argument.
It thus seems that all that this interpretation of the nature of Capital (the alleged relation, not the book) -- all that this interpretation of the nature of Capital can appeal to in support is a simple-minded view of "common sense" (backed by an evidential 'ceremony' that makes WMD-dossiers look rather substantial in comparison), coupled with a crass view of the logic of relational expressions -- compounded by a Philistine approach to language!
[The reader will no doubt have noted that this is precisely the accusation made at the beginning of Essay Three Part One, and will be repeated many times as these Essays unfold. Such moves are indeed the hall-mark of ruling-class forms-of-thought -- i.e., of Linguistic Idealism [LIE] -- the belief that profound theses about fundamental aspects of reality may be inferred from language alone -- which moves 'allow' those who indulge in them to by-pass the need to provide (adequate) material evidence (as we saw was the case with Ollman, and his appeal to what Hume and Butler said to support his conclusions about 'commonsense'). This process will be described and criticised in detail in Essay Twelve (parts of which can already be found here, and here).]
Now, it could be argued that Ollman rejects many of the above accusations, for example here:
"In order to forestall possible misunderstandings it may be useful to assert that the philosophy of internal relations is not an attempt to reify 'what lies between.' It is simply that the particular ways in which things cohere become essential attributes of what they are. The philosophy of internal relations also does not mean -- as some of its critics have charged -- that investigating any problem can go on forever (to say that boundaries are artificial is not to deny them an existence, and, practically speaking, it is simply not necessary to understand everything in order to understand anything); or that the boundaries which are established are arbitrary (what actually influences the character of Marx's or anyone else's abstractions is another question); or that we cannot mark or work with some of the important objective distinctions found in reality (on the contrary, such distinctions are a major influence on the abstractions we do make); or, finally, that the vocabulary associated with the philosophy of internal relations -- particularly 'totality,' 'relation,' and 'identity' -- cannot also be used in subsidiary senses to refer to the world that comes into being after the process of abstraction has done its work." [Ibid., p.72.]
But, this is precisely what Ollman does (i.e., "attempt to reify certain things), and flat denials cannot turn this around. Moreover, as we have seen (here and here), it is not possible to stop the dialectical juggernaut in its aimless journey into the infinite beyond, nor deflect the fatal criticism that, given this 'theory', it is indeed necessary to "understand everything in order to understand anything". Moreover, we have also seen that no sense can be made of dialecticians' use of words such as "totality" and "identity" (on that see here, here and here). Merely denying the untoward consequences of this Hermetic Horror story is not enough (just as it is not enough, say, for George W Bush to deny he is mass murderer). The evidence unambiguously suggests otherwise.
A few pages later, Ollman tries to say more about the "process of abstraction", but as far as can be determined, little is added concerning the process itself (and readers can easily check for themselves that this allegation itself is not unfair).
As far as can be determined, that is it! That is all that Ollman has to offer his readers about this 'core' idea.
To be sure, Ollman makes somewhat familiar claims about other areas of dialectics (which have, anyway, been batted out of the park elsewhere at this site, some of which will be examined again in Essay Twelve), however, he has little more to add concerning the nature of 'abstraction', certainly nothing which makes this mysterious process either comprehensible or plausible.
In that case, this passage is all the more unfortunate:
"Is there any part of Marxism that has received more abuse than his dialectical method? And I am not just thinking about enemies of Marxism and socialism, but also about scholars who are friendly to both. It is not Karl Popper, but George Sorel in his Marxist incarnation who refers to dialectics as 'the art of reconciling opposites through hocus pocus,' and the English socialist economist, Joan Robinson, who on reading Capital objects to the constant intrusion of 'Hegel's nose' between her and Ricardo (Sorel, 1950, 171; Robinson, 1953, 23 -- references given at the end, RL). But perhaps the classic complaint is fashioned by the American philosopher, William James, who compares reading about dialectics in Hegel -- it could just as well have been Marx -- to getting sucked into a whirlpool (James, 1978, 174 -- reference given at the end, RL)." [Ibid., p.59.]
In view of the continual slide into confusion and error that DM undergoes -- exposed at this site --, the comments of the above critics plainly were not harsh enough. As I pointed out in Essay One:
Another aspect of the defensive stance adopted by dialecticians is the fact that few fail to point out that hostile critics of Marxism always seem to attack their sacrosanct dialectic. This then allows DM-fans to brand such detractors as "bourgeois apologists", which in turn means that whatever the latter say can safely be ignored (as ideological)....
However, it has surely escaped such comrades' attention that the reason the dialectic is attacked by friend and foe alike is that it is by far and away the weakest and most lamentably feeble aspect of traditional Marxist Philosophy. Far from it being an "abomination" to the bourgeoisie (even though the State Capitalist rulers of Eastern Europe, the former USSR, Maoist China and North Korea are, or were, rather fond of it), the dialectic has in fact proved to be an abomination for revolutionary socialism.
Hence: our enemies attack dialectics precisely because they have found our Achilles Heel.
Whereas, revolutionaries like me attack it for the opposite reason: to rid Marxism of its Achilles Heel.
25. This seems to be the import of the passage from TAR, quoted above:
"[I]t is impossible simply to stare at the world as it immediately presents itself to our eyes and hope to understand it. To make sense of the world, we must bring to it a framework composed of elements of our past experience; what we have learned of others' experience, both in the present and in the past; and of our later reflections on and theories about this experience." [Rees (1998), p.63.]
As will be noted later, this is a rather odd way of making the point that knowledge is not solely derived from experience.
While some of the comments in the main body of this Essay might make it look as if a point were being made about the recognitional capacities of, for example, trainee feline classifiers -- it isn't. As pointed out in Essay Six, and Note 6a, above, this metaphor trades on a confusion introduced into traditional Epistemology (by Plato) between two different uses of the verb "to know". Knowledge of a friend or acquaintance is not the same as propositional knowledge. We do not have in modern English a pair of words that brings this out very well, but they do in French: connaitre and savoir. [I owe this point to Peter Geach.]
