New and revised edition david-hillel ruben
TOWARDS A MARXIST THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Download 3.01 Mb.
|
| TOWARDS A MARXIST THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
‘You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong—to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.' Ernest Everhard, in Jack London's The Iron Heel In this and the next chapter I wish to accomplish two tasks. First, I want to discuss in a quite general way some of the characteristics which, I think, any acceptable theory of knowledge must possess, or which any theory of knowledge must have in order to be judged adequate. In order to assess the adequacy of any particular theory of knowledge, or even any particular kind of theory of knowledge, one needs some general criteria of adequacy, some grasp of what some of the features are, possession of which is a necessary condition of adequacy or acceptability. Second, using these features as touchstones, I will discuss, again in a quite general way, how and why a reflection theory of knowledge suitably stated can pass the tests of adequacy which I have set. It will be convenient to raise this general question about reflection theories, through a discussion of some of the recent work of Lucio Colletti, In the sixth and final chapter I will turn my attention specifically to a discussion of Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio- Criticism in which Lenin espouses one particular variety of a reflection theory. Reflection theories, suitably stated, may passthe tests of adequacy, but some versions of reflection theory may not do so. In that chapter, then, I shall raise the specific question of whether, or to what extent, Lenin’s version of reflection theory is adequate. My discussion of the six features or characteristics which I want to focus on will be uneven. Some receive only brief treatment; others will receive a somewhat more thorough discussion. 1 want to stress at the beginning that my purpose in this chapter is not to ‘prove’ to professional philosophers that any adequate theory of knowledge must do or allow for the things I require. Rather, I think that the six features are ones which Marx himself would have insisted upon, or are broadly ‘Marxist’ in their perspective. Thus, it is my intention to argue with Marxists that reflection theory, suitably stated, passes the test of adequacy by possessing features which they will agree are necessary. Naturally, I think that such features are not only ‘Marxist’, but also correct, and thus I think that it is sensible from any view point to require that a theory of knowledge have those features. I hope, therefore, that many others will agree to such features or constraints as well. But I repeat that I do not intend my discussion to convince an entrenched opponent whose outlook inclines him to doubt quite systematically almost everything which I will be saying. To an entrenched opponent much of what follows may appear as obiter dicta; to someone generally sympathetic to the epistemological position I adopt, 1 hope my discussion moves beyond the standard recitation of these points, which abound in the Marxist literature, by pointing to the existence of genuine problems and difficulties which must be dealt with. I try to go beyond the mere repetition of well-worn slogans. Finally, I should add that I do not intend my list of features or criteria to be exhaustive, or sufficient, for the adequacy of a theory of knowledge. To mention just one example, I do not discuss holism versus atomism, the idea of system, an issue which has provided Marxists with one important criticism of the standard approach of the empiricist tradition. Rather, I have chosen the six items which I do discuss because they are the very ones which it is often said that no reflection theory can possess. For instance, the Marxist literature abounds with the accusation that reflection theory is undialectical, individualistic, and accepts the world just as it is given, thereby discounting change. My choice of items for inclusion has been dictated by that fact alone, and not out of a belief that these items are all, or even the most important, criteria for assessing the adequacy of a theory of knowledge. What are these features or characteristics which we can reasonably demand that any adequate theory of knowledge must have? They are, I submit, (1) that is respects the irreducibility or reality of the external world, (2) that it be consistent with science, (3) that it have a .yoczVz/conception of knowledge, (4) that it can account for human activity as central to an understanding of knowledge, (5) that it be, in a sense to be explained, a dialectical theory, and (6) that it does not necessarily accept the world as it appears, but permits access to the way the world essentially is. I would now like to explain and expand upon each of these points in turn although, since some of the points are internally related to others, what I say under one heading will often be related to other points as well. J. A theory of knowledge must be adequate to the real cognitive suitation in which men find themselves. This is something which empiricist epistemology has generally failed to do. Given what we know about human beings, and their material environment, empiricist epistemology proves to be literally incredible. The very titles of some of the recent ‘classics’ substantiate this incredibility: Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, The Structure of Appearance, Our Knowledge of The External World. Any credible theory of knowledge must begin with the knowability of an essentially mind-independent world, a world which would exist (and not just counterfactually!) even if every kind of sentient being in the universe were to be eliminated tomorrow, or indeed had never even come into existence. All reductionist doctrines—idealism, in both its subjective and absolute disguises, phenomenalism, classical empiricism, Machian positivism, Platonism, the Kantian thesis that limits knowledge to the world as it appears and never