Essay Three Part One: How 'Abstractionism' Undermines Both Science And Dialectical Materialism
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The main aims of Essay Three are outlined here. The opening sections of this Part of Essay Three are intended to motivate several of the more important ideas presented in the rest of this site. However, one or two of the things I say below might seem to some to be rather dogmatic, but they will be fully substantiated in other Essays -- for example, Essay Twelve Part One.
Several readers have complained about the number of links I have added to these Essays because they say it makes them very difficult to read. Of course, DM-supporters can hardly lodge that complaint since they believe everything is interconnected, and that must surely apply even to Essays that attempt to debunk that very idea. However, to those who find these links do make these Essays difficult to read I say this: ignore them -- unless you want to access further supporting evidence and argument for a particular point, or a certain topic fires your interest.
Others wonder why I have linked to familiar subjects and issues that are part of common knowledge (such as the names of recent Presidents of the USA, UK Prime Ministers, the names of rivers and mountains, the titles of popular films, or certain words that are in common usage). I have done so for the following reason: my Essays are read all over the world and by people from all 'walks of life', so I can't assume that topics which are part of common knowledge in 'the west' are equally well-known across the planet -- or, indeed, by those who haven't had the benefit of the sort of education that is generally available in the 'advanced economies', or any at all. Many of my readers also struggle with English, so any help I can give them I will continue to provide.
Finally on this specific topic, several of the aforementioned links connect to web-pages that regularly change their URLs, or which vanish from the Internet altogether. While I try to update them when it becomes apparent that they have changed or have disappeared I can't possibly keep on top of this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers informed me of any dead links they happen to notice.
In general, links to 'Haloscan' no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.
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As is the case with all my work, nothing here should be read as an attack either on Historical Materialism [HM] -- a theory I fully accept --, or, indeed, on revolutionary socialism. I remain as committed to the self-emancipation of the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat as I was when I first became a revolutionary thirty-five years ago.
The difference between Dialectical Materialism [DM] and HM, as I see it, is explained here.
It is also important to note that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality", "ruling-class ideology" (etc.) used at this site (in connection with Traditional Philosophy and DM), aren't meant to suggest that all or even most members of various ruling-classes actually invented these ways of thinking or of seeing the world (although some of them did -- for example, Heraclitus, Plato, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius). They are intended to highlight theories (or "ruling ideas") that are conducive to, or which rationalise, the interests of the various ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them. Up until recently this dogmatic approach to knowledge has almost invariably been promoted by thinkers who either relied on ruling-class patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped run the system for the elite.**
However, that will become the central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when they are published); until then, the reader is directed here, here, and here for more details.
[**Exactly how this applies to DM will be explained later in this Essay, as well as here and here. In addition to the three links in the previous paragraph, I have summarised the argument (but this time written for absolute beginners!), here.]
Incidentally, I have used the word "nominalisation" throughout this Essay; why I have done this is explained here.
It is also worth pointing out that a good 50% of my case against DM has been relegated to the End Notes and Appendices. That has been done to allow the main body of the Essay to flow a little more smoothly. In many cases, I have added numerous qualifications, clarifications, and considerably more detail to what I have to say in the main body. In addition, I have raised several objections to my own arguments (some of which are rather obvious, many not -- and some that will have occurred to the reader), which I have then answered. I have explained why I have adopted this tactic in Essay One.
If readers skip this material, then my response to any objections or qualms they might have will be missed, as will my expanded comments and clarifications. Since I have been debating this theory with comrades for over 30 years, I have heard all the objections there are! [Many of the more recent debates have been listed here.]
Finally, rather like Essay Twelve Part One, this Essay is in places rather repetitive. It has been my experience that if the points I wish to make aren't repeated several times (maybe from different angles or in other terms) their significance is all too easily lost. However, in future re-writes I will try to weed out any such unnecessary duplications. In the meantime, the readers' indulgence and understanding will be greatly appreciated.
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As of May 2024, this Essay is just over 163,000 words long; a summary of some of its main ideas can be accessed here.
The material below does not represent my final view of any of the issues raised; it is merely 'work in progress'.
[Latest Update: 22/05/24.]
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections.
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(2) Closet Idealists
(b) In Denial
(c) So, What Exactly Are Abstractions?
(d) Abstractions Are Merely The Proper Names Of 'Abstract Particulars'
(e) Due Process?
(f) Concrete Block
(3) Linguistic Idealism -- 'Superscience' From Thought Alone
(i) The 'Rational' Structure Of Reality
(ii) 'Super-Truths' Derived Solely From Language
(iii) Linguistic Megalomania
(iv) Universal, Eternal And A Priori Truth
(v) Logic And The Logos Of 'God'
(vi) Subject And Predicate In Indo-European Grammar
(vii) Traditional Philosophy: 'Superscience' By Another Name
(b) The Fetishisation Of Language
(c) The Ideas Of The Ruling-Class Always Rule
(4) Welcome To The Glorious New Abstractor Factory
(a) All Truth Is Concrete..., Er..., Except Perhaps For That Abstraction
(b) The Abstract And The Concrete
(d) Imposed On Nature, Not Read From It
(5) DM-Epistemology: Set In Concrete?
(a) Dialectics Fails To Make It Out Of The Starting Blocks
(b) A Name By Any Other Name Is Still A Name
(c) Are Indicative Sentences Just Disguised Lists?
(f) The Sad Demise Of Generality
(6) John And The Entire Universe -- Lenin's Word-Magic
(a) No Entity Without Identity
(b) Dialectics Emerges From Logical Confusion
(c) Theses From Thought, Dogma From Daydreams
(f) The Rest Of The Dialectical Menagerie
(i) The Totality And Universal Interconnection
(ii) Unity Of Opposites
(iii) Necessity And Contingency
(a) Engels Nails His Colours To An 'Ideal' Mast
(c) Is Reality Covered With Dialectical Messages?
(e) Ok, Comrades, Reach For The Prozac!
(f) George Novack's Descent Into Syntactic Confusion
(g) Comrade Jackson's Hare-Brained Assault On Language
(h) Thalheimer's Dialectical Disaster
(i) Lawler's Lame Criticism Of Bertrand Russell
(10) Appendix A: Hegel's Actual 'Argument'
(11) Appendix B: Assorted DM-Theorists On 'Abstraction'
(b) Bertell Ollman
(c) Andrew Sayer
(d) Woods And Grant
(e) Herbert Marcuse
(12) Appendix C: The Arabic System
(13) Appendix D: A Recent Hegelian Attempt To Defend Hegel
(14) Appendix E: Hegel Conjures 'Contradictions' Out Of Thin Air
(15) Notes
(16) References
Summary Of My Main Objections To Dialectical Materialism
Abbreviations Used At This Site
Essay Three will first of all explore several core tenets of DM-epistemology, which it will then systematically demolish.
To that end, Parts One and Two of this Essay will largely focus on a traditional philosophical 'concept' or 'method': the so-called "process of abstraction". These two Parts will show that little sense can be made either of the 'process' itself or its alleged results: the various 'abstractions' that have been conjured into existence by Traditional Philosophers and DM-theorists.
[DM = Dialectical Materialism.]
Following on from the controversial allegations advanced in Essay Two -- concerning the philosophical traditionalism promoted by every single DM-theorist and author -- Essay Three will show exactly how this ancient doctrine, Abstractionism, has been incorporated into Dialectical Marxism. As we will discover, the 'process of abstraction' is a source of much of the confusion that has in its own small way helped cripple Marxist theory, and hence much of revolutionary socialist practice for well over a century.
[Notice the use of the word "helped", here; it is not being claimed that other factors haven't also contributed to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism. Also notice my use of the term "Dialectical Marxism", which I distinguish from non-Dialectical Marxism (of the sort advanced at this site). The latter form of Marxism hasn't been road-tested anywhere yet.]
In general, DM-fans with whom I have debated Abstractionism react to my criticism of this 'concept', 'method', or 'process' with incredulity, followed by extremely negative, if not highly emotive, irrational, or hostile personal abuse -- which means they are perhaps the most fervent defenders of this ancient ruling-class approach to 'knowledge'. [See, for example, here, here and here.] Their reaction isn't all that surprising given the allegations that will be advanced both in this Essay and at this site concerning the origin of the philosophical doctrines touted by DM-fans, for instance, here and here.
In Part Two, I will examine in more detail the traditional approach to abstraction, showing that by incorporating this 'process' and its alleged 'results' into their theories, Dialectical Marxists have only succeeded in drawing a viper to their breast.
Part Three will destructively analyse the peculiar idea that certain states or processes of matter and 'Mind' "emerge" from other states or processes of matter. In Part Four, I will focus on what DM-theorists have had to say about truth and falsehood. In addition, I will consider how they think human knowledge progresses; that will also include a consideration of how they imagine their own theory has developed out of, or has progressed in line with, practice. [That will overlap with what I have to say in Essay Ten Part One.] In Part Five, I will concentrate on the 'free will' versus 'determinism' controversy, which is just another distinction dialecticians have unwisely imported into Marxism from ruling-class thought. [Two rather brief previews of the approach I will adopt can be accessed here and here.] Finally, in Part Six, I will examine the so-called 'Reflection Theory of Knowledge'.