Knowledge (connaitre) of one's friends does involve recognitional capacities since it relates an ability to identity over time an individual. Propositional knowledge (savoir) is not a relation between a knower and a known, unless we regard propositions as objects of some sort (and that observation alone nullifies a whole branch of modern Epistemology, most often to be found in French Philosophy). On the other hand, if we insist on doing this, then generality will exit via the window once more --, for clearly, as individual objects such reified propositions would be particulars, too.
Moreover, if the applicability of a general term were indeed based on recognitional capacities (i.e., as applied to any supposed instances of it) we should then have to postulate a second order ability to recognise when a particular was a particular of the right type, as well as for recognising which word correctly applied to either or both. But this merely introduces Aristotle's problem once more, since it doubles the difficulties we originally faced, instead of helping to remove them. Furthermore, this would involve the use of the very notion to be explained, and recourse would have to be made to further mysterious inner "mental acts" to buttress the public use of words, and so on.
On this topic in general, see Hacker (1987), and Geach (1957). The problems associated with naive accounts of language learning are detailed in Cowie (1997, 2002) -- who, on pp.x-xi of (2002) has also spotted the connection between theories concerning the origin of language and regressive political ideologies.
26. That this is the correct approach can be seen from the fact that traditional philosophers themselves had to employ general words to account for general ideas, whatever they later changed them into.
However, the abstract objects they tried to define (or locate) were said to reside either in a hidden region of the mind/brain, or in a 'heavenly/Platonic' realm, from where they could be apprehended by special 'acts of intellection', or even by mere 'intuition.' As such, these 'objects' could only be accessed privately. Unlike objects in the material world -- which are available to those involved in collective labour/life (etc.) --, these are quintessentially unique to each mind. In that case, their nature is in principle un-checkable. In this manner they naturally help undermine belief in the social nature of language by suggesting that key linguistic activities are private, atomistic, inner and representational.
At this point, it is worth recalling that what had been advertised all along as an ontological and epistemological expedition to track down these elusive universals now turns out to be little more than a quibble about the meaning of general nouns -– only surprisingly ineptly executed -- as Part One of this Essay sought to show.
26a. Some of the background to this can be found here, but good luck to anyone trying to understand it.
Many dialecticians speak instead of the contradiction between 'essence' and 'appearance'; Herbert Marcuse, for instance, puts things this way:
"Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless; the material content is neutralised; the principle of identity is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are the fault of incorrect thinking); final causes are removed from the logical order....
"Existing as the living contradiction between essence and appearance, the objects of thought are of that “inner negativity” which is the specific quality of their concept. The dialectical definition defines the movement of things from that which they are not to that which they are. The development of contradictory elements, which determines the structure of its object, also determines the structure of dialectical thought. The object of dialectical logic is neither the abstract, general form of objectivity, nor the abstract, general form of thought -- nor the data of immediate experience. Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts -- that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man. This practice (intellectual and material) is the reality in the data of experience; it is also the reality which dialectical logic comprehends." [Marcuse (1972), pp.114-17.]
[We will see here how wide of the mark the first paragraph above is, and Marcuse's risible attempt to criticise Analytic Philosophy and the ordinary language of working people will be taken apart in another Essay. His appeal to Ernest Gellner's egregious book (referenced by yet another dialectical dunderhead) is countered here.]
[HCD = High Church Dialectician; LCD = Low Church Dialectician.]
This of course says more or less the same as John Rees in TAR, but with just enough obscure jargon thrown in to confuse the unwary.
Even so, readers will no doubt have noticed that an HCD of the stature of Marcuse also quotes no FL-text or source in support of his odd allegation that:
"Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless..." [Ibid.]
Marcuse must know that there are many modern logicians, who have forgotten more logic than he seems ever to have learnt, who have also adopted this ancient and mystical way of talking.
And this:
"...the principle of identity is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are the fault of incorrect thinking)..." [Ibid.]
also displays all the confusions we have come to associate with our even more logically-challenged LCD brethren. And we will see here the crass logical blunders Hegel committed, but upon which Marcuse has unwisely rested his faith.
George Novack now weighs in with this brazen piece of dogmatic apriorism:
"What distinguishes essence or essential reality from mere appearance? A thing is truly real if it is necessary, if its appearance truly corresponds to its essence, and only so long as it proves itself to be necessary. Hegel, being the most consistent idealist, sought the source of this necessity in the movement of the universal mind, in the Absolute Idea. Materialists, on the other hand, locate the roots of necessity in the objective world, in the material conditions and conflicting forces which create, sustain and destroy all things. But, from the purely logical standpoint, both schools of philosophy agree in connecting reality with necessity.
"Something acquires reality because the necessary conditions for its production and reproduction are objectively present and operative. It becomes more or less real in accordance with the changes in the external and internal circumstances of its development. It remains truly real only so long and insofar as it is necessary under the given conditions. Then, as conditions change, it loses its necessity and its reality and dissolves into mere appearance.
"Let us consider a few illustrations of this process, this contradiction between essence and appearance, resulting from the different forms assumed by matter in its motion. In the production of the plant, seed, bud, flower and fruit are all equally necessary phases or forms of its existence. Taken separately, each by itself, they are all equally real, equally necessary, equally rational phases of the plant's development.
"Yet each in turn becomes supplanted by the other and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and non-real. Each phase of the plant's manifestation appears as a reality and then is transformed in the course of development into an unreality or an appearance. This movement, triadic in this particular case, from unreality into reality and then back again to unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance. Appearance cannot be understood without an understanding of this process. It is this that determines whether any appearance in nature, society or in the mind is rational or non-rational." [Novack (1971), pp.86-87.]