as it is—all of these doctrines are to be rejected. The physical world is not a construct out of experiences, ideas, Ideas, impressions, or sense data, whether actual or hypothetical, nor is our knowledge restricted to a realm which is so constituted. Any credible theory of knowledge must be realist in the sense in which I have been using that term. There is a sense in which even Hume or Berkeley might accept the statement that there are tables, chairs, physical objects in general. The point is that acceptance of such statements has, for them, to be accompanied by an analysis of what such statements mean. What their analyses purport to show is that such ‘physical objects’do not have a mind- independent status, since statements about them can be understood as, reduced to, sets of statements which are only ‘about’ the contents of the mind. Thus, to be a realist, it is not sufficient just to accept the statement that physical objects exist, and then couple that statement with an ‘analysis’ which dispenses with the claim of mind-independence. Realism takes physical objects seriously, not merely paying lip-service to their existence, and ‘seriously’ here means ‘understood as essentially independent of mind’. Finally, this last statement or claim, ‘physical objects are essentially independent of mind’, does not itself seem to be something which a Hume or Berkeley could formally accept, while giving it an analysis on which the commitment to essential independence of mind had been expelled! I began by saying: ‘Given what we know about human beings and their material environment, empiricist epistemology proves to be literally incredible.’ Someone might reply to this: ‘You claim to know these things. But how can you justify these cognitive claims about men and their environment? Certainly if we could know that men did exist in a world which was essentially independent of mind, then we agree that this would be something reasonable to demand of a theory of knowledge. But this is patently question-begging, for we can ask of you how you are entitled to that bit of knowledge. Surely an adequate theory of knowledge must be able to provide an answer to that question, and not merely begin with it as an assumption,’ How can we, then, justify the claim that 1 think every man naturally accepts when he has no philosophical axe to grind, that physical objects are essentially independent of mind? What such an imaginary reply shows, I think, is that the whole epistemological programme of systematic justification of our knowledge must be rejected, along with the impeachment of the mind-independence of the material world. It is not possible, even as a mildly amusing analytical exercise, to show how our knowledge of a mind-independent world can be reconstituted, like Florida orange juice, on some pre-selected basis, which is conceived as having some epistemological advantage because it does not itself assume mind-independence. It is this impossibility which, throughout the history of modern philosophy, tended to drive the systematic justificationists toward scepticism, because there always seemed to be something in our knowledge which could not be justified on each preselected basis. Thus, modern philosophy’s standard diet of attempting to account for, and finding problematic, various entities or procedures. If one begins with sense data or impressions, the justification of belief in mind- independent objects becomes problematic. If one starts with observable behaviour, other minds constitute a difficulty. If one is limited to the experiences one can introspect in oneself, then the Self seems to vanish. If observable entities are the only permissible basis for justification, theoretical entities pose a problem. If deduction is the only criterion for rational thought, induction may appear unjustified. Similarly, too, for deduction itself, the past, values, or causality. On some pre-selected basis, nearly everything can be made to appear problematic, since the basis will be too weak to license justification for what one had hoped to justify. Mind-independence, in the same way, has appeared problematic, because no basis seemed strong enough to bear its justification. The point I am making against the possibility of foundationalist attempts at justification is hardly an original one. In W. V. O. Quine’s use of Otto Neurath’s marvellous metaphor: ‘Neurath has likened science to a boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat. If we improve our understanding of ordinary talk of physical things, it will not be by reducing talk to a more familiar idiom; there is none.’1 But the point I am trying to make is directed not just against foundationalist attempts at justification, but against any non-circular attempts whatever. Consider, for example, a coherentist account of justification, which might argue that belief in a mind-independent world of physical objects is justified because it yields the overall simplest system of beliefs possible. 'Material objects are ‘posits’, on such an account, ways of simplifying, organising, the infinite variety of human experience into manageable proportions. Introduction of such physical objects provides us with the ‘smoothest and most adequate overall account of the world’.2 We reject all such attempts at justification, whether foundationalist, coherentist, transcendental, or whatever. What these attempts have in common is that they seek to justify the belief in a realm essentially independent of mind by reference to something else, whether sense experience or coherentist considerations of simplicity, where the ‘something else’ does not itself presuppose the existence of the mind- independent reality for which the justification is being sought. In particular, we also reject the idea that mind-independent reality has the status of a ‘posit’, a theoretical entity introduced for the sake of producing a maximally coherent system of beliefs, which can be used to account for and simplify observation reports and on whose basis such reports can themselves be corrected, in order to preserve overall