Incidentally, when I am speaking about the 'abstractions' upon which DM-theorists have concentrated -- and those they have imported from Traditional Philosophy -- I will in general put the relevant words in double quotes (for example, the words "man" or "Being"). When I am speaking about whatever these 'abstractions' supposedly designate, refer to, or 'reflect', I will use 'scare' quotes, or no quotes at all (for example, 'man').
In addition, it is worth pointing out that since the Traditional Theorists and dialecticians I will be covering in these Essays regularly confuse linguistic expressions with the objects to which they supposedly refer (or, as I often make this point: where they conflate talk about talk with talk about the world), any attempt by me to discuss this topic will become hopelessly complicated if I have to point this confusion out over and over again. I will, however, mention this mix-up from time-to-time, but readers should remain aware of this age-old confusion all the way through this Essay. Recall, I am trying to make a terminally obscure theory clear -- or as clear as is humanly possible(!) --, so any confusions that remain are the fault of those who invented this way of talking, not the present author.
I can't guarantee I will always manage to stick to these conventions consistently since it is often unclear what DM-theorists are themselves actually saying, or even to what they are attempting to refer. [If anyone has a clearer idea what they are banging in about, please contact me. On this, see also Note 1b1.]
Finally, nothing said in this Essay (or in Part Two) is aimed at criticising the ordinary use of so-called "abstract general nouns" (such as "courage", "wisdom", "justice"), although it might affect how we interpret them. Rather, these Essays are directed at the use of the word "abstraction" (and its cognates) in both Traditional Philosophy and DM. [On this, also see Cowley (1991), pp.85-116.]
In Essay Two, we saw that dialecticians were just as ready as any randomly-selected Idealist to impose their a priori theories on reality, despite what George Novack had to say about that approach:
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
Compare that with what Engels had to say:
"It is the old story. First of all one makes sensuous things into abstractions and then one wants to know them through the senses, to see time and smell space. The empiricist becomes so steeped in the habit of empirical experience, that he believes that he is still in the field of sensuous experience when he is operating with abstractions.... The two forms of existence of matter are naturally nothing without matter, empty concepts, abstractions which exist only in our minds. But, of course, we are supposed not to know what matter and motion are! Of course not, for matter as such and motion as such have not yet been seen or otherwise experienced by anyone, only the various existing material things and forms of motions. Matter is nothing but the totality of material things from which this concept is abstracted and motion as such nothing but the totality of all sensuously perceptible forms of motion; words like matter and motion are nothing but abbreviations in which we comprehend many different sensuous perceptible things according to their common properties. Hence matter and motion can be known in no other way than by investigation of the separate material things and forms of motion, and by knowing these, we also pro tanto know matter and motion as such.... This is just like the difficulty mentioned by Hegel; we can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit, because no one has so far eaten fruit as such." [Engels (1954), pp.235-36. Italic emphasis in the original. Link added. I have destructively analysed this passage in Essay Thirteen Part One.]
Which looks like a round-about way of saying that there is no evidence at all for much of DM -- or, at least, for the existence of all those "abstractions"! Either that, or DM itself is pure, unadulterated Idealism -- since the 'abstractions' Engels speaks about are based on "principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source."
Anyway, Engels's words sit rather awkwardly with other things that both he and Marx saw fit to commit to paper:
"The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way....
"The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will....
"In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.
"This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.42-48. Bold emphases added.]
"We all agree that in every field of science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.
"Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line." [Engels (1954), p.47. Bold emphases alone added.]
"All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought." [Ibid., p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976), p.13. Bold emphasis added.]
"In this way, however, the whole dogmatic content of the Hegelian system is declared to be absolute truth, in contradiction to his dialectical method, which dissolves all dogmatism...." [Engels (1888), p.589. Bold emphasis added.]
"The general results of the investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence are not principles, points of departure, but results, conclusions. To construct the latter in one's head, take them as the basis from which to start, and then reconstruct the world from them in one's head is ideology, an ideology which tainted every species of materialism hitherto existing.... As Dühring proceeds from 'principles' instead of facts he is an ideologist, and can screen his being one only by formulating his propositions in such general and vacuous terms that they appear axiomatic, flat. Moreover, nothing can be concluded from them; one can only read something into them...." [Marx and Engels (1987), p.597. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Well, perhaps there is some way of harmonising these passages that allows DM-supporters to come up with a convincing, or even a plausible, answer to the following questions:
(a) What is the precise nature of these DM-"abstractions"? And,
(b) Exactly what do they 'represent' or 'reflect' in nature and society, and how do they do it?
Satisfactory replies to both of the above from DM-fans would lend credence to the claim that their ideas haven't been "imposed" on nature and society, after all. However, given the additional fact that DM-supporters invariably ignore such 'pedantic quibbles' (or they are hand-waved aside), readers are advised not to hold their breath waiting for an effective, or even a plausible, response. Those same readers might like to ask DM-fans themselves for a clear answer to the above two questions. They will receive no such reply.
[If, per impossible, any of my readers do manage to receive a clear answer, please contact me with the details. In that eventuality I'll be keeping watch for a few flying pigs. There should be dozens of them!]
Be this as it may, another question now forces itself upon us:
(c) How is it possible for DM-theorists to avoid the Scylla of dogmatism while evading the Charybdis of Empiricism?
Well, in this Essay we will find out how they manage to avoid the latter by unfortunately careering headlong into the former -- i.e., by the way they all proceed "from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source" (to quote George Novack, again), despite their frequent protestations.
In Essays Nine Parts One and Two, and Twelve Parts One to Seven, we will discover exactly why they do it.
To be sure, DM-theorists claim that their theory is thoroughly materialist and they vigorously resist any imputation to the contrary. Far from imposing their ideas on nature, dialecticians argue that scientific knowledge (like theirs) advances because of a 'dialectical interplay' between abstract knowledge on the one hand and practical activity on the other, rendering it increasingly objective (or "concrete"), over time.
And yet, as we found out in Essay Two, there is little if any truth in this self-serving myth.
So, What Exactly Are Abstractions?
To state the obvious, without minds to invent them there would be no abstractions. On the surface, therefore, it looks like any theory committed to the 'objective' existence of 'abstractions' (or, "real abstractions") must be Idealist, whatever complaints are made to the contrary. As we will see, even when we dig 'below the surface', Idealist implications like these are difficult to resist. In which case, the above phrase, "looks like", itself turns out to be far too tentative, and by a rather wide margin, too.
If 'abstractions' aren't 'objective' -- that is, if they aren't "mind-independent", or if they fail to relate to (i.e., refer to) anything that exists in "mind-independent" reality --, it is difficult to see how they could possibly assist anyone construct an accurate or truthful theory of the world, or, at least, a theory that is supposed to be 'objective'. Nor is it easy to see how scientific knowledge could advance by means of 'abstractions' if they are somehow fictional. How could fictional concepts help account for a... -- for want of a better phrase -- ...non-fictional world?
Well, perhaps there is a way of interpreting the nature of abstractions, or what they supposedly 'reflect' in 'reality' -- that is, if they actually 'reflect' anything other than what is 'in the mind' of the one who invented them -- that succeeds in rescuing them from the world of make-believe. On the other hand, could it be that their only 'legitimate' role is to help maintain the morale of scientists and philosophers -- by making it easier to sell the idea that their latest theories are valid? That is, might it not turn out that 'abstractions' simply enable those who believe in them construct grandiose theories concerning 'fundamental features reality', valid for all of space and time, in the comfort of their own heads? One suspects so. And if those suspicions bear fruit, much of Traditional Thought should then perhaps be classified as a considerably less entertaining, but far more dogmatic, version of the collected works of the Brothers Grimm -- that is, as Fantasy Fiction on steroids.
On the other hand, if abstractions are 'objective' -- but only 'minds' are capable of constructing, or even of appreciating, them --, questions would naturally arise over what they could possibly reflect in nature. Exactly what is it in 'extra-mental reality' that corresponds with an 'abstract idea'? What do they capture 'in the world' if they only exist 'in the mind'?
Of course, for non-materialists and old-fashioned Realists, quibbles like these present few problems --, except perhaps in connection with awkward questions raised about the precise meaning of the word "objective".
Indeed, for Traditional Theorists the ultimate constituents of reality were in the end often taken to be either:
(i) Mind-like objects;
(ii) Non-material "concepts"; or,
(iii) "Ideas" floating about in some abstract 'mental', or even 'divine', arena.
In that case, the word "objective" -- that is, before its meaning flipped a couple of centuries ago (it used to mean what "subjective" now does, and vice versa; on this, see Daston (1994), and Daston and Galison (2007)) -- would almost be synonymous with another word frequently used these days, namely, "Ideal". In fact, at a fundamental level it isn't easy to distinguish old-fashioned Realists (i.e., Platonists and neo-Platonists) from Objective Idealists -- except, perhaps, in the way they both view logic/change --, and, truth be told, as far as the latter were concerned, the word "objective" clearly did no real work. But, the same can easily be said of "Ideal", and its close relative, "idealisation".