It is not my immediate concern to criticise this sort of mystical Natürphilosophie (however, it will be later), but merely to note the fanciful way that the term "contradiction" is employed by Novack, as well as highlight his idiosyncratic use of the word "appearance". Exactly why a seed turning into a plant makes it an "appearance" Novack failed to say, and why any of this is a 'contradiction' is deeply mysterious. Indeed, it is worth asking how Novack knows that something is real only if its appearance coincides with its essence (always assuming that there are such things as 'essences' to begin with) --, that is over and above merely accepting Hegel's diktat to that effect.
And Robin Hirsch makes the same sort of point here.
27. I have employed the rather stilted sentential prefixing clause "It is not the case that…" to avoid well-known scope ambiguities which result from the incautious use of negation in certain contexts.
28. R6 has also been left somewhat 'stylistically-challenged' to minimise the differences between the stated examples. The same applies to several other exemplary sentences used in this part of the Essay. R6 was:
R6: It is not the case that this stick is bent in water.
29. Of course, if DM-theorists reject this contention (as it seems they will do), then they must be intending to revise the meaning of the word "contradiction", as opposed to using the familiar notion drawn from ordinary language (which, incidentally, literally means "to gain-say"), or even yet that derived from FL. Naturally, they are at liberty to do this, but that move would be of no more significance than would a similar attempt to revise the definition of, say, "relative surplus value" in an endeavour to show that since Marx ignored this new 'definition', his analysis of the falling rate of profit was incorrect.
[FL = Formal Logic.]
29a. Of course, it could be claimed that Hegel believed this too (i.e., that appearances are also part of reality). In that case, it is not too clear what the contradiction here could possibly be. But, what little help we get from DM-fans turns out to be no use at all in trying to comprehend any of this.
29b. As noted above, Novack goes on to argue as follows:
"Let us consider a few illustrations of this process, this contradiction between essence and appearance, resulting from the different forms assumed by matter in its motion. In the production of the plant, seed, bud, flower and fruit are all equally necessary phases or forms of its existence. Taken separately, each by itself, they are all equally real, equally necessary, equally rational phases of the plant's development.
"Yet each in turn becomes supplanted by the other and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and non-real. Each phase of the plant's manifestation appears as a reality and then is transformed in the course of development into an unreality or an appearance. This movement, triadic in this particular case, from unreality into reality and then back again to unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance. Appearance cannot be understood without an understanding of this process. It is this that determines whether any appearance in nature, society or in the mind is rational or non-rational." [Novack (1971), pp.86-87.]
Why Novack wants to describe plants as unreal is somewhat unclear. If they were plastic, or imaginary, he might have a point. But do plastic pants develop (or just melt)?
However, he concurs with Hegel in regarding as not real, or not fully real, those things that perish:
"We have already seen what great measure of truth there is in the proposition that the real is rational. We have ascertained that all things come into existence and endure in a lawful and necessary way. But this is not the whole and final truth about things. It is one-sided, relative, and a passing truth. The real truth about things is that they not only exist, persist, but they also develop and pass away. This passing away of things, eventuating in death, is expressed in logical terminology by the term 'negation.'
"The whole truth about things can be expressed only if we take into account this opposite and negative aspect. In other words, unless we introduce the negation of our first affirmation, we shall obtain only a superficial and abstract inspection of reality.
"All things are limited and changing. They not only force their way and are forced into existence and maintain themselves there. They also develop, disintegrate and are pushed out of existence and eventually disappear. In logical terms, they not only affirm themselves. They likewise negate themselves and are negated by other things. By coming into existence, they say: 'Yes! Here I am!' to reality and to thought engaged in understanding reality. By developing and eventually going out of existence, they say on the contrary: 'No, I no longer am; I cannot stay real.' If everything that comes into existence must pass out of existence, as all of reality pounds constantly into our brains, then every affirmation must inexorably express its negation in logical thought. Such a movement of things and of thought is called a dialectical movement.
"'All things...meet their doom; and in saying so, we have a perception that Dialectic is the universal and irresistible power, before which nothing can stay, however secure and stable it may deem itself,' writes Hegel. (Shorter Logic, p. 128.)
"There is a fable in The Arabian Nights about an Oriental monarch who, early in life, asked his wise men for the sum and substance of all learning, for the truth that would apply to everything at all times and under all conditions, a truth which would be as absolutely sovereign as he thought himself to be. Finally, over the king's deathbed, his wise men supplied the following answer: 'Oh, mighty king, this one truth will always apply to all things: "And this too shall pass away".' If justice prevailed, the king should have bequeathed a rich reward to his wise men, for they had disclosed to him the secret of the dialectic. This is the power, the omnipotence of the negative side of existence, which is forever emerging from, annihilating and transcending the affirmative aspect of things.
"This 'powerful unrest,' as Leibnitz (sic) called it, this quickening force and destructive action of life -- the negative -- is everywhere at work: in the movement of things, in the growth of living beings, in the transformations of substances, in the evolution of society, and in the human mind which reflects all these objective processes.
"From this dialectical essence of reality Hegel drew the conclusion that constitutes an indispensable part of his famous aphorism: All that is rational is real. But for Hegel all that is real is not without exception and qualification worthy of existence. 'Existence is in part mere appearance, and only in part reality.' (Introduction to the Shorter Logic, § 6.) Existence elementally and necessarily divides itself, and the investigating mind finds it to be so divided, into opposing aspects of appearance and essence. This disjunction between appearance and essence is no more mysterious than the disjunction between the inside and outside of an object." [Novack (1971), pp.84-86. Quotation marks changed to conform to the conventions adopted here. I have reproduced the edition of Hegel's work used by the editor of this on line text, Andy Blunden.]
As we will see in Essay Seven and Fourteen (summary here), this is a mystical or a poetic way of viewing nature, and openly confuses linguistic/logical expressions with reality itself. It also represents an echo of the idea (one that Hegel certainly accepted) that only 'God' is fully real, since only 'He' exists of necessity. Everything else is merely contingent, and depends on 'Him' for its own insecure grip on the 'Real'.
