The Totality: A Complete Mystery
This Essay, as with all the others at this site, does not represent my final view on any of the issues it raises, and is merely 'work in progress'.
Apart from Essay Three Part Two, this has been the most difficult Essay to write so far. This is because so little has been published in the 'dialectical' literature over the last 200 years to help the bemused critic understand what dialecticians are referring to when they talk about the "Totality" -- as will soon become apparent to those who might think otherwise.
Hence, attacking this notion is like punching a blancmange; but even then, one would at least have something to aim at.
Finally, it is worth pointing out up-front that in what follows I will not be discussing holist ideas applied to the understanding of human social and economic development (unless, of course, these involve the use of Hegelian concepts), since that would involve issues arising in Historical Materialism, a theory I fully accept.
Hence, both Parts of Essay Eleven are concerned solely with Dialectical Materialism -- i.e., with holist ideas applied to the natural world.
This essay is over 52,000 words long; a summary of some 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 Mystery Of The Totality
(b) 'God', The "Totality", And Negative Theology
(c) The "It's Everything" Gambit
(2) What Do The Dialectical Prophets Say?
(3) Where The Shoe Originally Pinched -- John Rees's Theory
(a) TAR Bottles It
(b) Putting The Part Before The Horse
(4) It's An Awful Job, But Someone Has To Do It
(d) A Fit-Up?
(f) The Elusive Membership List
(g) Ontological Blank Cheque For Scientists?
(h) 'Objectively' On, Then Off The Cosmic List
(5) Universal Interconnection -- Fact Or Fancy?
(a) Precisely What Is interconnected With What?
(b) Interconnectionism Comes Apart At The Seams
(c) Maximal Interconnectionism
(d) Non-Maximal Interconnectionism
(6) The Epistemological Definition
(a) What Do We Know?
(b) Kant's Noumenon By Any Other Name
(7) The "Totality" -- Universal And A Priori
(a) Surely Not
(b) What Else Could A Totality Be?
(c) Is Dialectical Materialism A Conventionalist Theory?
(d) Is Dialectical Materialism A Metaphysical Theory, Then?
(e) Is Dialectical Materialism A Scientific Theory?
(f) Guilty As Charged -- Not A Scientific Theory
(a) Dialectics Collapses Yet Again
(b) Just A Method?
(9) Pick Your Mystic
(10) Dialectical Contradictions -- Different?
(11) The Dialecticians' Dilemma -- Again
(12) The 'Heraclitean Flux' -- Fact Or Fancy?
(13) Notes
(14) References
Abbreviations Used At This Site
Hamlet Without The Prince
Imagine, if you will, Hamlet without the Prince, or at least without a single description of 'him' -- such as, whether 'he' is indeed a Prince, male or female, or even whether 'he' is a human being. Questions would rightly be asked about what that character's role could possibly be in a play supposedly about 'him', just as they would be asked about the competence of its author, William Shakespeare.
Fortunately, we need not so indulge our fancies.
But, imagine now, if you can, a theory that tells us, among other things: (1) that it is the "world-view" of the proletariat, (2) that it is the general theory of all that exists and how it changes, (3) that everything is interconnected in something called the "Totality", and (4) that this notion is a centrally-important concept of that theory, to such an extent that nothing can be understood without it.
Imagine, too, the unlikely event that every one of its theorists studiously refused to say what this "Totality" actually is, or what those interconnections are --, or even how they know so much about such a perennially empty notion.
Imagine no more! For that theory is DIM, and those theorists are dialecticians --, and they are world champion prevaricators.
[DIM = Dialectical Marxism; DM = Dialectical Materialism.]
If you still have doubts, I invite you to search through their writings (and for my sins, I have) -- even if you are the slightest bit interested, you will find precious little to help you decide what DIM is actually about, for its most avid supporters have yet to tell anyone (least of all one another) what their mysterious "Totality" actually is.
So, this is not so much Hamlet without the Prince, as it is Hamlet without the, er...well, what?