However, the same can't be said about dialecticians -- but only if we accept at face value their version of DM -- that is, that it represents Hegel's 'theory'/'method' put 'back on its feet', stripped of its outer 'mystical shell'. Nevertheless, and controversially, it can and will be said of them -- after the tangled undergrowth surrounding much of what they do say has been cleared, its roots in Traditional Thought exposed for all to see.
Oddly enough, we find a DM-classicist like Lenin arguing along such familiar lines, for all the world sounding like a born-again Realist with added Hegelian spin:
"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Emphases in the original.]
"Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature." [Ibid., p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Unfortunately, Lenin forgot to say how any of this rather ambitious project is at all possible if abstractions are nothing but the creations of the human mind. If scientific knowledge more truly reflects the world the more its abstractions are correct, or valid, how is that possible if they don't actually exist 'objectively' in the material world, in some form or other for scientists, or, indeed, for Marxist philosophers, to reflect?1a
Once again: if abstractions don't exist in the 'outside world', what is there in nature for them to reflect, for them to represent to us, or for them to refer to in 'extra-mental reality'?
Recall that for Lenin, and those who agree with him, 'objectivity' concerns whatever exists exterior to, and independent of, the human mind, ratified by practice:
"The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from this -- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology -- is that outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies and that our perceptions are images of the external world...." [Lenin (1972), p.111. Bold emphasis added.]
"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth...." [Ibid., p.148.]
"Knowledge can be useful biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid., p.157.]
"[T]he sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind." [Ibid., p.311.]
"Thus…the concept of matter…epistemologically implies nothing but objective reality existing independently of the human mind and reflected by it." [Ibid., p.312.]
"[I]t is the sole categorical, this sole unconditional recognition of nature's existence outside the mind and perception of man that distinguishes dialectical materialism from relativist agnosticism and idealism." [Ibid., p.314.]
"The fundamental characteristic of materialism is that it starts from the objectivity of science, from the recognition of objective reality reflected by science." [Ibid., pp.354-55.]
Lenin never once repudiated the above claims.
That can only mean DM-abstractions can't be 'objective'. Plainly, that is because they don't exist "outside our minds".
[As we will see, practice can't rescue DM-abstractions from this bottomless pit of 'subjectivity', either.]
On the other hand, if we simply ignore 'annoying quibbles' like these -- and even if we were to suppose that abstractions actually exist in the 'outside world' so that abstract general words can and do refer to them, or which can and do 'reflect' them --, what form do any such 'abstractions' take? Of what are they composed? Worse still: where do they exist? And how can they possibly interact with human thought? As soon as they are capable of being experienced they become particular, not general. In that eventuality, the whole point of inventing them (i.e., to rise above the particular by ascending to the general -- as we will see below) would be lost. It seems that, because of their nature, they can't be 'objects of experience'. What then are they?
Are we somehow 'mentally linked' (or can we even be 'linked') with, or to, them? Is that the case? But, as we have just seen, there appears to be no conceivable way they could be physically connected to us, or could even physically interact with us, without automatically losing their status as abstract general 'concepts'.
Or, do we perceive them by what is in effect the equivalent of a 'non-physical' Third Eye? [As we will see in Part Two, this is indeed (roughly) how Rationalist Philosophers tended to approach this topic; readers are directed there for more details.]1b
Perhaps so; indeed, as August Thalheimer let slip (in relation to another of this theory's core precepts):
"Only a person trained in dialectics will perceive the permeation of opposites. Of course, this does not depend only upon training in dialectics, but also upon the class viewpoint, the social viewpoint which the individual adopts." [Thalheimer (1936), p.164.]
Maybe that is also true of DM-abstractions? Only the faithful, only those with the 'eyes to see', can 'see' them.
As we will find out in Essay Nine Part Two, the above "class position" (at least in 'dialectical' philosophy) has almost exclusively been adopted by petty bourgeois and déclassé professional revolutionaries; that is, by those who imported this ruling-class theory into our movement, and who weren't workers.
Perhaps this is being a little too hasty? Maybe dialecticians are capable of seeing or apprehending 'abstractions' by a special 'act of cognition'. If so, the Idealist implications of that source of knowledge would be plain for all to see (no pun intended). Indeed, it finds immediate echo in Plato:
"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a, pp.1254-55. I have used the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published edition translates the third set of highlighted words as follows: "It is indivisible -- it cannot be perceived by the senses at all -- and it is the role of the understanding to study it." Cornford renders it thus: "[It is] invisible and otherwise imperceptible; that, in fact, which thinking has for its object." [Cornford (1997), p.192.]
As far as Idealists are concerned, Plato's comments present few immediate difficulties -- although, Essay Three Part Two (Sections One and Two), will show this dogmatic approach to knowledge introduces serious problems of its own.
Nevertheless, this leaves dialecticians with more than a few annoying headaches, the origin and cause of which Essay Three (in all its Parts) aims to expose.
To that end, and in order to make genuine progress, we will need something a little more helpful than Lenin's enigmatic prose to light our way. Surprising as this might seem to those still living under a rock, DM-theorists have to this day remained studiously silent on these issues -- saving, of course, where they are content merely to repeat Lenin's words verbatim in the vain hope that repetition will generate clarity where enigmatic prose on its own manifestly can't.
Traditional Theorists viewed abstractions (or the 'Forms'/'Universals') as a 'reflection', or an expression, of "essential" features of the world, which, according to them, were inaccessible to the senses and lay 'behind' appearances -- with that over-used metaphor also left conveniently obscure for over two thousand years.
[Later, we will have occasion to question the aptness of these figures of speech, even when they are employed by avowed materialists -- i.e., DM-fans.]
In stark contrast to the particulars we meet in everyday life -- a table, a chair, a cat, a relative... --, abstractions aren't just universal in form, they are also supposed to be general in fact. Indeed, the use of 'abstractions', so we are told, allows human 'cognition' to rise above and beyond immediate experience, enabling it to construct an increasingly universal, law-governed picture of (underlying) reality. As the late Fraser Cowley pointed out:
"The notion of a universal and with it the celebrated problem of universals was invented by Plato.... The distinction of particulars and universals is complemented in many doctrines since Plato with the distinction and division of labour between the senses and the reason or intellect, or understanding. According to these doctrines, what is given to the bodily senses is merely particular, and the understanding or reason alone apprehends, or constructs or derives, the universal. Many philosophers take the problem of universals to be that of the meaning of general terms without realising that what makes the meaning of general terms a problem is the very concept of a universal." [Cowley (1991), p.85. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
Hence, it seemed to more than a few Traditional Thinkers that abstractions (like those 'universals') were necessary if human beings were to (a) comprehend the generality supposedly found in nature, (b) both establish and consolidate scientific knowledge, or (c) uncover a countless 'necessary truths' buried 'under the surface' or which lie 'behind 'appearances'. DM-theorists merely added an extra flourish: their theory allows them to understand the 'concrete world' more fully in order to help change it. But, as we will discover, their approach to such Cosmic Verities owes much more to early modern forms of Rationalism and those who paved the way for Hegel than it does to science itself:
"Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Thinkers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996), p.29. Bold emphasis added.]
Each (genuine) abstraction therefore seems to operate like some sort of 'conceptual key' capable of unlocking secrets that govern the 'inner workings' of the entire universe, an artefact of thought that supplies each mind prepared to indulge in this ancient sport with universally valid principles -- important components of which, oddly enough, don't actually exist anywhere in 'extra-mental reality'!
However, in order to exert a little more pressure on the opposing idea (that 'abstractions' actually do exist somehow, somewhere...), it might prove helpful to raise a handful of additional questions:
(d) If abstractions are general in form, and do in fact exist in the 'outside world', how does that 'generality' actually express itself?
(e) Is an abstraction somehow 'spread out', as it were -- like some sort of 'metaphysical liquid' or 'force field' -- in, or over, the 'concrete particulars' that supposedly instantiate it, uniting the diversity we see all around us, perhaps by a 'mysterious power'/'influence' as yet unbeknown to us?
(f) Or, are abstractions merely an aspect of the complex tales human beings tell one another? Are they simply subjective stories in pseudo-objective drag, but which are essential for the successful advancement of knowledge (even though they aren't really 'real' in themselves)?
(g) Are they not then simply useful fictions?
Unfortunately, the questionable origin of the traditional approach to knowledge (in the theories developed by openly Idealist Philosophers) has done little to improve its image among materialists, nor does it inspire much confidence.1b0 Small wonder then that consistent materialists have, in general, regarded abstract ideas as guilty until proven even more guilty.
Nevertheless, more work will need to be done before it becomes clear whether or not 'abstractions' aren't simply useful fictions, handy at least for maintaining the morale of scientists, or, indeed, for giving dialecticians something over which they can endlessly perseverate --, and, if we are brutally honest, precious little else.