However, to spoil the Hermetic fun, protons seem to have received an exemption certificate (perhaps from 'Being' itself), for they do not change; or if they do, they do not do so as a result of their 'internal contradictions'. Photons are similarly uncooperative, as are electrons. More on this here.
To be sure, these flowery sayings (of the sort that Novack seems to dote upon) go down well in DM-circles (but, they have an offensive air of Christianity about them, and clearly serve to maintain the morale of naive cadres -- more on this in Essay Nine Part Two), but they only make sense if those using them are prepared to anthropomorphise reality; Novack's "Here I am", "No I am not" rather gives the game away, one feels.
But, still, we have yet to be told what the 'contradiction' here actually is!
30. There is something rather odd about the idea that appearances are capable of contradicting either reality or the facts. This is because an appearance cannot contradict a fact unless both are expressed in indicative sentences, and perhaps induce beliefs conducive to that end. Clearly, this now redirects attention to the confrontation that could occur between such contradictory beliefs. But, with respect to bent sticks, for example, who actually believes sticks are bent in water? And, which person of sound mind believes that sticks are both bent and not bent in water?
But, if that is the sort of confusion that scientific advance encourages us to reject it would be no great loss to humanity. However, none of this has anything to do with the alleged contradiction between appearance and reality, since, plainly, such contradictions would be between beliefs expressed in language; still less would this have anything to do with 'commonsense'.
31. Those who think this unlikely should read Note 32, below.
32. It hardly needs pointing out that Rees (and other DM-theorists) would not be interested in pairs of allegedly contradictory propositions if they thought both were false, or one true and the other false. But, because DM-theorists without exception fail to specify clearly what they mean by "contradiction", it is impossible to say whether or not this supposition is itself correct. Or, indeed, if it only appears to be the one or the other -- or something else.
It could be objected here that, for example, modern post-Copernican science has in fact contradicted Aristotelian ideas about the immobility of the earth. Of course, that is itself a controversial interpretation of the relationship between modern and ancient scientific theories -– and one that is not obviously correct. [I will explain why this is so in a later Essay.]
[TOR = Theory of Relativity.]
Anyway, and despite this, one clear consequence of the TOR is that, with a suitable change of reference frame, it is possible to picture the Earth as stationary and the Sun (etc.) in motion relative to it. That done, the alleged 'contradiction' disappears. In that case, the only necessary 'correction' to Aristotelian Physics (in this respect) would involve the abandonment of the idea that the earth is situated in a unique frame of reference -– but science itself can neither confirm nor deny that particular metaphysical assumption.
On this, Robert Mills had this comment to make:
"Another way of stating the principle of equivalence, a way that better reflects its name, is to say that all reference frames, including accelerated reference frames, are equivalent, that the laws of Physics take the same form in any reference frame…. And it is also correct to say that the Copernican view (with the sun at the centre) and the Ptolemaic view (with the earth at the centre) are equally valid and equally consistent!" [Mills (1994), pp.182-83. Spelling altered to conform to UK English.]
[It is worth recalling that the late Professor Mills was co-inventor of Yang-Mills Theory in Gauge Quantum Mechanics, and was thus no scientific novice.]
And this is what Fred Hoyle had to say:
"Instead of adding further support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions the Einstein theory goes in the opposite direction, giving increased respectability to the geocentric picture. The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view....
"Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful physical sense...." [Hoyle (1973), pp.78-79.]
"We now know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance. But such an understanding had to await Einstein's theory of gravitation in order to be fully clarified." [Hoyle (1975), p.416.]
Similarly, Max Born commented:
"Thus from Einstein's point of view Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right. What point of view is chosen is a matter of expediency. For the mechanics of the planetary system the view of Copernicus is certainly the more convenient. But it is meaningless to call the gravitational fields that occur when a different system of reference is chosen 'fictitious' in contrast with the 'real' fields produced by near masses: it is just as meaningless as the question of the 'real' length of a rod...in the special theory of relativity. A gravitational field is neither 'real' nor 'fictitious' in itself. It has no meaning at all independent of the choice of coordinates, just as in the case of the length of a rod." [Born (1965), p.345. I owe this reference to Rosser (1967).]
Of course, it could always be claimed that Copernican theory is simpler than the Ptolemaic system, but until we receive a clear sign that nature works according to our notion of simplicity (or cares a fig about it), that argument won't wash.
This is quite apart from the fact that 'simplicity' is impossible to define in non-question-begging terms. For example, which is the simpler of these two formulae?
(1) θ = Ae-kt
(2) θ = At2 + Bt + C
(2) is algebraically 'simpler', but (1) is 'simpler' if we judge simplicity on the basis of the number of terms used.
On this, see Losee (2001), pp.228-29.
Nevertheless, even if this were an accurate depiction of the relation between these two theories, it would still be of no use to DM -– that is, not unless dialecticians also abandon the requirement that DM-contradictions should both be true (or both 'exist'). But, as noted in the text, both sets of propositions cannot be true at once. If Aristotelian (or Ptolemaic) theory is now regarded as representing 'appearances' (or perhaps the 'commonsense view' of the universe), and it is still viewed as true/partially true -- even if it is 'contradicted' by reality -- then it seems that DM-theorists must accept the truth/partial truth of erroneous ancient theories. And, if that is so here, it should apply to allegedly 'commonsense' theories, too –- such as, say, the ancient idea that a woman who sees a hare will give birth to a child with a hare-lip (etc). Or even the more modern tale that women can and have given birth to rabbits. [Pickover (2000).] It seems they would have to accept the truth of this fable and that of its negation!
If we are meant to derive a DM-contradiction where both halves are true, then this conclusion seems unavoidable.
But, what is remotely true about such fanciful ideas? What was even vaguely correct about the ancient idea that angels pushed the planets around the earth? If there is nothing true about outdated theories like these, then a DM-contradiction cannot be manufactured from them.
