I don't get it - (Materialism, Objectivity and Metaphysics) Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 04:03:26 No. 13668
Can someone please dumb this down for me?>The concept of “objective” in metaphysical materialism appears to mean an objectivity which exists even outside of man, but to assert that reality would exist even if man did not exist is either to state a metaphor or to fall into a form of mysticism. We know reality only in its relations with man, and just as man is an historical process of becoming, so also knowledge and reality are a becoming, and objectivity is a becoming, etc. >Engels’ expression that “the materiality of the world is demonstrated by the long and laborious development of philosophy and the natural sciences” needs to be analyzed and made precise. By science does he mean the theoretical or the practical-experimental activity of the scientists or the synthesis of the two activities? In this we could be said to have the typical unitary process of reality, in the experimental activity of the scientist which is the first model of the dialectical mediation between man and nature, the elementary historical cell by which man, putting himself into relation with nature through technology, knows it and controls it. Undoubtedly, the promulgation of the experimental method separates two worlds of history, two epochs, and begins the process of the dissolution of theology and metaphysics and the development of modern thought, whose crowning is Marxism. Scientific method is the first cell of the new method of production, of the new form of active union between man and nature. The scientist-experimenter is also a worker, not a pure thinker, and his thought is continually controlled by practice and vice versa, up to the point where a perfect unity of theory and practice is formed. >The neo-scholastic Mario Casotti (Teacher and Scholar) writes: “The researches of the naturalists and the biologists presuppose an already existing life and real organism,” an expression which comes near to that of Engels in Anti-Dühring. >The agreement between Catholicism and Aristotelianism on the question of the objectivity of reality. >In order to understand exactly the possible significance of the problem of the reality of the external world, it may be useful to develop the example of the notions of “East” and “West” which do not stop being “objectively real” even if on analysis they prove to be nothing but conventions, i.e. “historico-cultural constructions” (often the terms “artificial” and “conventional” indicate “historical” facts, produced by the development of civilization and not just rationally arbitrary or individually artificial constructions). The example given by Bertrand Russell in his little book should be recalled. Russell says roughly the following: “Without the existence of man on earth, we cannot think of the existence of London and Edinburgh, but we think of the existence of two points in space where London and Edinburgh are today, one to the North and the other to the South.” It could be objected that without thinking of the existence of man one cannot think of “thinking,” one cannot think in general of any fact or relationship which exists only in so far as man exists. What would North-South or East-West mean without man? These are real relationships but nevertheless they would not exist without man and without the development of civilization. It is evident that East and West are arbitrary, conventional, i.e. historical, constructions, because outside real history any point on the earth is East and West at the same time. We can see this more clearly from the fact that these terms have been crystallized not from the point of view of man in general but from the point of view of the cultured European classes who, through their world hegemony, have made the terms evolved by themselves accepted everywhere. Japan is the Far East not only for Europe but perhaps also for an American from California and for the Japanese themselves, who through English political culture will call Egypt the Near East. Thus through the historical content which has been compounded with the geographical term, the expressions East and West have ended by meaning certain relationships between complexes of different civilizations. So Italians often speak of Morocco as an “oriental” country, in order to refer to its Muslim and Arab civilization. However, these references are real, they correspond to real facts, they will allow one to travel over land and sea and reach a known destination, to “foresee” the future, to objectivize reality, to understand the objectivity of the external world. The rational and the real are identified. >It seems that without understanding this relationship one cannot understand Marxism, its position vis-à-vis idealism and mechanical materialism, and the importance and significance of the doctrine of the superstructure. It is not correct to say that in Marxism the Hegelian “Idea” is replaced by the “concept” of
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 04:07:19 No. 13669
Part of it tl;dr is simply>Yes, sure now what is the practical hands on activity in question?
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 04:20:52 No. 13670
Marx already succinctly broke this down with the Theses on Feuerbach. Also, have sex.
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 04:32:38 No. 13671
Its an analysis of how the concept of objectivity is related to human conceptualization, various metaphysical queries, and how Marxism is different from past philosophies.
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 04:56:59 No. 13672
Objectivity isn't real and neither is the moon when nobody is looking at it.
>He's saying that to say that something is "south" of something is an objective fact, but relies on human understanding of reality. But the two points still existed in different areas, that would be objective fact even if no humans existed, no? What is "south" with nobody to have the idea of what south means?