Short of burying this entire topic under layers of impenetrable Hegelian jargon, dialecticians haven't advanced much beyond the 'subjective stage', if such it may be called. In fact, as we will see, the way they conceive of abstractions, and the 'process' by which they have been given life, undermines the very generality they had all along been introduced to explain.
As should now seem reasonably clear: if true, that accusation would completely undermine the DM-theory of knowledge.
This ironic 'dialectical inversion' -- whereby DM-abstractions end up killing the very theory that spawned them -- will be the subject of the rest of this Essay -- and Part Two.
Abstractions Are Merely The Proper Names Of 'Abstract Particulars'
Admittedly, when language is viewed in a traditional light, it appears to predispose or even motivate its users into entertaining the idea that 'abstractions' are universal in form; the words that supposedly denote them appear to be, or to express, general ideas, categories and concepts.1b1
Even so, things are rarely this straight-forward. The problem here revolves around the fact that the terminology Traditional Theorists use to talk about abstractions turns out to be far from general. Indeed, such theorists in the end use what turn out to be the Proper Names of the aforementioned "Universals", or they are the Proper Names of the "Forms", of "Concepts", "Categories", "Essences", and "Ideas". Now, this might at first sight appear to be a relatively insignificant point, hardly worth mentioning, in fact; but this seemingly minor detail turns out to be the exact opposite. That is because this linguistic move implies that these Universals (etc.) aren't in fact general in form or content but are particulars of some sort or other, named now by abstract nouns such as "Manhood", "Cathood", or "The Population", "Being", conjured into existence by the 'process' of abstraction -- a 'process' that defies clear explanation even to this day, as the first two Parts of Essay Three will demonstrate.1b2
The question now confronting us is the following:
(h) How is it possible for an abstraction to be both general and particular at one and the same time?
Well, are abstractions like classes? Classes are abstract particulars of a rather peculiar sort: they are singular in form, supposedly compound in nature, but no less Ideal.1c If Universals are like classes -- which somehow seem to 'exist' anterior to material reality -- it would suggest they were ghostly containers of some sort, populated by what are supposed to be the material objects they (metaphorically) collect together.1d But, does this intellectualist approach to reality not now commit us to the existence of classes over and above their members? Indeed, is such a 'theory' little more than bargain basement Platonism? As the late Fraser Cowley pointed out:
"The open sentence 'x is a spider' determines a class only because 'spider' signifies a kind of thing. It is by being one of that kind...that a value of x is a member of the class. To identify something as a spider, one must know what a spider is, that is, what kind of thing 'spider' signifies. Kinds of things can come to be or cease to be. The chemical elements, kinds of substances, are believed to have evolved. The motorbike -- the kind of vehicle known as a motorbike -- was invented about 1880. The dodo is extinct. There is no obvious way of producing sentences equivalent to these in terms of classes. The class of dodos and the class of dead dodos are not identical: though all dodos are dead, a dead dodo is not a dodo....
"Since a kind is to be found wherever there are particular things of the kind, it can have various geographical locations. The lion is found in East Africa. Lions are found in East Africa. It makes no difference whether we say 'the lion' or whether we say 'lions': what is meant is the kind of animal. To say that it can be seen in captivity far from its remaining natural habitats does not contradict the statement that it is found in East Africa. A kind is not a class: the class of lions is nowhere to be found." [Cowley (1991), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
So, what we say about an individual of a certain sort (such as a spider), or even kinds of things (such as spiders), can't sensibly said of classes. You might find spiders in your loft, garage or bath, but you will nowhere find the class of spiders in your neighbourhood, or anywhere else, for that matter. Not even the most enthusiastic hunter will stalk the class of elks or the class of pheasants. Spiders, as a kind, are to be found dispersed across this planet, but not the class of spiders. TV documentaries will happily film spiders, but no one has ever videoed the class of these eight-legged beasties, or has even tried to do so.
And yet, what are classes apart from their members? Indeed, what were they before their members existed? Was there, for example, a class of tigers existing somewhere (maybe for billions of years), waiting for these magnificent beasts to evolve just to give that class some sort of material content --, and, perhaps, provide theoretical distraction for taxonomists? Does nature 'plan ahead' in this way? For Platonists, maybe it does; but for materialists? Surely not.
On the other hand, are classes somehow material in form, like a table, a chair, a rock, a pair of cuff links or a TV set? If they are indeed material in some way, of what are they composed? If they are made of something, why call them abstractions? That particular word doesn't even look right.
Abstractions (or abstract ideas/concepts) are constructed -- so the story goes -- either (a) By means of some sort of mental subtracting process, in the course of which theorists progressively ignore certain particular (or even general) features of material objects in their desire to ascend to something more general, or (b) By means of a law-like, generalising process, which each intrepid abstractor brings to reality, a priori -- rather like the "concrete universal" idea that Hegel borrowed from Aristotle.1d1
About that, the late Donald Davidson had this to say:
"Aristotle again and again reverts to the claim that if the forms are to serve as universals, then they cannot be separate from the entities of which they are properties. Aristotle agrees with Plato that universals, like the forms, are the objects of scientific study.... Where Aristotle differs from Plato was in holding that universals are not identical with the things of which they are properties, they exist only by virtue of the existence of the things of which they are properties. If universals existed independently, they would take their place alongside the things that instantiate them. Separate existence is just what would make universals like other particulars and thus no longer universal. But doesn't this argument show Aristotle to be confused? If universals can be talked about, they can be referred to. Yet whatever can be referred to is a particular. Confusion seems to have set in: universals are both particulars and at the same time necessarily distinct from particulars." [Davidson (2005), pp.89-90. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]1e
Of course, this simply labels the problem since it is still unclear what any one of these "universals" actually is. Compare that with calling what we now know as Oxygen, "dephlogisticated air". That term simply labelled a problem in 18th century Chemistry, which, fortunately, the scientists of the day didn't try to solve simply by inventing yet more jargon, unlike Philosophers. [I will develop that theme throughout this Essay and this site.]
Nevertheless, whichever one of (a) or (b) above is the correct approach to the invention of these 'abstractions', exactly how this highly individualised skill is mysteriously coordinated across an entire population of intrepid abstractors, and over many centuries, is an even deeper mystery. No doubt there is an abstraction covering that, too.
But, if (a) were the case, in the limit, one would expect abstractions to be more like Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, not the Old Woman's Shoe -- i.e., empty of all content. As we will see, this was indeed the 'thinking' that motivated Hegel's reduction of generality and Marx's criticism of it.
On the other hand, if (b) were the case, nature couldn't be anything other than Ideal, as Hegel himself maintained and as Marx also famously criticised.
[Those specific topics will be the main subject of much of Part Two.]
Anyway, should dialecticians be tempted to adopt strategy (b), they won't be able to avoid imposing the resulting abstractions on reality, something they said they would never do. Indeed, that is precisely why, in these Essays, DM is accused of being a thoroughly Idealist theory; because dialecticians have in fact imposed an a priori dogma on nature and society their theory couldn't be anything other than Ideal.
[Again, that allegation was fully substantiated in Essay Two.]
Maybe these aren't even the right questions to ask? Perhaps a closer examination of the actual process of abstraction will tell us more.
Abstraction is widely held to be a process that all (or maybe most) human beings are capable of performing, accessing, or using, and which enables those so minded to extract or form 'abstract ideas' almost at will.2
One interpretation of this allegedly 'universal skill' involves the additional belief -- among Marxist dialecticians, it seems -- that abstractions already exist in reality somehow waiting for intrepid mental gymnasts to 'discover' by the operation of 'reason' alone -- otherwise they wouldn't be 'objective'. Again, as Lenin noted:
"[T]he sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind." [Lenin (1972), p.311.]
"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth...." [Ibid., pp.148.]
"Knowledge can be useful biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid., p.157.]
So, if 'abstractions' are to be considered 'objective', or are capable of reflecting 'objective' features of 'reality', they must have pre-dated human existence. There appears to be no other way of interpreting Lenin, here.
The only other alternative, it would seem, is to view these 'abstractions' in a way that would make them both 'objective' and 'mind-dependent', all in one go -- an odd combination, to be sure, but one we will find resists all serious attempts at explanation. Here is Lenin, again:
"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. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Good luck to anyone trying to make sense of that! One might well wonder how nature could be abstract as well as concrete. Lenin nowhere explained what he meant by this rather odd, nay, entirely puzzling, assertion. I will, however, try to make some sort of sense of it later on in this Essay.
In summary, the above approach to knowledge appears to suggest that:
(i) Most, if not all, 'abstractions' (or what they supposedly 'refer to' or 'reflect') pre-date human existence; but also that,
(ii) They require some mind or other to think them into existence, or, at least, 'represent' them to 'consciousness'.
In which case, the following conclusion seems inescapable:
(iii) Human minds must have pre-dated themselves!
Or, even,
(iv) 'Mind-in-general', or some 'Mind-in-particular', pre-dated humanity.