[Of course, some dialecticians, who cleave to the sacred Hegelian text a mite too closely, have a different view of truth (as perhaps the conformity between an object and it concept). But, as we saw in Part One of this Essay, this only works if an ancient syntactical confusion is accepted, and concepts are treated as objects. More on this in Essay Twelve. See also here.]
On the other hand, if an antiquated or obsolete theory is to be rejected because it is based on appearances, not reality, then DM-style contradictions cannot feature anywhere at all. This is because, in that case we would have alleged truths (those depicting reality) facing putative falsehoods (those encapsulating the 'commonsense'/ancient view) -– but never two truths -– still less two 'partial truths' (i.e., those belonging to the outmoded picture confronting the less 'partial' ones found in the modern theory).
Howsoever these options are shuffled there seem to be no winning cards in any of the hands DM-theorists have dealt, or could deal, themselves.
33. Science Cannot Undermine Common Sense
Ordinary Language Confused With Common Sense
Philosophers and scientists frequently confuse ordinary language with 'commonsense'. With respect to the alleged contradiction between appearance and reality -- occasioned by modern theories that the earth moves, for instance -- such thinkers have in mind perhaps the supposed link between certain "folk" theories (i.e., theories that hold that the Earth is stationary while the Sun moves) and everyday language. In that case, it is this incongruity, say, which is connected with the use of the word "sunrise" and the fact that it does not 'actually rise'. This is supposed to demonstrate the fact that ordinary language still contains concepts derived from defunct metaphysical, religious or quasi-scientific theories, which allegedly means that the vernacular is defective.
However, even if such inferences and links were part of the 'commonsense view', that would not imply that the vernacular depended upon or encapsulated outmoded scientific/metaphysical theories. This can be seen from the fact that all of us (scientists included) still employ terms like "sunrise" despite our assenting to modern theories of the Universe. We are not to suppose that when scientists use the word "sunrise" they do so ironically or thoughtlessly.
Moreover, unless scientists and philosophers used and already understood terms taken from ordinary language, they could scarcely begin to correct 'commonsense' -– always assuming that the latter needed correcting, or even that this is what scientists/philosophers in fact do.
On this topic, see Button, et al (1995), Cowley (1991), Cook (1979, 1980), Ebersole (1967, 1979a, 1979b), Hacker (1982a, 1982b, 1987), Hanfling (1984, 1989, 2000), Ryle (1960), Macdonald (1938) and Stebbing (1958). This issue is discussed in more detail in Essay Twelve, Part Two.
Since writing this, I have come across a somewhat similar account in Frank (1950), Chapter Seven, parts of which can be found here -- but unfortunately not the latter chapter, as yet.
However, a much more revealing fact about ordinary language -– and one easily missed -- is that we can readily form the negations of sentences that contain such allegedly obsolete notions (like the daily ascent of the Sun). Consider, for example, the following:
S1: The Sun rises in the morning.
S2: It is not the case that the Sun rises in the morning.
The facility we have in ordinary language of being able to negate every indicative empirical sentence demonstrates that the vernacular is neither a theory nor is it dependent upon one. This is because -- to use another argument of Peter Geach's -- no viable theory could countenance the negation of all its empirical propositions, as ordinary language readily does.
Naturally, this claim is controversial -- but clearly only to those who depreciate ordinary language.
[Ordinary language is defended in depth in a later Essay. Some of this material appears in Essay Twelve Part Two, and here.]
Of course, scientific theories extend, develop and replace the meanings of ordinary words by the use of analogy and metaphor (etc.), and they employ technical terms not found in the vernacular. But unless the latter were linked to ordinary language and practice at some point, their meanings would remain completely indeterminate -- and the theories to which they belonged would be incomprehensible. [Again, this line of defence will be pursued in more detail in an Essay on Science to be published later.]
Returning to the case in point, the view defended here means that the word "sunrise" is no more problematic than words such as "nightfall" and "daybreak" are. No one imagines that the use of "nightfall" commits anyone to a "folk theory" of the susceptibilities of darkness to the law of gravity, or that "daybreak" suggests that mornings are brittle.
Indeed, and to change the example, no one (certainly no scientist) believes that when someone catches the 'flu (or influenza) there is some sort of cosmic influence at work, even though as matter of fact the original use of this scientific word (from medieval Latin, influentia) was based on an ancient mystical theory about there being just such stellar influences. Still less would anyone be eager to accept the idea that when someone is described as "hysterical" this means that that person has a wandering womb (even though that particular idea used to be based on a former scientific belief that wombs could wander; Greek: hysteria or 'womb'). Nor do psychologists now think that "lunatics" are sensitive to phases of the Moon -– or even that phlegmatic individuals have a superabundance of phlegm --, and so on. In fact, if the term "Big Bang" were to be understood as literally as certain critics of 'commonsense' read "sunrise", we should be committed to the view that the origin of the Universe was rather loud, and was witnessed by sentient life.
[On "influenza", type that word into the search box here. On hysteria, see here and here.]
In addition, it is worth noting that many currently used scientific terms are themselves derived from ancient or odd uses of certain words. For example: "Oxygen" (derived from the original Greek meaning "acid"); "Quark" (coined by Murray Gell-Mann from Finnegans Wake); "Law" (derived from Jurisprudence); "Atom" (meaning "indivisible"); "Acid" (meaning "sour" or "sharp to the taste"); "Alkali" (Arabic, "the ashes of a plant"); "Algebra" (Arabic, "the reduction"); "Alcohol" (Arabic, al-kuhul, powdered antimony, or eye-makeup), "Flow" (from Old High German flouwen, "to rinse"); "Force" (Latin, "strong"); "Root", in Mathematics (part of a plant); "Matrix" (Latin, "mother", or "womb"); "Vector" (Latin vehere, "to carry"); "Missing Link" (from the Great Chain of Being), "Planet" (Late Latin planeta, or "wanderer"), "vaccine" (from vacca, cow), and so on.
[Most of these were all obtained from this on-line dictionary. On the Great Chain of Being, see Lovejoy (1964). On this topic in general, see Crosland (2006).]