smoothness and simplicity, in order to maximise coherence in the tissue of our beliefs. Someone might now argue that what we have done is to have made belief in a material reality an a prior/belief or principle, an a priori assumption. But this is not so. To say of a belief that it is ‘a priori' is to provide it with a sort of justification. Rather, what we claim is that this belief has no justification, in the sense in which the truth of what does the justifying does not itself depend on the truth of what is being justified. In short, there are no non-circular justifications for the belief in a material world. Thus, in answer to the earlier imaginary reply which I sketched previously, we can say that we agree that we can ask how we know that there are material objects (essentially independent of mind) but that the only answer to this is a scientific answer, which includes reference to retinas, optic nerves, and pressure receptors in our limbs, things which are themselves material things. The only answer is the scientific answer. Beyond that way of answering the question there is no more basic, philosophical answer, and it is mere illusion to believe otherwise. The goal of systematic philosophical justification for physical object beliefs is not a reasonable task for any theory of knowledge to engage in. We can explain naturalistically how we can come to have such knowledge, but only by using a natural science which presupposes that there is a material world. Such a ‘justification’by science is circular, for the purposes of the philosopher, but this shows only that the philosophical task of justification is not one we ought to pursue. It is in this spirit that I interpret Marx’s cryptic eighth thesis in his Theses on Feuerbach: ‘All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.’3 It is wrong to read this as a statement of pragmatism, which is foreign to Marx’s overall outlook in any case. Marx is not saying that belief in a material world is justified because it works in practice. The thesis is not an attempted solution to the problem of the justification of our belief in the material world, through practice or through anything else. Rather, the thesis signifies an abandonment of the need to look for a philosophical solution, for it is an abandonment of the very question of philosophical justification for our belief in a reality essentially independent of mind. Once we engage in, and comprehend practice, from that vantage point the philosophical puzzle of justification for such knowledge simply dissolves. We do not answer the philosophical question, but forget it. ‘The real premisses from which we begin ... are the real individuals, their activity, and the material conditions under which they live.’4 Thus, as naturalists we eschew all attempts to justify, by non-question- begging arguments, our belief in mind-independent objects; we merely begin with them. It is the original sin of most modern philosophers that they tailored their theories of knowledge so as to ward off that demon, scepticism, by trying to answer the philosophical questions ofjustification. From Descartes to Hegel, and beyond, the question that occupies centre- stage epistemologically in bourgeois thought is: with what premisses can we begin in order to justify our knowledge? This is as true of Hegel, who discusses the question in ‘With What Must the Science Begin?’,5 as it was of Descartes in The Meditations. These philosophers have paid far too much attention to the sceptic or immaterialist. We do not seek a more refined answer to Hegel’s or Descartes' question, to use in reply to the sceptic. We ignore the sceptic philosophically, and the challenge he threatens. We ignore the sceptic at the intellectual level because we think the solution to his difficulties are not philosophical, but of another order entirely. These sceptical doubts arise within the traditions of bourgeois thought, on whose presuppositions and assumptions about man, the world, and the nature of cognition these doubts depend for their very formulation. Roy Bhaskar, in his recent book A Realist Theory of Science,6 attempts to construct a transcendental argument which moves from the premiss that there is science to the conclusion that the objects of science are intransitive (real or mind-independent) and structured (do not necessarily appear or manifest themselves). For example, one of his several arguments for the mind-independence of the objects of science runs as follows: For Kepler to see the rim of the earth drop away, while Tycho Brahe watches the sun rise, we must suppose that there is something that they both see (in different ways). Similarly, when modern sailors refer to what ancient mariners called a sea-serpent as a school of porpoises, we must suppose that there is something which they are describing in different ways. The intelligibility of scientific change (and criticism) and scientific education thus presupposes the ontological independence of objects of experience from the objects of which they are the experiences? Now, I think that it can be shown that, in fact, all of Bhaskar’s transcendental arguments are either invalid, of ineffectual against the target, or question-begging. For example, concerning the above argument for the reality of objects, the following comment is in order. Bhaskar assumes in his argument that scientific change amounts to changing theories about that which does not itself change, which is precisely what Bhaskar needs to prove. Given that alternative (neo-idealist) interpretations of scientific change exist, according to which there is no neutral world ‘shared’ by different theories or paradigms, Bhaskar needs to argue for this assumption about the nature of scientific change, which he does not do. So his conclusion about the existence of mind-independent objects does not follow from the premiss of scientific change, unless that premiss is given a ‘realistic’ interpretation. It is not then surprising that the conclusion follows. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 3.01 Mb. Share with your friends:
|