Small wonder then that these 'abstractions' are the proud offspring of the hyper-ambitious thoughts and theories of the many Idealists and 'God'-botherers that the class war regurgitated and then dumped on humanity. What they are doing here in Lenin's thought is therefore something of a mystery. This is hardly the sort of metaphysical company for self-respecting materialists to keep. Unfortunately, sound advice like this has arrived on the scene far too late, for this is just the sort of intellectual company dialecticians have been frequenting for generations, as Lenin himself admitted:
"The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia." [Lenin (1947), pp.31-32. Bold emphases added.]
"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.
"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added.]
Nevertheless, using their 'natural' abstractive skills, intrepid abstractors are supposed to be able to do one or more of the following:
(A) Progressively ignore certain features, properties, or aspects of material objects, enabling them to form increasingly general ideas or concepts.
(B) Access 'abstract concepts' which (i) each abstracter (somehow?) already possesses, or which (ii) 'inheres' in every object of a given type. However, these mysterious 'objects'/'concepts' are only capable of being 'brought to the surface' if philosophical 'reason' is allowed free reign and given licence to speculate. And yet, by shear coincidence, these 'concepts' emerge in each mind only if exactly the same jargonised expressions (such as "Being", "Nothing", "Becoming", "Substance", "Determination", etc.) are pressed into action -- which terminology, by yet another almost miraculous coincidence, had already been dreamt up by previous generations of Philosophers, Idealists and Mystics. This might suggest to neutral observers that the intrepid abstractors mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph weren't in fact in possession of these notions before they had been talked into adopting them by a smooth-talking traditionalist.
Either way, abstract ideas appear to emerge in each individual head in miraculously the same way.
Nevertheless, whatever their provenance, these 'creatures of thought' may then be used to cast each material particular in an entirely new light.
Or, at least, that is what the Metaphysical Brochure would have us believe.
But, materialists should be suspicious of such moves. And for good reason:
(C) How could abstractions conjured into existence in this way be material (in any sense of that word) if adepts have to disregard (or rise above) all aspects of material reality in order to derive (or ascend to) some idea of them?
(D) How could abstractions even be materialist notions if only a select -- nay, exclusive -- class of human beings (of the 'right' sort) are capable of 'apprehending' them, or of enlisting the right a priori categories, concepts and laws to that end, which allegedly determine the nature of every material object in the entire universe, for all time? At the very least, this approach to knowledge would seem to imply that physical objects in are 'real' only because of the 'existence' of an Ideal world underpinning them, which 'world' is more 'real' than the material universe we see around us, and which 'world' is accessible to thought alone, as Plato maintained all along. As we will see, this would imply that the 'concrete' is only 'concrete' because of these 'abstractions'. In other words, only the abstract world is really real! Maybe that is what Lenin meant?
Hence, if, according to Lenin, materiality is bound up with "objective existence" outside the mind, and if it requires the exercise of specially-choreographed mental gymnastics to conjure abstractions into existence, how could a single one of them be material? More to the point: how could any of them be "objective" -- i.e., "mind independent" if they are all in fact "mind-dependent"?
Or, is this just another 'dialectical contradiction' we are supposed merely to "grasp", sweep under the non-dialectical carpet, and then continue on our merry way?
To be sure, the above remarks appear to ignore at least four key DM-ideas:
(1) The distinction between "concrete" and "abstract" universals,2a
(2) The flip-side of the dialectical coin, "concrete particulars" (before and after they have been 'dialectically processed').
(3) The distinction between "subjective" and "objective" dialectics, and,
(4) The "dialectical relation" between the "abstract" and the "concrete", as well as that between "the knower" and "the known".
As far as (2) is concerned: if anything, 'concrete particulars' are even more difficult to comprehend. So, it is far from clear how this term helps in any way.
Consider a familiar enough example of one possible candidate: a cat. Is each of these furry mammals a concrete particular? DM-theorists would perhaps want to argue that a single cat isn't such until it has been comprehended against a background of all its interconnections, these being infinite in number. But, that would surely mean nothing could ever be viewed as a concrete particular, which in turn implies that nothing would be a concrete particular unless an Ideal Observer (or, Abstractor) viewed it against just such an infinite back-drop. This now suggests that concrete objects are only concrete in the Ideal limit. Here is Lenin again:
"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to it; 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, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity…. [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 emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]
Perhaps this is what Lenin meant when he argued as follows:
"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. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
If that is the case with respect to familiar feline occupants of the universe, it would seem that the more we know about them the more Ideal they should appear to be! Abstract cats; who would have thought?
That can't be right. And yet it looks like that is the clear implication of this rather odd approach to knowledge.
[There is more on this in Part Two, and in Essay Ten Part One, where we will see that this approach to knowledge soon collapses into overt scepticism, since the difference between a finite number of facts and an infinite number is itself infinite. Naturally, that implies humanity will always be infinitely ignorant about everything and anything!]
On the other hand, if this approach is correct, it looks like the class of concrete objects would: (i) Only ever have aspiring, but never successful, members, or it would (ii) Look increasingly ephemeral, resembling a metaphysical version of the Cheshire Cat -- the more we knew about this class, or this Cheshire Cat, the less substantial it would appear to be. [On that, see below.]
Furthermore, given this way of seeing things, no abstractor (novice or skilled adept alike) would ever have the remotest idea what could possibly count as the genuine article, since bona fide 'concrete particulars' will only emerge from this Ideal Dungeon at the end of an uncompletable, infinitary exercise in interconnection -- again just as Lenin argued.2b
And, indeed, as both Engels and Trotsky concurred:
"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the 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…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), pp.457-58, and Marx and Engels (2004), pp.463-64.]
"Shachtman obviously does not take into account the distinction between the abstract and the concrete. Striving toward concreteness, our mind operates with abstractions. Even 'this,' 'given,' 'concrete' dog is an abstraction because it proceeds to change, for example, by dropping its tail the 'moment' we point a finger at it. Concreteness is a relative concept and not an absolute one: what is concrete in one case turns out to be abstract in another: that is, insufficiently defined for a given purpose. In order to obtain a concept 'concrete' enough for a given need it is necessary to correlate several abstractions into one -- just as in reproducing a segment of life upon the screen, which is a picture in movement, it is necessary to combine a number of still photographs.
"The concrete is a combination of abstractions -- not an arbitrary or subjective combination but one that corresponds to the laws of the movement of a given phenomenon." [Trotsky (1971), p.147. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
However, if Lenin were correct, no 'concrete' dog could ever be said to walk, sit or stand in front of Trotsky until an infinite number of interconnections had been established between it and the rest of the universe. If so, the 'dog' to which Trotsky referred was always abstract. Indeed, given this approach, a fully accurate depiction of the very first 'concrete particular' in the whole of human history(!) will only ever leap from the Ideal page on 'Epistemological Judgement Day', so to speak -- at the 'end of time'! Because of this, it looks like no mortal being will ever be in a position to form a clear idea of a single 'concrete particular'. On that score, humanity is doomed never to know what the nature is of even one of these (now) obscure 'entities', these 'concrete particulars', these cats and dogs. Indeed, if Lenin is right, humanity will be infinitely ignorant of any and all of them, forever. Worse still, if we are infinitely ignorant of, say, cats and dogs, could we even say with confidence that they are in fact real cats and real dogs? And if they aren't, what the dickens are we supposed to be interconnecting here? What is there for an intrepid abstractor to work on if it isn't clear what we are supposed to begin with?
Unfortunately, this means that abstractions themselves are based on, or must be applied to, nothing at all if they are supposed to be grounded on these infinitely elusive 'concrete particulars'. Abstractions must, it seems, be applied, or constructed, in almost total ignorance, using ethereal bricks to build each ghostly building. If there are no really real concrete particulars, no real dogs and no real cats, how can a single abstraction be made of them? What exactly is being abstracted -- and of what is it being abstracted?
In that case, Lenin, Engels and Trotsky's enigmatic comments are no help at all. If we have no idea what abstractions and concrete particulars actually are, and no idea what they will ever be, then it is little use being told that "The concrete is a combination of abstractions," is it?
Indeed, Trotsky, for example, might just as well have said: "The schmoncrete is a combination of schmabstractions."
[Several objections to this unexpected turn of events have been neutralised here and here.]
To be sure, dialecticians will take exception to these controversial allegations and claim, perhaps because the above considerations ignore not only the dialectical interplay between the knower and the known, but also the link between the abstract and the concrete, and the link both have with practice. They also seem to confuse "subjective" with "objective" dialectics.
Naturally, this brings us back to items (1), (3) and (4), outlined earlier. However, further ruminations on the complex relation between these epistemological Siamese twins (i.e., the abstract and the concrete) will be left for later on in Essay -- as well as in Parts Two, Three and Six.
The question before us now is: Despite the inversion that Hegel's system is said to have undergone at the hands of dialecticians, does an acceptance of the existence of abstractions mean that DM is little more than Upside Down Idealism? Is there anything to support (or even refute) this contentious allegation?