Moreover, the idea that words encapsulate ancient or defunct theories appears to commit those who accept it to the view that 'meanings' follow words about as if attached to them by some sort of 'semantic adhesive', and that once a word has gained a meaning it will always mean or connote the same no matter what. That would imply that words are quasi-intelligent beings whose denotations and connotations are hard-wired into their 'memory', which cannot be altered by subsequent users.
Howsoever these metaphors are interpreted, they suggest that anyone who uses such words must have their meanings dictated to them by those words themselves, or that language-users somehow 'catch' the meaning of these words when young, rather like the way that they might pick up a virus from their parents.
[The recent infatuation with Richard Dawkins's 'memes' also trades on this same fetishised myth. On the weakness of this 'theory, see McGrath (2005). Those who object to my referencing a book written in order to defend belief in 'God' should also point a few fingers at those who appeal to Hegel, who had the same aim in mind.
Of course, I am only commending McGrath's argument against 'memes'.]
In this case, something analogous to a foreign body will have taken them over, running their brains and governing their speech; learning a language would thus be more like contracting a disease or being possessed, but it would not be a socially-acquired skill. Hence, the claim that words still carry their ancient meanings about with them would amount to their fetishisation -- in effect reifying the Ideal as a causal agent, animating immaterial beings.
Meaning in language would not then be a function of the communal life, social interaction or material existence of human beings; it would be a function of the social life of words and meanings.
Admittedly, TAR's general point appears to be that while science presents us with an 'objective' view of the world, ordinary 'commonsense' operates at the level of 'subjective appearance'.
"But Hegel is also difficult for reasons that are not the result of character and circumstance. His theories use terms and concepts that are unfamiliar because they go beyond the understanding of which everyday thought is capable. Ordinary language assumes that things and ideas are stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that.' And, within strict limits, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the fundamental discovery of Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change…. And they change because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is to this end that Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic processes…. It is the search to resolve…contradictions that pushes thought past commonsense definitions which see only separate stable entities." [Rees (1998), pp.45, 50.]
"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Ibid., p.187.]
Here, Rees appears to be arguing that while 'commonsense' might be alright in its own sphere, it is inadequate in more technical areas or in those that involve change. [These claims are examined in detail in Essay Twelve, Part Two, some of which material appears here.]
Furthermore, because appearances can be -- and often are -- deceptive, scientific knowledge must be based on theories that go beyond or behind the phenomenal world to reveal its underlying "essence". These 'deeper realities' must be capable of explaining why appearances are what they are and seem how they seem.
Scientists Cannot Afford To Undermine Common Sense
Despite this, it is plain that scientists have to rely on their activity in this world -- the 'world of appearances' -- to test, refine and advance their hypotheses. No matter how sophisticated, technical or "elegant" a theory is, at some point researchers have to interface with the ordinary world. In order to test their ideas scientists must read dials, check meters, mix substances, carry out measurements, handle and calibrate instruments, conduct surveys, look down microscopes, collect samples, consult computer screens, research the relevant literature, speak to colleagues, complete reports, formulate equations, attend conferences, write articles and books, etc., etc. All or most of these must be carried out if a theory is to become anything more than speculative, tentative or hypothetical. But, clearly, all of these activities and performances take place in the ordinary phenomenal world.
In addition, all of the above routines are regulated by the same conventions that govern everyday speech and reasoning -– and these in turn are mediated by familiar mundane physical skills and practices, all of which are materially-, socially-, and historically-conditioned. In that case, scientists cannot risk undermining the deliverances either of the phenomenal or the social world, just as they cannot afford to depreciate ordinary material language and practice for fear that, by weakening the branches upon which they collectively sit, their own ideas risk a catastrophic fall.
Socially-conditioned practice in this material world enables the intelligent prosecution of science; the vernacular not only facilitates the education and socialisation of scientists, it underpins everyday skills and laboratory routine (etc.). Moreover, not only do such mundane aspects of our material and/or social existence help secure successful inter-communication between scientists, they provide a steady source of the metaphors and models that breathe life into the vast majority of their theories. [On this see, Lynch (1996), Polanyi (1962), and Ravetz (1996).]
Nevertheless, it could be argued at this point that Rees's account does not imply that appearances cannot be trusted; indeed, as noted above, he actually argued that his own analysis:
"…does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Ibid., p.187. Bold emphasis added.]
But, as was pointed out in more detail in the main body of this Part of the Essay, this just means that surface phenomena in a Capitalist society are different from their underlying form -– which, of course, implies that appearances cannot be relied upon. That accounts for the author's use of the word "real", highlighted above.
Consequently, to return to earlier examples, the idea that appearances are not "real" could encourage the belief that just as, say, the Sun simply appears to rise (but it does not really do so), and just as sticks, for instance, merely look as if they are bent in water (but they are not really deformed in this way), and just as objects, for example, only seem to get smaller when they recede from us (when they don't really shrink), and just as tables and floors, say, give the impression that they are solid (when they are really 'composed' mostly of empty space), so the surface appearance of Capitalism only seems to be fair when 'underneath' it really isn't. If this is so, and on this view, it is clear that appearances can neither be fundamental nor trustworthy aspects of reality.
That is why no one believes that deep down objects change their shape as we walk round them, that the Sun is the same size as the Moon, or that boats sink below the waves when they go over the horizon. And, presumably, it is why only deeply confused Marxists believe Capitalism really is fair.
[Note that I am not committed to the idea that appearances are deceptive, since only human beings can be deceptive. Quite the opposite. I am merely drawing out the consequences of this batch of confused metaphysical notions unwisely imported in Marxism. However, further consideration of this would take us too far into HM, an area largely avoided in this work -- for reasons spelt-out in Essay One.]