>Would it not be objective fact that the dinosaurs existed in various places until humans found their fossils? Was there anything among the dinosaurs to recognize them as dinosaurs?
Honestly at a surface level and when you make this argument in a vacuum it's pedantic as fuck and annoying. There are some important implications of it however:
What we consider objective is limited to our knowledge of the facts and our ability to understand those facts. Therefore, what we understand as objective vs what we imagine true objectivity would be are fundamentally different things. We don't have access to true objectivity. Therefore, staking your claim on objectivity is merely a rhetorical gesture and a dishonest one. This is compounded by the next issue, bias.
All knowledge is contextual. It fits into an existing and functioning order, and unless you are a hermit (and arguably even then) it is a social order. This means that knowledge and "truth" are subject to power dynamics in practice and what is "true for us" (in the sense of what we are capable
in practice of recognizing as truth) is contingent on its utility to us. Ideas that hurt our ability to function within that order are detrimental, and whether or not they fit some external-to-mankind sense of objectivity they contradict the social order and are therefore repressed. That doesn't mean they are "false" but it does mean that the contextual pressures hobble our ability to be objective
in practice .
Additionally, no amount of objectivity in truth can be of any consequence whatsoever unless it can be
put into practice . This point, however, is the weakest because as it happens knowledge can actually be stored and survive for a very long time - millennia if not longer - and social systems are extremely dynamic. Therefore, that which may be true but irrelevant may become very relevant in due time as the social context changes - so long as that knowledge is preserved. But it is especially that contingent and changeable utility that blows apart the notion of objectivity. That's because knowledge does not exist in some separate, higher realm of existence. Knowledge is material. The words in books and synapses in your brain are just as material as your flesh and bone. And more importantly, the actualization of that knowledge has to be material. Even the mere communication requires you to physically interact by speaking and vibrating air or writing using some writing implement. For the knowledge to be
useful it must
function materially in an even more explicit way, by facilitating your ability to enact change upon the world. In that sense knowledge is only "objective" insofar as it is being wielded to affect the world, and
presently .
tl;dr
this
>>13670 Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 05:23:34 No. 13673
>>13672 Thank you!
So in the time of Copernicus, the objective truth, as in, the collective social understanding of reality, was the geocentric model. This served its time's scientific understanding and social ideas, but when heliocentrism proved to yield more results in practice, that model became accepted as objective truth. They are both models for objective truth, one of which yielded more in practice later on in history, but for the level of understanding prior, the geocentric model was sufficient in being "objective truth" as it was serviceable in the given context, and to say otherwise back then without the necessary proof and merely invoking "true objectivity", or some God's point of view, would not serve to actually help humanity develop objectivity.
Is that right?
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 05:26:33 No. 13674
>>13673 Basically, but it's also that you should think of this as "practical" truth because the point of the exercise is recognizing that calling the things we know "objective" is an error.
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 05:35:45 No. 13675
>>13674 >>13673 Also, the geocentrism vs heliocentrism thing is more of an example about context biasing what we know than how "objective" truth is defined. It is more useful to anybody to understand the solar system is heliocentric, but in that particular context the utility was marginal and subordinate to the utility of upholding the cosmology claimed by the church due to the way they structured their claims to knowlege about the world and the danger of being discredited about something so fundamental.
Other people in the world had figured out heliocentrism earlier, like some people in ancient Greece and ancient India. It's just that it wasn't especially important, didn't confer a serious advantage, so it didn't catch on as a discovery. Sort of how the Romans had steam engines but couldn't do much with them because they lacked the productive forces to construct or use them effectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 06:50:14 No. 13676
Did lenin write this 😳
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 12:21:19 No. 13677
>>13676 not OP but pretty sure it is gramsci
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 17:02:02 No. 13678
>>13676 no. all posts with more than 128 words are literal chatgpt output
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 22:18:49 No. 13679
>>13668 >>13672 >to assert that reality would exist even if man did not exist is either to state a metaphor or to fall into a form of mysticism Your are literally making a metaphor that he argued about.
He says reality does not exist.
Anonymous 2023-06-10 (Sat) 22:35:03 No. 13680
>>13678 I was just asking because it's so much metaphysical pseudery