As will soon become apparent, this infant suspicion will not only mature alarmingly, it will grow into full adulthood throughout the rest of this Essay, and this site.
But first, we must take an apparent detour.
Linguistic Idealism -- Or, Superscience From Thought Alone
[While the following section this Essay presents what might at first sight appear to be a series of unsupported assertions, allegations and inferences about the nature and provenance both of Traditional Thought and DM, they will all be fully substantiated as the rest of this Essay, and, indeed, this site, unfolds. It is also worth pointing out again that this main sub-section is a little repetitive, hence I am continually re-writing it in order to put that right. So, as noted in the Preface, the reader's indulgence is required here a little more than elsewhere.]
There is a clearly identifiable thread running through the entire history of Traditional Philosophy: the idea that substantive (i.e., non-trivial, metaphysical or necessary) truths about 'reality' can be derived from thought alone, or the meaning of a handful of specially-selected concepts, ideas or words -- indeed, as Marx himself suggested:
"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 alone added.]
Naturally, few Traditional Theorists will be willing to admit that this is all they ever do (or all they have ever done) -- i.e., spin complex metaphysical tales solely from thought/language. Outside of the Rationalist Tradition, even fewer theorists would be willing to concede that in so doing they were in effect treating language as some sort of 'Secret Code', deeper knowledge of which allowed them to derive profound truths about fundamental features of 'Reality', valid for all of space and time -- or, indeed, sometimes reaching beyond even that, with theories about every possible world, and even of the 'mind' of the 'Deity' 'Himself', all from thought alone.
Nevertheless, this is indeed what every single one has been doing.
However, over the last two-and-a-half thousand years, and perhaps in order to disguise that fact, this approach to Super-Knowledge has motivated Traditional Philosophers into inventing various subterfuges, ruses and likely stories aimed at 'justifying' their semi-godlike ability to derive substantial truths about "Being" from a consideration of the supposed meaning of a few carefully chosen (and often artificially doctored) expressions.
[There is no suggestion, however, that every single one of them did this duplicitously.]
Among these are the following hardy perennials (several of the following overlap somewhat, which means that the material below will be a little more repetitive than much of the rest of this Essay):
[1] The 'Rational' Structure Of Reality
The widely-held doctrine that the world was created by a 'Divine Being', 'Person', 'Mind', or by 'god'/'gods' 'justified' the further belief that reality has an underlying 'rational' structure, which was either a creation, a reflection or an "emanation" of one or more of those supernatural 'entities'. Classic examples of this metaphysical doctrine can be found in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, John Scotus Eriugena, Anselm, Aquinas, Nicolas of Cusa, Descartes, Jakob Boehme, Leibniz, Kant -- and, of course, Hegel himself.
As I noted in Essay Thirteen Part Three:
Umberto Eco points out the following (in relation to the 'western' Christian tradition):
"God spoke before all things, and said, 'Let there be light.' In this way, he created both heaven and earth; for with (sic) the utterance of the divine word, 'there was light'.... Thus Creation itself arose through an act of speech; it is only by giving things their names that he created them and gave them their ontological status....
"In Genesis..., the Lord speaks to man for the first time.... We are not told in what language God spoke to Adam. Tradition has pictured it as a sort of language of interior illumination, in which God...expresses himself....
"...Clearly we are here in the presence of a motif, common to other religions and mythologies -- that of the nomothete, the name-giver, the creator of language." [Eco (1997), pp.7-8. Bold emphasis added.]
Language was a vehicle for the "inner illumination" of the 'soul'; a hot-line to 'God'. Unsurprisingly, the theories concocted by countless generations of ruling-class hacks turned out to be those that, 'coincidentally', you understand, almost invariably rationalised or 'justified' the status quo, alongside obscene inequality and systematic oppression.
[On this, see Bono (1995). There is more on this in Essay Twelve (summary here).]
[2] 'Super-Truths' Derived solely From Specially-Concocted Jargon
Dogma [1] above in turn implied that only those with the 'right' intellectual powers -- or, to be more honest, only those with the right social standing, adequate means, indulgent patrons, sufficient leisure time and a flair for inventing of jargon -- were capable of 'discovering' these 'Super-Truths'.
Fortunately enough for these 'intellectual hacks' their Super-Theories could be obtained by the sole exercise of the mind, as we saw Plato insist. Indeed, those capable of performing impressive verbal tricks found that they could unearth any number of 'Cosmic Verities', which will forever remain way beyond the comprehension of the great 'unwashed', by the simple expedient of unravelling the 'implications' of their own jargon. Often these verbal tricks were 'fortified' by the liberal use of stipulative and persuasive definitions.
So, in order to elaborate upon this impressive skill Traditional Thinkers invented increasingly arcane and baroque terminology, which, in the distant past, had been regarded as a gift of the 'gods' (as Umberto Eco noted), which might help explain its prolixity. 'Divinely-inspired' jargon 'naturally' gave spurious substance to the highly abstract prose these theorists continually cranked out, the allegedly superficial aspects of this material world having been peremptorily 'abstracted away', cast aside as inferior and beneath contempt by generations of boss-class Idealists and Mystics.
Clearly, there is no way that 'surgically-enhanced' jargon like this could have been the product collective labour and communal life (on that, see Essays Three Part Two, Nine Part One and Twelve Part One), nor could it have been grounded on the material world, or even have been the product of social practice. Hence, the 'verbal spaghetti' Traditional Theorists cooked up not only had a very limited sphere of influence -- stretching about as far as the ideas of other socially-isolated 'thinkers' playing the same game --, it was the sole patronage of a highly exclusive clientele. And deliberately so. Only a lexicon of 'sanctified' words with such an exclusive and elevated pedigree could possibly act as an intermediary between this self-selected group of 'superior' human beings and the 'Deity'. By such means these theorists were able to uncover with relative ease a series 'necessary truths' about "Essence", "Being", and, of course, the 'Rational Order of Reality'. It is no surprise therefore to see that this "ruling idea" idea still motivates much of 'popular science' and amateur metaphysics.
In this way, therefore, theories that explored the relationship between "Thought" and "Being" were merely an extension to Theology, as Marx himself noted:
"Feuerbach's great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis and link added.]
Lenin expressed a similar opinion; here he is quoting Dietzgen:
"J. Dietzgen had not the slightest doubt that the 'scientific priestcraft' of idealist philosophy is simply the antechamber to open priestcraft. 'Scientific priestcraft,' he wrote, 'is seriously endeavouring to assist religious priestcraft' (op. cit., p.51). 'In particular, the sphere of epistemology, the misunderstanding of the human mind, is such a louse-hole'...in which both kinds of priests 'lay their eggs.' 'Graduated flunkeys,' who with their talk of 'ideal blessings' stultify the people by their tortuous...'idealism' (p.53) -- that is J. Dietzgen's opinion of the professors of philosophy. 'Just as the antipodes of the good God is the devil, so the professorial priest...has his opposite pole in the materialist.' The materialist theory of knowledge is 'a universal weapon against religious belief' (p.55), and not only against the 'notorious, formal and common religion of the priests, but also against the most refined, elevated professorial religion of muddled...idealists' (p.58).
"Dietzgen was ready to prefer 'religious honesty' to the 'half-heartedness' of freethinking professors (p.60), for 'there at least there is a system,' there we find integral people, people who do not separate theory from practice. For the Herr Professors 'philosophy is not a science, but a means of defence against Social-Democracy...' (p.107). 'All who call themselves philosophers, professors, and university lecturers are, despite their apparent freethinking, more or less immersed in superstition and mysticism...and in relation to Social-Democracy constitute a single...reactionary mass' (p.108). 'Now, in order to follow the true path, without being led astray by all the religious and philosophical gibberish..., it is necessary to study the falsest of all false paths..., philosophy' (p.103)." [Lenin (1972), pp.413-14. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Of course, it is arguable that Lenin was referring to the philosophers of his day, but, give or take a few qualifications, his comments apply equally well to the whole profession stretching (in the 'West') right back to the Ancient Greeks. Granted he would have seriously questioned that unqualified extrapolation of his words, but, Essay Twelve will show it is no less apt for all that (summary here). Just as it is no less pertinent when applied to DM itself.
Of course, the above is no mere supposition; the History of Philosophy fully supports such deflationary conclusions. [On that, see Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here, here, and here).]
Even Hegel admitted as much:
"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. Bold emphasis added.]
Hence, no expensive equipment or convoluted experiments were required. In fact, no real engagement with the material world was necessary --, that is, over and above a comfortable armchair, some writing material and maybe a little too much wine. Wealth, patronage, more than your fair share of leisure-time, a lively imagination --, and, of course, a flare for inventing jargon -- are all that the aspiring Philosopher required.
This ancient and (originally) aristocratic approach to 'knowledge' has surfaced many times, in many different guises, in diverse Modes of Production that have come and gone since the Ancient World, both 'East' and 'West'. It is indeed the common thread that unites every shade of ruling-class thought, despite its re-packaging as and when the exigencies of the class war required.