Moreover, the idea that Rees does not believe that appearances are deceptive implies that his own distinction between surface phenomena and underlying 'real essences' is pointless; his arguments would make no sense unless he believed that appearances were deceptive in themselves. Otherwise, why try to isolate or identify underlying essences if surface phenomena never misled anybody? Why delve deeper if Capitalism looks fair and therefore can be regarded as fair (given this way of talking)? And, why try to explain to workers that their wages represent only a fraction of the value they produce if what they get appears to be a fair slice of the cake, and is so?
Doubtless, several of the above assertions might still attract severe criticism. However, critics can console themselves with the thought that the resolution of these issues may only take place in this phenomenal world -– that is, in the world of appearances and ordinary language. Hence, if the superiority of science or dialectics may only be established by a defence situated precisely here, in the world of appearances and ordinary language -- using the printed page, books, articles, spoken/written words, argumentation, observation, experiment and the like --, then any criticisms of the points made above must self-destruct. If those espousing such criticisms are only able to convince others of their correctness by arguing that no one can really trust what they see or hear -- except the material form of the argument that had just been used to express those very doubts --, then self-destruct they will.
If phenomena are untrustworthy, then any phenomenal statement of that fact must be, too.
And it is little use referring to the 'dialectical interplay' between "appearance" and underlying "essence" (as we saw Novack attempt to do earlier), since one half of this process (at least) is defective (see above, and the main part of this Essay), while the process itself is predicated on a series of logical blunders.
Returning to the main theme of this section: if scientists themselves understand the meaning of the word "rise" in S1, for example, then they cannot simply re-define it to suite themselves -- perhaps under the mistaken impression that such a revision will uncover its 'real' meaning. To see this, consider this pair of sentences:
S1: The Sun rises in the morning.
S2: It is not the case that the Sun rises in the morning.
If the word "rises" in S1 or S2 does not mean what we ordinarily take it to mean, then any given scientist (or philosopher) using these sentences would not in fact be clarifying or correcting ordinary language; he or she would be attempting to change it.
On the other hand, if the word "rises" in S2 is to be understood in a new, and as yet unspecified way, then S2 would no longer be the contradictory of S1, and so it could not clarify or correct it. Either way, it is not possible to 'correct' ordinary language in this way.
However, Rees also claimed that science (in that scientists study 'reality itself') contradicts appearances -- or, at least, that seems to be the import of this passage:
"There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Rees (1998), p.188.]
Although Rees does not use not use S1 and S2 himself, they might nevertheless serve to illustrate the alleged conflict he seems to have in mind. If so, it could be argued that they reveal that the apparent motion of the Sun (or a belief in it) was in fact contradicted by later developments in science, which demonstrates the limitations of 'commonsense'.
The problem with this reading of S1 and S2 is that (as noted several times in the text) it does not actually depict a contradictory state of affairs. This is because this take on the situation interprets S1 as a report that the Sun appears to rise. But, if appearances were deceptive and it appeared to be the case that the Sun moved (even if it did not) then both of the following could be true:
S3: The Sun appears to rise in the morning.
S4: The Sun does not rise in the morning.
But, we have been here already.
Perhaps the worry exercising DM-theorists might be brought out by means of the following 'argument':
S5: The Sun appears to move.
S6: Therefore the Sun does move.
S7: But, modern science shows that the Sun does not move.
S8: Therefore, the Sun does not move.
S9: Hence, the Sun both moves and does not move.
S10: S9 is a contradiction, and so is false.
S11: If S8 is still held true, then based on the falsehood of S9, S6 is false.
It looks like S9 is the contradiction DM-theorists require. The idea appears to be that while phenomena might lead us to accept one set of beliefs, science forces us to adopt an 'opposite' or 'contradictory' set. Once again, the conclusion seems to be that scientific knowledge contradicts 'commonsense' and ordinary language.
Of course, DM-theorists -- if they accept this line of reasoning -- must abandon one or both of the following theses:
(1) Contradictions are true. [The opposite of this was used in S10 to derive the falsehood of S6.]
(2) All of reality is contradictory.
The continued acceptance of (1) would mean that although scientific knowledge contradicts 'commonsense', incorrect and correct systems of belief are equally true. Clearly, this would completely undermine scientific knowledge. If mythical tales and allegedly erroneous 'folk' theories were true (even though they 'contradicted' fact and/or theory), then there would seem to be no point bothering with scientific research. On that account, we would have to accept as true the idea that the Earth sits stationary at the centre of the Universe and the belief that it is in motion on the periphery somewhere. Naturally, it would then be impossible to believe that science provides an 'objective' account of reality if the opposite of what scientists believe to be the case was also the case.
Of course, the acceptance of (2) would mean that the contradictory of whatever scientists held to be true was also true. Clearly, this would undermine science even more effectively.
Despite these problems, S5-S11 present serious problems of their own:
[A] S5 does not imply S6, which means that S9 cannot be derived from either.
[B] S9 is not a contradiction; it is far too vague.
[C] If all phenomenal reports are to be subjected to this sort of test, then it might not be possible to show that S7, for instance, is true. This is because the validation of S7 would require extensive reliance on other phenomenal reports, all of which would be susceptible to similarly destructive analyses. [This is quite apart from the fact that S7, for example, is a phenomenal object itself.]
In which case, S9 to S11 cannot be derived from these premisses; this putative reductio is defective from start to finish.
34. Anyway, and once more, these two sentences are too vague to be considered contradictory.
35. For the sake of argument (as in Note 33, above), I am assuming that this reductio is valid (whereas it isn't) and that R26 is a contradiction. Despite this, even if this argument worked, it would do so only if DM-supporters were prepared to withdraw their criticisms of FL. Once again, if contradictory pairs of propositions can both be true at once, R27 would be false, and R28 would no longer follow from R21-R27.
[I have also ignored what seems to be the correct implication of this argument, which is that people (workers) hold contradictory beliefs about the fairness of Capitalism.]
[For ease of reference, again, R21-R28 were:
R21: Capitalism appears to be fair.
R22: This appearance leads people (including workers) to think that it is fair.
R23: Hence, Capitalism is fair.
