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We shall have to inquire to what extent, if any, Lenin can justly be accused with the sort of charges Stebbing brings against him, and this we shall undertake in Chapter VI. Meanwhile, it is worthwhile noting that Stebbing almost certainly means by ‘materialism’ the kind of reductive materialism we have eschewed. Stebbing says that ‘If I have succeeded in showing that the present state of physical theories does not warrant any form of idealism, it must not thereby be concluded that I suppose it to warrant any form of materialism’. However, the form of materialism we have defended is simply equivalent to the denial of idealism, so that the materialism Stebbing has in mind must be the more specific, reductive materialism, which is not simply equivalent to the denial of idealism. This accusation of ajorioriimposition on science grossly misunderstands what it is to which Marx’s materialism commits us. Materialism, as I have described it, asserts the existence of something essentially independent of thought, mind, or human praxis, I have often called that something an ‘object’, even when I discussed Kant, although for Kant the fact that our experience is one of objects itself arises through the activity of thought. Talking about objects as that which materialism commits us to may itself be wholly misleading. It may well be—and Engels himself insists that this is so—that the division of reality into discontinuous discrete objects is something essentially related to the activities of human thought. Engels’ own view is that reality is process, divisions and distinctions in which are made by our mind in its effort to grasp, comprehend, understand, the reality which lies before it. The great basic thought that the world is not to becomprehended asa complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes ... is now scarcely ever contradicted. The old metaphysics, which accepted things as finished objects, arose from a natural science which investigated dead and living things as finished objects . . ,ls My own point here is not that Engels’ view is necessarily the correct one. The point, rather, is that Engels was quite right to regard the question of what is the nature and structure of that which exists essentially independently of us as a question for scientific investigation. Our beliefs about its nature or structure have changed as the natural sciences have themselves changed, and it is important not to tie materialism down to outdated beliefs about the nature of mind-independent reality which are taken from a particular stage in the development of the natural sciences, a mistake which many materialists have certainly too often made. Our ordinary modes of understanding reality, which divides it into things of familiar kinds, has no specially sacrosanct status. Reality could be essentially as it was described as being by Greek atomists, eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth century chemistry and physics, or as is more likely, not exactly like any of the theoretical descriptions natural science has yet produced. The question is not one philosophers have anything to dictate about in a priori fashion to natural scientists. All materialism does commit us to is the belief that something exists essentially independently of human thought or activity; for its proper description one relies on natural science. But what of materialism itself? Is that an a priori truth that philosophers can foist upon natural scientists who unwittingly may be lead to an ‘idealist’ interpretation of their results? Does the commitment to materialism as we have explained it at least attempt to instruct science a priori in the minimal commitment to there being something or other which is essentially independent of mind? I have already argued that materialism is not itself a priori true. Moreover, I claimed, against Bhaskar, that there are no deductively valid, non-question-begging arguments which are able to establish the conclusion that materialism is true. If materialism were either an a priori truth, or there were such interesting, valid transcendental arguments, we could thereby provide a justification for our belief in the mind-independence of the natural world, and this is precisely what I have denied. I spoke earlier of the vision of philosophy, shared by Marxism and others, as broadly a posteriori, continuous with the development of natural science. I also quoted Marx’s remarks about philosophy having as its legitimate task only ‘a summing-up of the most general results’ of science. But what shall we say about materialism? If materialism is not an a priori truth, is it one that at least in principle could be established by science? Is it a posteriori? Does science give materialism any inductive support? At first sight it might be thought that materialism is straight-forwardly a posteriori. For example, is the denial of materialism, which holds that world is essentially dependent on mind, really consistent with the findings ■of science? Geology informs us that there was a time at which a natural world existed, but no human mind or thought to grasp it. Does this geological fact ‘confirm’ the essential independence of the natural world? If so, could this then count as a scientific a posteriori justification of materialism? Does science establish materialism inductively? Unfortunately, the relationship