Some may object that philosophical ideas can't have remained the same for thousands of years, across different Modes of Production. Surely, that idea itself runs counter to core ideas in HM? But, we don't argue the same for religious belief. Marx put no time stamp on the following, for example:
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo." [Marx (1975c), p.244. Italic emphases in the original. Some paragraphs merged.]
The above remarks applied in Ancient Babylon and Egypt,
just as they did in China and India, in Greece and Rome, in the Middle Ages, and
they have done so right across the planet ever since. So, despite what some
might conclude about the implications of HM, Marx certainly thought that certain
"ruling ideas" and other thought-forms could survive such profound social
transformations.
The same is the case with the core forms of thought found throughout Traditional
Philosophy -- that there is an invisible, 'abstract' world, accessible to thought
alone that is more real than the material world we see around us --, especially since, as we have
already seen, Marx also believed that:
"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought...". [Marx (1975b), p.381.]
Some might argue that there have been (and still are) ancient, early modern and contemporary materialists, which fact alone undermines the above rather sweeping generalisations. However, those theorists are philosophical materialists, who also derived their ideas from thought alone, which situates them well inside the perimeter of the above generalisations. To be sure, there have been theorists who claimed to have based their ideas on scientific evidence, but their materialism has to be imposed on science, it doesn't follow from it.
[I will say much more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]
Unfortunately, the theses that litter DM show similar signs of what can only be called linguistic megalomania: the belief that (i) A handful of words invented on this planet can unmask the deepest 'secrets' of 'Being' and (ii) The human brain lies at the very centre of the 'meaning universe' -- i.e., the belief that it follows somehow from the perennial desire to find meaning in a 'meaningless universe' that there must indeed be meaning 'out there', after all, and the thought of a few specialist theorists is capable of capturing and then revealing it to the rest of us. So, philosophers and amateur metaphysicians alike just have to think hard enough to access this 'Cosmic Motherlode' of meaning. Since human beings can access it, that puts us at the centre of the meaning universe; the entire shooting match was somehow intended for our benefit. The Earth might no longer be at the centre of the Universe, but our minds still are, according to this world-view. DM-theorists have clearly bought into since they have adopted the same approach to knowledge, outlined in (i) above.
Option (ii) often re-surfaces as a more secular version of Marx's famous words quoted six or seven paragraphs ago.
[On this topic, see Stove (1991), pp.83-177, which is, I think, one of the most coherent and powerful statements, and condemnations, of this world-view I have ever read. Having said that, I hesitate to reference Stove's work because of his objectionable, reactionary political opinions; I distance myself, therefore, from many of the remarks he expresses, especially those found on p.96. On that, see also here.]
The search for religious and philosophical consolation isn't, therefore, confined to the open and honest god-botherers among us.
DM-fans unfortunately show similar a predilection.
[3] 'Linguistic Megalomania'
In the 'West', since early Greek times, 'linguistic megalomania' of the sort just described has dominated the thought-processes of the elite, their hangers-on and their "prize-fighters" (as Marx termed these ideologues) -- manifesting itself in a series of interconnected philosophical theories that gave expression to the "ruling ideas" of each epoch:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch...." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]
Notice how Marx pointed out that:
"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
Hence, this class, or their ideologues, rule as "thinkers", and they do so in "its whole range".
This 'philosophical personality disorder' is indeed part of a wider array of ruling-class, 'theoretical character traits' that have dominated all forms of what are regarded as 'acceptable' examples of philosophical thought ever since -- even by Marxists.
[4] Universal, Eternal, A Priori Truth
One of the most important implications of Traditional Thought was the idea that the Super-Truths invented by ruling-class hacks must of necessity apply to all of reality, for all of time. This doctrine has manifested itself in different forms of LIE, which include the even more ancient idea that reality is in effect merely 'condensed language', the result of the activities of the 'Word of God'.
Again, by sheer coincidence, the 'philosophical gems' mined as a result turned out to be those that 'justified' or rationalised the interests of the many and diverse ruling-classes humanity has had imposed on it.
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism (explained further below).]
[5] Logic And The Logos Of 'God'
Logic was viewed as the study of "the laws of thought", or "the science of thought/cognition" itself, which was in turn somehow capable of reflecting the 'essential nature of Being'. This time-honoured idea was augmented by the parallel belief that there were countless 'secrets' lying 'below the surface of appearances', which could be uncovered by an examination of the 'logical structure' of suitably 'doctored' sentences -- but only if they were buried beneath layers of unintelligible jargon, and packed with just enough speculative flights-of-fancy to distract and confuse the unwary. Or, these days, if they contained sufficient enough obscure terminology to impress Marxist 'intellectuals':
"Logic is the science of the thought process. Logicians investigate the activities of the though process which goes on in human heads and formulate laws , firms and interrelation of those mental processes." [Novack (1971), p.17.]
"Hegel insisted on a Logic which was not something separate from the reality which confronted man, a Logic which was identical with the richness and movement of all reality, a Logic which expressed the whole process of man's growing consciousness of reality, and not just a dry summary of formal principles of argument, reflecting only one brief phase in the definition of reality by thinking men." [Slaughter (1963), p.9.]
In this, they agreed with the DM-classicists:
"Modern materialism is essentially dialectical.... What independently survives of all former philosophy is the science of thought and its laws -- formal logic and dialectics." [Engels (1976), p.31. Bold emphases added.]
"In every epoch, and therefore also in ours, theoretical thought is a historical product, which at different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different contents. The science of thought is therefore, like every other, a historical science, the science of the historical development of human thought. And this is of importance also for the practical application of thought in empirical fields. Because in the first place the theory of the laws of thought is by no means an 'eternal truth' established once and for all, as philistine reasoning imagines to be the case with the word 'logic'." [Engels (1954), p.43. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]
"Logic is the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge…. The laws of logic are the reflections of the objective in the subjective consciousness of man.... [These] embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature." [Lenin (1961), p.182. Bold emphasis alone added..]
"Hegel himself viewed dialectics precisely as logic, as the science of the forms of human cognition.... What does logic express? The law of the external world or the law of consciousness? The question is posed dualistically [and] therefore not correctly [for] the laws of logic express the laws (rules, methods) of consciousness in its active relationship to the external world.... Thought operates by its own laws, which we can call the laws of logic...." [Trotsky (1986), pp.75, 87, 106. Trotsky is apparently referring to Hegel's Introduction to The Science of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999), pp.43-64. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
So, not only were Logic and Epistemology regarded as two sides of the same bent coin, the idea prevailed that Logic was in fact a higher form of Psychology -- indeed, the study of the "laws of thought" -- a doctrine that only makes sense if 'reality' is indeed the product of 'Thought', which is why it was imagined that logic could reflect it.
In relation to this theory I pointed out the following over at Wikipedia:
Why are these called 'laws of thought' (over and above the fact that it is traditional to do so)? Does anyone seriously think that people actually cogitate in syllogisms, or that they use the formal calculi found in Principia Mathematica when they reason?
If logic were the science of what went on in people's heads, logicians would busy themselves with brain scans, surveys, psychometric tests, and the like. They certainly would not bother with all those useless theorems and proofs.
And in reply to an individual who claimed he did indeed think in syllogisms, etc., I had this to say (slightly edited):
I didn't speculate whether or not there were maverick individuals on the planet who might at least claim they thought in syllogisms (a remarkably useless and inefficient way to think, anyway) or the calculi of Principia; however, I retain a healthy scepticism that you actually think using symbols like this: ~[(P → Q) v (P → R) ↔ (P → (Q v R))], or this ~[~(Ex)(Fx & ~Gx)↔(x)(Fx → Gx)], but I seriously doubt whether "people" do this, i.e., the majority of the population. And if they don't, then logic can't express 'laws of thought', otherwise we'd all be at it, and we'd have been doing it for thousands of years before Russell and/or Aristotle were thought of. [Ibid.]
[Where "P", "Q" and "R" are propositional variables, "F" and "G" are predicate letter variables, "(Ex)" is the existential quantifier (equivalent to "Some...", or "There exists..."), "~" is a negation operator (i.e., "It is not the case that..."), "v" is the disjunction sign (equivalent to the inclusive "or", i.e., "and/or"), "&" obviously stands for "and", "→" is the conditional sign (equivalent to "if...then"), and "↔" is the biconditional sign (equivalent to "if and only if" or its abbreviation, "iff").]
The theory that Logic mirrors the deep-structure of reality also motivated another widely held idea that it is some sort of Super-Code, a source of Super-Knowledge, which can be used to reveal the 'hidden secrets' of nature, way beyond the reach of the senses -- and even of the sciences proper. In one form or another, the vast majority of Traditional Thinkers accepted this dogma, for centuries viewing Logic as an expression of the Logos, or 'God's Mind Itself', and hence a reflection of the underlying 'Cosmic Order'.