R24: But revolutionary theory and practice convinces some that Capitalism is not fair.
R25: Therefore, Capitalism is not fair.
R26: Consequently, Capitalism is fair and not fair.
R27: But, the contradiction in R26 implies that R23 cannot be true (based on the truth of R25).
R28: Therefore, Capitalism is not fair.]
36. Naturally, the way this is expressed in the text prejudices any conclusions that might be drawn from it. Anyway, it is not faithful to the aim of the argument constructed there (i.e., that which was expressed in R21-R28). But, DM-texts themselves are the main source of the problem. As noted above, since it is not possible to form a contradiction by conjoining a proposition expressing an appearance with one recording only matters of fact, any attempt to do so (as in the argument in the main body of the text, reproduced above in Note 35) not unsurprisingly flounders. Moreover, and for the same reason, the comments in the text about the options available to DM-theorists are also unsatisfactory.
So, until DM-theorists clarify what they mean by much of what they say, little more can be done to make sense of anything they do say.
37. The generation of contradictory beliefs (in the minds of the unwary) will not be entered into here, since that would take us too far adrift into HM.
38. It might be objected here that this latest assertion argues that appearances are 'subjective', when it was pointed out above that they were 'objective'. Which is it to be?
Of course, the philosophical terms "objective" or "subjective" are not ones I would prefer to use; this Part of the Essay is simply responding to the vague use of these words adopted by dialecticians. The latter seem to believe that appearances are subjective; it is this assumption that is being used against them. But, that tactic does not imply that I accept that the terms "subjective" and "objective" have any clear meaning (when used 'philosophically', or 'dialectically').
On the other hand -- to continue in this hopeless idiom --, appearances are also seemingly 'objective' in that they are presumably part of the real world (i.e., they do not belong to any other); even if they are totally mistaken and entirely made up, they still exist as a brain state/process (on this view), or 'emerge' from one, independently of every other mind in the universe.
[Recall, I am not asserting the truth of the above; their incongruity with other DM-notions is merely being highlighted.]
39. The circumstances which prompt members of different classes to draw true or false conclusions about the nature of Capitalist society will not be entered into in this work.
40. It is certainly controversial to claim that thoughts should be classified with appearances, but since these terms-of-art (i.e., as they feature in Metaphysics) are devoid of meaning anyway, the denial of that claim would be equally absurd -– either that, or it would be impossible to assess, and for the same reason.
This quibble aside, presumably the following would be counted as examples of thoughts, at some level:
T1: "That stick is bent in the water", said the philosopher.
T2: NN thought that the stick was bent until she realised it was poking into water.
T3: NM thought that he had won the vote until the recount was announced.
On the basis of these (and countless other examples one could think of) it would be difficult to maintain that thoughts are neither appearances, nor are they part of the 'world of appearances'. In fact, the above are not only about appearances, they are appearances themselves.
It might be objected that appearances arise from, or are related to, sense perception; this is what distinguishes them from thoughts. But, T3, for example, is not about 'sensations', but about how things appeared to NM at a certain moment during the re-counting of the said votes, and afterwards; it notes the reported appearance that prompted NM's thoughts -- and he was wrong. What appeared to be the case turned out not to be.
Of course, what has exercised Philosophers (and amateur metaphysicians) over the centuries is the picture they hold that 'thoughts' are inner, shadowy 'mental' events, states or episodes (which represent things to us in our heads), accessible only to their owners in an inner private ante-chamber, prompted by sensation. Because of this, it then seemed obvious to many that since appearances derived from sensation they could not be 'thoughts' (nor the other way round). But, given this metaphysical way of speaking, appearances are equally shadowy and inner beings, so this cannot be what distinguishes them from thoughts that also exist in the same internal and secret arena.
Naturally, the dualism underlying this entire picture is something materialists would want to reject anyway; unfortunately there is no way for dialectical materialists to do this.
[Why this is so is discussed in detail in a later Essay, where the idea that mental events are 'inner objects/processes' will also subjected to sustained and destructive criticism.]
Once more, until a clear account of the nature of 'thoughts' and 'appearances' (as these are understood by DM-theorists) is produced, it is difficult to say whether the two are the same or different.
On the inappropriateness of depicting sensations (and appearances) in the traditional way, see Hacker (1987).
41. Although TAR does claim the following:
"[C]oncepts which arise from direct interaction with the world cannot be false." [Rees (1998), p.92.]
Nevertheless, from the surrounding context it is unclear whether Rees actually agrees with these sentiments or not. If not, he was certainly wise to reject them. Clearly concepts themselves cannot be either true or false; it makes no sense at all to ask whether: "….cat" (or even "cat") is true or false. Hegel thought otherwise, but that belief itself was based on the ancient confusion between objects and concepts (analysed in detail in Part One of this Essay).
However, I discuss this topic in more detail in Part Three of this Essay.
41a. As Wittgenstein noted, all you have here are yet more signs, and signs cannot interpret themselves. There is a good account of this in Bloor (1997). A more profound analysis can be found in Kripke (1982), and another intelligent approach in Williams (1999a).
Bloor's book is one of the better contributions to the debate over the nature of rule-following to have appeared in the last ten years, however there are several serous weaknesses to his overall argument; they will be discussed in a later Essay. On this in general, see Kusch (2006).
42. In fact, this work is aimed at demonstrating that although DM appears to its supporters to be a good theory, in reality it is thoroughly misconceived.
Here, at least, subjective appearances finally clash with reality!
There would, of course, be no point arguing for or against the truth of DM if thoughts were self-certifying.
[Apparently only Stalin's and Mao's thoughts have ever merited such well-deserved respect -- as self-certifying dogma.
On second thoughts, perhaps we should beatify Gerry Healy, too. Bob Avakian is already well on course.]
43. This word (i.e., "semblances") is not being used here in its Hegelian sense.
44. This topic will not be entered into here for reasons noted in Essay One.
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Latest Update: 13/04/09
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