Indeed, over the last twenty years or, I have made it a point of asking the many DM-fans I know, or have met, what they think the "Totality" is. Most were either slightly puzzled or somewhat miffed that I even dared to ask such an impertinent question. Some responded with "Nature, what else?", but refused to say anymore (perhaps because, as we will soon discover, there is no more to be said). Others gestured airily toward the heavens and said "All that!", rather like parents who try to explain to little children where 'God' is with an "He's up there, in heaven", wafting their hands vaguely upwards. Still others confessed they did not know, but declared that they still believed in it, just like those tiny children with hand-waving parents.
Some, of a scientific frame-of-mind, referred me to the "Big Bang", forgetting that this is a theory of origins; it tells us nothing about "everything", as we will also soon find out.
Now, readers of a more kindly disposition might be tempted to respond thus: "This cannot be so. Surely someone has specified clearly what the DM-"Totality" is. After all, dialecticians have had at least 150 years to come up with something!"
To be sure, a few of the DM-faithful have offered the world a handful of vague ideas, casually linking them to that mysterious being, the "Totality" --, but beyond that, they have sat on their hands or looked the other way.
I suspect these guys could prevaricate for their country.
In fact, dialecticians are remarkably coy about the "Totality", and it is not difficult to see why: there isn't one.
Or rather: there is in fact no way of referring to whatever it is they think they want to refer to.
"God", The "Totality", And The Via Negativa
Just as it is impossible to say what 'God' is, it is impossible to say what the "Totality" is. This is not so much because of what either word might seem to mean, but because both are in fact meaningless (and this is so for remarkably similar reasons).
For believers, 'God' is unlike anything you or I or anyone else could possibly imagine or conceive. Anyone who thinks differently has simply latched onto an inferior sort of 'being', in whose praise is not worth persecuting a single heretic.
Naturally, this means that the faithful have found it impossible to speak of 'God' except by using inappropriate metaphors.
[In that case, is "God" really a father? With sexual organs, and all that goes with this idea? What's that, you say? 'He' has none at all! In what sense therefore is 'He' a he...?
You get the picture.]
More sophisticated theologians use analogies to help us understand. Unfortunately, even though some of the mediating terms they employ are well understood (again, such as "father", and "son"), the intentional target of all this analogising isn't. What precisely is being analogised?
Failing both, believers fall back on a via negativa; so, 'God' is not this, not that, not...
As that lapsed right wing atheist Anthony Flew once observed: in this way 'God' slowly dies "the death of a thousand qualifications"; in the end 'He' is really different from nothing at all.
[On this, see Flew (1963), p.97. Flew's 'sort-of conversion' (but see here) was based on flawed science, anyway.]
But, if we know nothing of 'God', how is the use of that word any different from employing, say, "slithy tove"? Save an appeal being made to a not very appealing tradition --, where the word "God" has been used to depict all manner of things -- from money, to the powers of nature, to various Roman Emperors, to.., yes, Eric Clapton --, what can the faithful point to, to explain this word to those who simply see before them three letters ("G", "o", and "d"), congealed on the page into an inky sort of Trinity?
Figure One: Is Clapton 'God'? Figure Two: This Album Says 'Maybe'
In like manner, to what can the DM-faithful appeal in order to help us materialist non-believers comprehend their invisible Being?
As we will soon find out, this inverted Deity -- the "Totality" -- will also die the death of a thousand qualifications; or perhaps better: the death of a thousand prevarications.
At this point, some might be tempted to respond with the "Everything" ploy (as in "Sod it, it is perfectly clear what that the "Totality" is: it is everything!").
Unfortunately, that reply would be of no use either since it would simply prompt this further annoying question: "And what does that include?" And as we will also discover, there is no way to answer that query that does not sink DM one millimetre per second slower than it did Theology.