between materialism and science is not so straightforward. Idealism, as the denial of materialism, can always be made consistent with science in the following way.19 It is clear that there has existed a world unrelated to human mind. But idealism may then appeal to Infinite or Absolute Mind to which the natural order would have always stood in relation (and necessarily, rather than contingently so). Indeed, this attempt to make science and idealism formally consistent will always force idealism into a form of theology. There may have been a natural world unrelated to finite minds, but Infinite Mind, or Absolute Spirit offers itself as a first-class candidate to the idealist as that to which the natural world has always stood in essential relation. The denial of essential independence must then collapse into a version of Hegelian absolute idealism. This verdict reinforces, I think, the point that Hegelian jargon taken seriously cannot be detached from the general idealist framework in which it is situated.20 What better argument can we offer to those Marxists who use the jargon of the inseparability of nature and mind (or thought, or man) than the argument that such jargon must ultimately be understood as theology? Since everyone knows that there has been a natural order without human minds, insistence on the jargon can only lead to the inseparability of the natural order and mind itself, or of the natural order and the cosmic Man, Thus, materialism is one form of atheism, and idealism a form of theism, I accept that both materialism and idealism are inductively consistent with the results of science. In this way, science neither ‘disconfirms’idealism nor, therefore, ‘confirms’ materialism; no straightforward empirical, a posteriori inductive justification of materialism is possible. Theology has always been able to guard itself against empirical refutation; there is no evidence which could disprove the contention made by Hegel that nature is necessarily related to Absolute Mind, Indeed, even a careful, circumspect statement of divine creation is possible which makes it compatible with science. Since empirical evidence cannot refute idealism, that evidence does not provide a justification for the denial of idealism. Although a posteriori justification of materialism is not possible, there is still a sense, I think, in which materialism is continuous with the sciences, is an 'a posteriori' philosophy, whereas idealism is not. It is difficult to specify precisely in what this continuity consists, but it has to do ultimately with unity of approach or outlook. To look at the world materialistically is to look at it in the same sort of way as one looks at it as a scientist. It is a ‘diurnal philosophy’2! which asks us to accept science at its face value, not to move beyond the reality our science attempts to describe for us. It is the philosophy of the a posteriori, literally the philosophy for science. Idealism, as a theology, demands a break with scientific modes of thought and reasoning. It bifurcates methodology, demands a dualism in our understanding. It is in that sense discontinuous with science. It is not a philosophy of the a posteriori in approach or method, although it is not inconsistent or incompatible with science. Idealism is the ‘nocturnal philosophy’. I have steadfastly maintained the impossibility of providing a noncircular justification of materialism. Earlier I argued that it had no deductive justification, and now I have been arguing that it has no a posteriori, inductive justification, since both materialism and its denial are consistent with scientific evidence. In keeping with the earlier vision of philosophy I sketched, I still claimed that there was a sense in which materialism remains continuous with science, a philosophy of the a /HWtenonifnotquitean aposteriori philosophy.22 It,and not idealism, is a general summing-up of science. Even if this last claim be accepted, I do not claim that it provides a justification for materialism. No non-circular justification is possible. The idealist could retort that, for him, continuity with science does not itself constitute a reason in favour of a philosophy, rather discontinuity with science ought to be the sine qua non for acceptance of the claims of a philosophy. Thus, I cannot see that the fact that materialism expresses the ‘spirit’ of science, if it be a fact as I have claimed, can constitute a non-circular justification of materialism to a determined opponent. This is, I think, as it should be, I said earlier about the sceptic, who refused to accept the extra-mental existence of objects, that we ignore him at the intellectual level, that no rational justification for the denial of scepticism is necessary because we think that the solution to his difficulties are not really philosophical at all, but of another order entirely. Similar comments are in order about the idealist, who denies the essential independence of the existence of the natural order from the existence of thought or mind. Ultimately, the choice between materialism and idealism is the choice between two competing ideologies. The choice is not an ‘epistemological’ choice to be made on grounds of stronger evidence or more forceful argument, but is a ‘political’ choice to be made on class allegiance. Although materialism, as we have discussed it, is not r;//thereis to Marxism—since it is a doctrine far less controversial than Marxism is— there is certainly no Marxism without it. As an idealist, one cannot, objectively, be on the side of the proletariat in class struggle; its interests and ultimate role in history cannot be advanced following the political practice that tends to flow from an idealist or theological perspective. The history of the workers’ movement after Marx and Engels has, I believe, born out the truth of this claim time and time again. If it is true, then this should be what determines the final, political choice between idealism and materialism, and not a futile, continuing search for deductive or inductive arguments in favour of one or the other. 