Does this this "everything" include everything that exists now, has once existed, will one day exist, could exist, or might have existed? Is it everything that has been thought about, not thought about, discovered, not discovered, found then lost (like Phlogiston), lost then found, then lost again (like Democritus and then Dalton's indivisible atoms)? Does it include the 'Gods' of the entire Apache Nation (surely they are part of 'everything'..., or are they?) and the mythical beasts of yore?
[Who knows, scientists might unearth one or more of these some day? Look at the Coelacanth, glypheoid lobsters, jurodid beetles...]
Does it include, or exclude, the edge of the universe? Indeed, does 'everything' have a boundary? If not, how can it be a totality (as opposed to being an open-ended infinite sort of ontological smear)? On the other hand, if it has a boundary, then is that boundary itself part of everything? If it isn't, it cannot be the boundary of everything, can it? [Otherwise it would have to be the boundary of itself!] Alternatively once more, if it is the boundary of everything, then does this new ensemble (i.e., 'everything' plus its boundary) have a boundary, too, and does that, and that, and...?
Once more, you get the picture.
[TOR = Theory of Relativity.]
Some might now seek leave to appeal to ideas drawn from the TOR, pointing out that the universe is in fact finite and unbounded, this being the "Totality". The former I do not wish to deny, but since we do not as yet know if the picture painted by TOR applies to our universe, it can hardly feature in a rebuttal of the above. Anyway, as we will also see, the TOR itself is no friend of DM.
And to cap it all, there actually have been, and there still are DM-theorists who deny the universe is finite. [More on that below, too.]
At this point it is worth noticing that we seem to be encountered the same sort of problems we met earlier in relation to the obscure metaphors the faithful use to depict 'God'.
Keep that worrying thought in mind as this Essay develops.
As I aim to show, even if it were possible to find answers to the above perplexing questions, our problems would only just be starting, for as Russell's Paradox has taught us, unless we define "everything" very carefully, and eminently arbitrarily, we will end up with a "Totality" that contains things it does not contain!
[A recent criticism of so-called "universally unrestricted quantification" can be found in Hellman (2006).]
Down this road, one suspects, lies our very own dialectical via negativa.
On the other hand, even if we manage to define it carefully, such a "Totality" would plainly be a creature of convention --, and like "God", a purely human invention.
No wonder DM-fans go quiet when asked about their 'God'..., er, their "Totality".
In their unenviable position, I think I would too.
Well, What Do The Dialectical Prophets Say?
The short answer is "Not a lot"; the long answer is "Not a lot."
Engels, as usual, writes much, but manages to say little:
"When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away....
"We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine, and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away....
"[The] new German philosophy culminated in the Hegelian system. In this system -- and herein is its great merit -- for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process -- i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development." [Engels (1892), pp.405-08.]
"The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existences extending from stars to atoms, indeed right to ether particles, in so far as one grants the existence of the last named. In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident that matter is unthinkable without motion." [Engels (1954), p.70.]
So, no clearer then.
Is 'comrade' Stalin of any assistance?
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard Nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things…are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.
"The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in Nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena….
"The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being….
"Speaking of the materialist views of the ancient philosopher Heraclitus, who held that 'the world, the all is one...,' Lenin comments: 'A very good exposition of the rudiments of dialectical materialism.' [Lenin (1961), p.347.]" [Stalin (1941), pp.837-38, 845. I have used a different edition of Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks here.]
Unfortunately not.
What about Bukharin?
"I am now writing on paper with a pen. I thus impart pressures to the table; the table presses on the earth, calling forth a number of further changes. I move my hand, vibrate as I breathe, and these motions pass on in slight impulses ending Lord knows where. The fact that these may be but small changes does not change the essential nature of the matter. All things in the universe are connected with an indissoluble bond…." [Bukharin (1925), p.66.]
We need not labour the point.1 A few years ago, Martin Jay published an excellent book (called Marxism And Totality. The Adventures Of A Concept From Lukács To Habermas [Jay (1984)]), but in over 500 pages he managed to avoid telling us what the title of his book was actually about.
To be sure, in Chapter One, Jay very usefully summarised classic and early modern Holist theories of nature and society, but those theories were themselves equally vague. And despite the fact that he found little material in the DM-classics (or in the writings of 'systematic' and other academic dialecticians) to help him, Jay simply ducked the question whether Greek and early modern ideas of nature, or of 'the Whole', were the same as, or were different from each other --, or, indeed, were the same as, or were different from the DM-"Totality".
In fact, how would we be able to tell?
How would it be possible for anyone to decide whether Hegel's ideas in this area were the same as, say, Plato's? Or those of Plotinus? Or, those of the "Wholes" that feature in most mystical systems -- in fact, in all of them -- that use similar-looking language?
Now, if the use of certain words, which boast similar letters, were enough to identify the items so depicted, we would be able to conclude that, for example, Plato's "Forms" were the same as those complicated sheets of paper you have to fill in to get a driving licence.
And, does anyone have an identikit picture of the "Totality", which allows them to pick this mysterious object out in a Cosmic line-up? Has anyone seen its likeness in the sand, in the clouds, or on Mars --, as some claim to have of Jesus or Mary?
Indeed, what is the criterion of identity for mystical Totalities?
Of course, this puzzle is not helped at all by the fact that none of the ancients were all that specific -- and neither were the mystics, for obvious reasons. After all, a crystal clear mystic would lose his/her licence to confuse!
But, of the lot, the Dialectical Mystics are the most vague. Prevarication taken way beyond the call of duty.
So, this is not so much a line-up as a Dialectical-Mystery tour.
The rest of Jay's book is devoted to expounding what various prolix and eminently incomprehensible DM-authors thought about history, society, and the economy as sub-totalities. But, as far as can be determined, the "Totality" itself is conspicuous by its universal absence from Jay's book. Now that in itself is quite remarkable; in fact it is decidedly odd -- just as odd in fact as if Darwin had forgotten to mention natural selection, or had omitted all talk of species in his masterpiece, Origin.
This is not to pick on Jay, since his book is an excellent guide in this area -- a sort of Dialectician's Alice, as it were. To be sure, if anyone wants to know what modern day DIMs think of social wholes (albeit, expressed in what looks like an obscure Venusian dialect), this is the book to consult.
However, we still missing the Prince of Denmark.
Some in the audience are getting restless.
They want their money back...
Where The Shoe Originally Pinched
Now, this project began years back as a lengthy review of John Rees's book The Algebra Of Revolution [Rees (1998a), or TAR], which, for all its faults, is widely influential in one of the most geographically-extensive Trotskyist tendencies on the planet (the IST). In that case, it is well-placed to do real harm. Moreover, since Rees is one of the most recent DM-authors to put the "Totality" at the centre of his thought --, it seems reasonable to start with his account.
In view of the foregoing, it is no surprise therefore to find that even though Rees clearly believes that the "Totality" is a centrally-important DM-concept [Rees (1998a), pp.5-8], and apart from a few rather vague gestures at defining this term, he never really tells us what it is!
One of the only attempts made in TAR to explain this notion is the following:
"Totality refers to the insistence that the various seemingly separate elements of which the world is composed are in fact related to each other." [Rees (1998a), p.5.]
This passage does not appear to be worded correctly, for it tells us that the "Totality" is in fact an "insistence".
Can this be what "everything" is: an "insistence"?
Is this what the Big Bang ushered forth? An ever-expanding "insistence"?
This seems to suggest that Rees intends the word "Totality" to be understood methodologically, which would in turn appear to indicate that the idea that nature is a unified whole is either a useful fiction or it merely serves as a statement of intent.
Who can say?
Unfortunately, there are few other clues in TAR that help the bemused reader understand the nature of this supposedly key DM-concept.
One of these is a passage that also endeavours to link the "Totality" with "universal interconnectedness", which is something we saw other DM-theorists (above) claim to be able to see in nature:
"[The] natural and social world [form] a single totality developing over time as a result of…internal contradictions….