3. Knowledge is irreducibly social. This claim has been made many times before, and I do not now wish to rehearse all the various things which this rather ambiguous claim has been, or could be, taken to mean. It is certainly true that Descartes, the classical empiricists, and Kant had, in different ways, a very asocial conception of knowledge. ‘What can /know?’ rather than Svhat can we know?’ is for them the logically prior point of departure. One of the genuine insights of Hegel and the Hegelian movement, including philosophers like Bradley and Bosanquet, is the re-location of epistemological (and moral) questions back into the community. This Hegelian insight is one that Marx made his own. This is true also for much of the Wittgensteinian tradition, with its emphasis on the oft repeated but little understood notion of ‘a form of life’, with its insistence on the priority of a public language to any form of private language or discourse.23 There is one point about the social nature of knowledge which I should like to touch upon. In the practice of acquiring knowledge (or values, since precisely parallel remarks to the tension between community and individual knowledge can be made about the tension between community and individual values), whether as a scientist or simply at the level of ordinary experience, each man receives a social transmit, a portion of the collected wisdom (or values) of the society in which he finds himself. He receives such knowledge through his learning contacts with others, either before he is able to reflect critically on what he is learning or often simply as a matter of fact without critical reflection, even if he is capable of it. Although each man receives such a social transmit, no man is bound to it, for he can come to critically reflect on anything which he is taught. That is, he can come to critically reflect, if the transmission mechanism has operated on him by respecting him as a rational agent, for people who are brainwashed, indoctrinated, etc., often are not capable of coming to critical reflection. Thus, in certain conditions which it is not now important to specify more precisely, not only can a man add to what he learns, but he can come to reject or revise that which he has been taught. Within certain constraints, the knowledge which an individual acquires for himself after receiving the social transmit can be corrective as well as additive. This is a commonplace, but it is one well worth restating, for the following reason. On the individualist conception of knowledge, so common to philosophy as it is shaped by the bourgeois mode of production, a man appeared to be able to reject everything which he had been taught. This is an absurdity, and Descartes’ individual quest for certainty was absurd for this reason, Descartes was genuinely worried that he may have accepted as true, false beliefs, opinions, prejudices which he may have acquired by learning in an uncritical way. His worry was genuine insofar as it grew out of a sense of the influence of the church, its dogma and its use of ancient school philosophy, over the minds of his contemporaries. Hence, Descartes undertook to reject everything which he had been taught, in order to rebuild knowledge on the firm individual certainties which could not possibly be false. Had Descartes really been able to dispossess himself of all that had been socially transmitted to him, would he have been able to proceed in his quest for firm and secure knowledge? It does not seem so. We do not deny that, in addition to a social transmit, a man receives a biological transmit.24 On the contrary, Marxist materialism must be especially alive to the ways in which the natural world continues to exercise its influence, its constraining and limiting influence as well as the possibilities it provides, over social man. The extent of the importance of the biological transmit is an empirical, a posteriori question,25 and the role of philosophy is to sum up, rather than dictate, these scientific results..But it does, as a matter of‘deep' fact, seem to be true of men that with the biological transmit alone, they are capable of almost nothing in the way of knowledge acquisition, beyond that which we might attribute to some of the higher animals, Thus, we can say that if Descartes had really been able to dispossess himself of all that had been socially transmitted to him, he would not have known how to proceed. He would not have known and could not have acquired the technique for acquiring secure knowledge, for knowing that there is a technique for the acquisition of knowledge is itself a piece of socially transmitted knowledge 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:
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