"[N]ature is an interconnected system that developed for millions of years before humans." [Ibid., pp.285-86.]2
This appears to equate the "Totality" with nature, but as we shall soon see this is far too vague to be of much use to anyone other than a child.
Worse: this does not really distinguish DM from Hermeticism:
"Another parallel between Hermeticism and Hegel is the doctrine of internal relations. For the Hermeticists, the cosmos is not a loosely connected, or to use Hegelian language, externally related set of particulars. Rather, everything in the cosmos is internally related, bound up with everything else.... This principle is most clearly expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which begins with the famous lines "As above, so below." This maxim became the central tenet of Western occultism, for it laid the basis for a doctrine of the unity of the cosmos through sympathies and correspondences between its various levels. The most important implication of this doctrine is the idea that man is the microcosm, in which the whole of the macrocosm is reflected.
"...The universe is an internally related whole pervaded by cosmic energies." [Magee (2001), p.13. More on this here.]
[HM = Historical Materialism.]
Now, with respect to the alleged social aspects of the "Totality", they are clearly connected with issues that arise in HM, discussion of which will largely be omitted from this Essay. Since I do not deny that HM relies on factors governing the whole of human history, there is nothing much for me to question in this regard.3
Nevertheless, one important aspect of Rees's use of this (as yet unexplained) concept is the relationship that he and other dialecticians claim exists between parts and wholes:
"In a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is determined by its relationship with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts…. In this analysis, it is not just the case that the whole is more than the sum of the parts but also that the parts become more than they are individually by being part of the whole…." [Ibid., p.5.]4
The problem with this is that it still does not tell us what the "Totality" is --, nor is it clear what the "parts" are, either.
As far as I can ascertain, this is practically all that Rees has to say about this allegedly important topic.5 Clearly, this creates serious problems from the start; the uninformed reader has as yet no idea what Rees (or any other DM-theorist) is referring to. As we have seen, one will look in vain in other DM-texts for further clarification.6
Putting The Part Before The Horse
Anyway, if, according to Rees, "the part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts", it would in fact be impossible for anyone to say exactly what this mysterious "whole" amounted to before they were clear about the nature of every single part.
In turn, it would be impossible to determine the nature of a single one of these parts before the entire whole was comprehended.
As seems clear, that would mean it would be impossible for anyone to grasp a single rudimentary fact about part or whole since no one would know anything about either before they knew everything about both.
As is well-known, this was just one of the epistemological holes into which Hegelian Idealism dropped itself.7
But, whatever steps Hegelians finally took (or still take) to haul themselves out of this bottomless pit -- whether successful or not --, they do not appear to be available to DM-theorists. This is because the latter must base their comments on evidence, not on conceptual chicanery. But, what sort of evidence could they appeal to that was not similarly compromised? Manifestly, since relevant evidence itself relates to --, and is comprised of --, such 'parts', then the nature of each 'part' that is constitutive of this evidence could not, on this view, be ascertained until the whole had been, and vice versa.
There thus seems to be no way of breaking into this Idealist circle: the status of any and all evidence would not be known until the whole had been, and the nature of the whole could not be grasped as a material whole if there is no determinate physical evidence to delineate it.8
In that case, the part undermines the whole just as the whole undermines the part.
This might explain why Rees was so cagey about the "Totality", and why his 'definition' was little more than a gesture: there is nothing that could have been said about this nebulous concept and its ghostly parts that would be consonant with a believable form of materialism.9
Nevertheless, even though it seems clear that nothing could be said about the "Totality", or its parts, before everything was known about both, it is worth remembering that even an attempt to try to say something about either could not itself be done, since, ex hypothesi, nothing would be known about the parts (and hence the whole) until the end of an infinite epistemological journey:
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute… The cognition of the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels (1954), pp.233-35. Bold emphasis added.]
"…[T]he concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically." [Engels to Conrad Schmidt (12/3/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975), p.457. Bold emphasis added.]
"But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to [any material object]; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world….
"[I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely…. [D]ialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection with the surrounding world." [Lenin (1921), pp.92-93. Bold emphasis added.]
This, of course, is one of the least appreciated consequences of 'inverting' Hegelian Idealism: material reality may only be comprehended by beginning at the end!
Not even the Owl of Minerva would be identifiable until Epistemological Judgement Day, by which time who would there be left to care whether it flew or not? [More on this here.]
It's An Awful Job, But Someone Has to Do It
Consequently, in the absence of anything even remotely resembling a loose sort of characterisation (let alone a definition), we are forced to press the question DM-theorists consistently avoid: What exactly is the DM-"Totality"?
I propose to examine two possible approaches to this problem. The first introduces what I shall call the "Ontological Definition" of the "Totality" (because it involves a consideration of a likely contents list); the second I propose to call the "Epistemological Definition" (because it links this mysterious 'being' to the current extent of human knowledge, experience and practice).
Since the next few sections are somewhat explorative, less committed readers might want to skip them and begin again here.
In response to the above, it could be objected that it is perfectly clear that the "Totality" includes everything in the Universe --, or everything in existence.
End of story.
But, not so fast: does this "everything" include "Possible Worlds", which some philosophers and scientists believe to be actual? [Cf., Lewis (1986). See also Divers (2002).]
Maybe not; but how do we know?
[In fact, I give a novel solution to this 'problem' in another Essay, to be posted later.]
Be this at it may, the problem with this revealingly quick response is that it is at once too vague and too generous.
Why this is so will now be explored.
The Polo Mint Totality: A Whole With A Hole In It
If the "Totality" includes everything that exists, several other questions automatically arise. For instance: Does the "Totality" comprise all that exists in the present, or does it include all that 'exists' in the past? Since DM-theorists seek an historical explanation of the development of class society (etc.), and because they think everything in nature and society is interconnected, it seems they must view both the past and present as parts of their "Totality".
But, if, as seems to be the case, the past is no more, how can it be part of anything, let alone the "Totality"?10
On the other hand, if the "Totality" does include the past, that can only mean the "Totality" contains things that do and things that do not exist --, unless, that is, we are to suppose that things in the past still exist.
However, if the latter do not still exist, that further implies that the "Totality" contains some things that 'exist' only as ideas about the past, entertained in the mind of someone stuck in the ephemeral present. If that is so, does this not mean that the "Totality" is part material (the present), and part Ideal?
But, how is it possible for ideas of the past to be interconnected with everything that currently exists in the universe? Worse, what was the past interconnected with before any ideas were formed about it --, i.e., before conscious life evolved?11
Furthermore, but more worryingly, any ideas we have of the past plainly correspond with nothing at all, since the past does not exist for anything to correspond with 'it'. In that case, the "Totality" cannot even be objectively Ideal -- at least, not with respect to the past -- let alone material.
In that case, one half of the supposed correspondence relation between our ideas of the past and the past itself would not, on this interpretation of the DM-'Totality', exist, which must in turn mean there could be no 'objective' relationship between our ideas of the past and the past itself --, certainly not one of correspondence.
In order to avoid these insoluble problems, we might be tempted to restrict the "Totality" to things that exist only in the present, to objects and processes that enjoy contemporary material existence.
But, this option creates several serious problems of its own. For example, the "Totality" would then contain no historically significant events (or worse, no historical events at all), without which nothing that happens in the present would have taken place. Depicted this way, the "Totality" would surely become explanatorily useless, since an appeal would now have to be made to 'things' outside the "Totality" to account for things inside it!
Indeed, if the "Totality" were circumscribed in this way, it would become precariously ephemeral. This is because the present is of extremely limited duration. Thus, a very slender (if not terminally anorexic) "Totality" would be implied, if this option were correct.
Is the DM-Totality therefore a Whole with a huge Hole in it -- or, is there no substance to it at all?
Figure Three: The Totality? All Hole, Little Substance?
Now some readers might be forgiven their impatience at this point, for it might seem to them that the present author is putting words in the mouths of these comrades. Unfortunately, speculation has been forced upon us because of the extremely limited information to be found in DM-writings about the "Totality".
Others might think that all this is hyper-pedantic. On that, see here.
To continue: If the past, which now exists only as an idea (or better still, which now only 'exists' conceptually), is to be included as part of the Whole, then the vast bulk of the "Totality" must be Ideal. This is because, of course, the past is far longer than the present.
Several other rather surprising conclusions follow from this, and from the CTT --, a theory of truth widely accepted in DM-circles. [More on this in Essays Three Part Four and Ten Part Two.]
If propositions about the past are true just in case they correspond with events in the past, then it would be impossible ever to declare them true. This is because there exists nothing with which they could correspond, since the past is no more.
[CTT = Correspondence Theory of Truth.]
To be sure, we may draw true or false conclusions about the past from the evidence before us, but such evidence (of necessity) exists only in the present. Not only that, but whatever this evidence once related to plainly no longer exists, so it is difficult to see how such non-existents could form part of a correspondence relation with anything else, or in any obvious sense of that phrase -- over and above an obvious retreat into Idealism, that is.
In response to this it could be argued that the past is an objective feature of reality, hence the above conclusions are completely misguided.
And yet, the meaning of the term "objective" is itself highly unclear (as will be demonstrated in a later Essay), but whatever it does mean, it would be of little use here, anyway. This is because it would still be unclear how anything (such as the past) could be "objective" if it does not exist. 'Objectivity', seemingly, has something to do with existence independent of the human mind, and yet we appear to have something here (the past) that does not exist except we form ideas of it; in which case, it is not independent of the mind, and so cannot be "objective".
Again, it could be argued that our beliefs about the past are true just in case they correspond with past events. The existence of the latter might in turn be confirmed or refuted by an appeal to evidence (in the form of documents, artefacts and assorted remains, etc.).
But, this does not alter the fact that the past no longer is, nor does it change the fact that the confirmation of claims made about the past requires the use of contemporary objects and events -- that is, it necessitates the use of evidence situated in the present, consideration of which is albeit augmented by the use of past tense verbs. Naturally, this is because extant evidence (i.e., in the shape of the aforementioned documents, artefacts and assorted remains) clearly exists in the present. Without the help of a working time machine, we would have no access to evidence from the past that is still located there --, i.e., in the past.
Even then, and supposing for the moment we could 'visit' it, it would still be evidence that exists in the then present (to us), as it was being examined --, in the past!
Truths about the present are quite unlike those about the past -- whatever we finally conclude about the nature of supporting evidence. This can be seen by the way we form sentences relevant to each: plainly, we use expressions with differentially tensed verbs. This is partly where the attempted rebuttal recorded above itself went wrong; it failed to explain -- as similar ones must always do without just such a use of suitably tensed verbs -- precisely what it is that contemporary propositions about the past are supposed to correspond with, if one half of the alleged relation does not exist.12
To be sure, this serious difficulty does not just plague the CTT when it is applied to past events; the CTT collapses into some form of Idealism whatever time period is chosen for it (as will be demonstrated in Essays Three Part Four and Ten Part Two).
Philosophical 'problems' like this (concerning past, present and future) often arise out of an inappropriate interpretation of phrases like "the past", "the present" and "the future". It has thus seemed to some that if such expressions resemble names (or if they appear to be referring expressions), then they must designate, or name, something, which 'something' must therefore exist, and it must do so somewhere. A philosophical search is then initiated to locate these pseudo-entities, which, alas, were the sole creation of an over-active mind, compounded by a crass misuse of language.13
But, plainly, if the past exists, we seem forced to use the present tense to refer to it -- as has just been done in this very sentence. Naturally, if we interpret those words just as crassly, it would mean that the past was no longer in the past, but in the present(!) -- implying that the past had in fact been mis-'named'.14
The depiction of the past in this way is thoroughly inappropriate, for it makes it look as if its existence were an empirical issue, resembling that of, say, Bigfoot -- only far more difficult to pin down.
If something exists we should at least (in theory) be able to hunt it down, even if we can't do so at present (no pun intended). Unless we believe in time travel (a notion that arises precisely out of confusions like this, anyway -- more on that in a later Essay), this is not possible.
Clearly, these terminological difficulties have arisen because of an inappropriate and misleading analogy, that drawn between space and time. This imagery suggests (clearly to some) that just as objects in space can be located somewhere, those 'in time' can be located 'somewhen', with the latter being given a new slant by making it resemble spatial location, perhaps by means of a fourth axis tacked onto the Cartesian (or some other) co-ordinate system.15
Clearly, an analogy of this sort ought to sanction the following parallel argument: since some future-tense indicative sentences are true now, they must correspond with events which have yet to occur, but which must also now exist (present tense!) in a shadowy form in 'the Future'. Unfortunately, that would place these future events in the present too!
Naturally, this would mean that all events -- past, present and future -- must co-exist!
As may readily be appreciated, this would 'solve' the problem by destroying time altogether.16 This sort of metaphysical scorched earth policy, of course, has no viable future -- or none worth mentioning in present company.17
The Elusive Membership List
In order to neutralise/side-step awkward questions like these, perhaps we should simply declare that the "Totality" incorporates everything that exists --, but a-temporally? However, that particular descriptor is of little help since it is unclear what could exist in such a way, except, perhaps, a 'Deity'.
[That, of course, would link the "Totality" even more closely to those earlier ruminations about "God".]
More specifically, we need a membership list; if we knew what we were talking about, the nature of this elusive "Totality" might become clearer.
To that end, it's worth asking whether the "Totality" includes all material objects, but excludes non-material abstractions -- like courage, generosity, justice and equality (etc.). But, as we saw in Essay Two and Essay Three Parts One and Two, DM-theorists have yet to tell us with what exactly such abstractions correspond.
So, it might be wise to throw these bogus creations of Greek grammar overboard now. And yet, that would scupper the 'dialectical' theory of knowledge; in that case, the DM-"Totality" must contain abstractions.
Please do not ask me where such abstractions reside. [In 'heaven' with 'God'?] May I suggest to puzzled readers, therefore, that they contact they local DM-soothsayer, who, in response to such an impertinent enquiry, will wave his/her arms vaguely heavenward --, if you are lucky.
And if you are a child, you will of course believe all you see and hear.
Moving on: what about scientific/theoretical entities, such as Quarks, Superstrings, Wormholes, energy, force, genes, species and genera? Do these belong to the "Totality" --, or not? Are mathematical concepts and objects -- such as, π, e, Matrices, Complex Numbers, Partial Derivatives, Banach Space, Hermite Polynomials, the Kronecker delta, Abelian Groups, Transfinite Cardinals (etc.) to be excluded or included?
Well then, what about the properties of objects that depend either on their disposition or on their relation to other bodies, such as size, velocity, weight, and hardness? Do these make the list? Should we then not also add in the apparent properties of matter, such as solidity, liquidity, colour, smell, taste, and sound? But, according to some, these depend solely on their being perceived by sentient beings, which would mean that they are not 'objective' (even if they do seem to exercise some sort of causal influence on material bodies). Is that sufficient reason to strike them from the cosmic record, or not?
What then should we decide about genuine oddities such as corners, surfaces and shapes? These strange beings seem to disappear at the micro-level, and several even depend on the point of view of the observer. In that case, can they be part of the 'objective' "Totality"?18
But, what are we to conclude about those aspects of reality whose natures are even more obscure? For example, what are we to make of mathematical fictions like the average worker, the mean square velocity of gas molecules (in the Kinetic Theory of Gases), the probability of an event, Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient, the centre of mass of th