As noted above, many still find it impossible to abandon the comforting idea that humanity sits at the very centre of the meaning universe, a special creation of a 'Super-Logician', a Super Mathematician2c -- or, in its DM-form, as a special creation of the NON (with 'Being', 'Nothing' and 'Becoming' forming a sort of Logical Trinity in this Cosmic Drama) --, so that their thoughts were somehow possessed of Cosmic Significance. Few asked how it could be that human thought (on its own) might have such profound consequences, or how language might have such implications built into it, other than that it was 'the will of god'. Although that idea has largely disappeared from Philosophy, it has its left indelible mark behind. So, these days few even ask those questions let alone try to answer them.
Hence, even though science has rendered obsolete such ancient fancies, metaphysicians (and DM-fans, for whom DL actually runs the entire Universe) still imagine they can derive Super-Facts from words alone.
[NON = Negation of the Negation; DL = Dialectical Logic.]
Again, as the late Umberto Eco noted (my words and paraphrase, not his!), Traditional Philosophers found such ideas especially appealing. For obvious reasons, this approach to Super-Knowledge invariably assumed linguistic form. Hence, if human beings are of special importance to 'Being'/'God', and if language originally constituted and now governs both nature and society, then language and thought must be interlinked with the fundamental nature of 'Being Itself'.
This view in turn 'legitimated' the authority of the State -- as a reflection of the Cosmic Order, as this commentator notes:
"Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change -- the Logos -- form the essential foundation of the European world view. Every time you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus's speculations on change and the Logos....
"In reading these passages, you should be able to piece together the central components of Heraclitus's thought. What, precisely, is the Logos? Can it be comprehended or defined by human beings? What does it mean to claim that the Logos consists of all the paired opposites in the universe? What is the nature of the Logos as the composite of all paired opposites? How does the Logos explain change? Finally, how would you compare Heraclitus's Logos to its later incarnations: in the Divided Line in Plato, in foundational and early Christianity? How would you relate Heraclitus's cryptic statements to those of Lao Tzu?" [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]
[Of course, the short answer to the above questions is: The ideas of the ruling-class are always the ruling ideas! The long answer is little different.]
[6] Subject And Predicate In Indo-European Grammar
The specially-concocted jargon mentioned above had to fulfil another pre-condition: it must be capable of connecting 'finite minds' to the 'Ultimate Ground Of Meaning' (which is the principle aim of all mystical thought, a dogma that resurfaced as the "Subject/Object" problematic of German Idealism and later still as a central concern of 'Materialist Dialectics' -- on that, see below). As a result, a seemingly endless series of 'truths' could now 'legitimately' flow from the meaning of a handful of words. For each theorist, Super-Knowledge accessed in the comfort of their heads.
Traditional Philosophers were only too eager to latch onto the belief that human thoughts were universally significant -- i.e., that what went on in certain heads was the best, if not the only guide to 'Absolute Truth' --, and which also supplied a key to solving the very 'problems' they themselves had concocted. Keith Thomas notes a similar tactic adopted by 16th century magicians:
"It would be tempting to explain the long survival of magical practices by pointing out that they helped provide many professional wizards with a respectable livelihood. The example of the legal profession is a reminder that it is always possible for a substantial social group to support itself by proffering solutions to problems which they themselves have helped to manufacture. The cunning men and wise women had an undoubted interest in upholding the prestige of magical diagnosis and may by their mere existence have helped to prolong a mode of thinking which was already obsolescent." [Thomas (1972), p.295.]
The bottom line was that they alone -- Traditional Theorists -- had access to the 'hidden knowledge' superhighway, a back-channel that penetrated right into the heart of 'Being', which 'enabled' them to derive necessary truths from jargon they themselves had invented for that specific purpose. This 'allowed them to generate philosophical theories that couldn't fail to be true, which, for that reason needed no evidence in support. Acting as judge and jury in their own case, these 'thinkers' declared these Super-Verities "self-evident", arguing that only "crude materialists" would think to challenge such a 'self-confirming' and self-serving approach to 'knowledge'. In which case, the history of Traditional Thought has amounted to little more than collective indulgence in protracted self-deception.
Unfortunately however, this 'highway to Super-Knowledge' was based on what was in effect a contingent feature of a minor aspect of the grammar of one particular language-group -- the Indo-European family --, in which most of these fairy-tales have been, and still are being, spun.
In Ancient Greece, "subjects" and "predicates" suddenly became cosmically significant.2d Unfortunately, the "abstraction" of a strictly limited set of these predicate expressions -- which are supposed to express generality -- only succeeded in turning them into singular terms incapable of expressing anything, let alone generality. As this Essay unfolds we will discover that linguistic magic like this re-configured these general terms as the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars. The intractable problems these moves then created were compounded by the bizarre Hegelian-, and later DM-idea that it was possible for an individual to be identical with a 'Universal'!
But, whatever their origin or provenance happened to be, these abstract, Ideal Forms (or what they allegedly 'reflected') were supposedly more real than objects and processes in the natural and social world around us. In fact, this meant the material universe was somehow 'unreal', 'inferior', 'ephemeral', a 'mere appearance'. Those invisible, underlying 'essences' (just like the 'gods' of old) were the only really real world.
Access to nature's secret names (all those 'abstractions') 'allowed' Traditional Theorists to forge a mystical, intellectual link between their thought and the underlying, non-material 'essences' that governed all of reality, 'behind the scenes' as it were. Indeed, it was a near-universal belief that this 'secret knowledge' would help those 'in the know' gain a special sort of control over nature itself (which, of course, is one of the core principles of ancient, medieval and contemporary forms of magic and alchemy). Far more importantly, 'secret knowledge' like this helped 'rationalise' state power and hence the status quo. For if the status and power of the elite were guaranteed by -- indeed, were a reflection of -- The Cosmic Order, class division and oppression could be 'justified' as an irrevocable feature of 'Being'. Or, at least as far as Hegel was concerned, an integral component in the development of 'Being'.
In that case, theorists skilled in the art of 'jargon-juggling' and 'word magic' could accrue to themselves no little prestige -- if not power -- as skilled 'legitimators' of the ruling elite.
A metaphysical Rumplestiltskin now walked the earth, and was well paid for its services. If reality had an a priori structure, which the State also mirrored, then Philosophy and ruling-class legitimacy could be, and were, intimately inter-linked.
At least, that is how things seemed at first.3
If religious affectation is the opiate of the oppressed, rationalising suffering in its wake, then deep-seated motivating forces behind the need to concoct metaphysical abstractions underpinned these analogous opiates of the oppressor -- 'justifying' and rationalising the power and wealth of the very class that helped create the need for such opiates in the first place.
[Concerning the consolation that Traditional Thought provides those held in its thrall, see, for example, Stove (1991), pp.83-177. A classic in this genre is perhaps Boethius's, Consolations of Philosophy, accessible here.]
As will be demonstrated in this Essay, and throughout the rest of this site (especially here), the aprioristic tradition in 'Western' Philosophy seduced Marxist dialecticians into thinking they had successfully flipped Hegelian Idealism through 180º, so that it was now the "right way up" -- allegedly transforming it into its materialist alter ego: 'Materialist Dialectics'.
A change of name, perhaps; but a ruse by any other name is still a ruse.
[7] Traditional Philosophy: 'SuperScience' By Another Name
Philosophy was now viewed as a unique and special source of Super-Knowledge -- knowledge that is not just anterior to, it is even more fundamental than, anything the sciences could possibly deliver. It is "Superscientific" because its theories reveal Super-Necessities that underpin 'Being' itself, knowledge of which is only attainable by the application of 'reason'. As Immanuel Kant noted:
"First, concerning the sources of metaphysical cognition, it already lies in the concept of metaphysics that they cannot be empirical. The principles of such cognition (which include not only its fundamental propositions or basic principles, but also its fundamental concepts) must therefore never be taken from experience; for the cognition is supposed to be not physical but metaphysical, i.e., lying beyond experience. Therefore it will be based upon neither outer experience, which constitutes the source of physics proper, nor inner, which provides the foundation of empirical psychology. It is therefore cognition a priori, or from pure understanding and pure reason.... Metaphysical cognition must contain nothing but judgments a priori, as required by the distinguishing feature of its sources." [Kant (1953), pp.15-16. (This links to a PDF.) I have quoted the on-line version which is a different translation to the one I have referenced. Bold emphases added; link added and paragraphs merged.]
"Lying beyond experience", of course, implies philosophical knowledge is superior to anything science has to offer.
However, as we will see, the actual origin of these 'Cosmic Verities' was rather more mundane: 'philosophical reasoning' turns out to be little more than the creative and idiosyncratic use of a limited range of words, specially-concocted as the need arose.
Naturally, this means that Superscientific Knowledge like this can only be 'confirmed' by an appeal to Super-Evidence -- obtained, of course, Super-Naturally (i.e., not from nature) -- either by means of a series of 'thought experiments', or from yet more creative word-juggling. Unsurprisingly, as noted above, the Super-Theories that Traditional Philosophers invented also lay way beyond any possibility of empirical verification or falsification.3a
Perversely, this is still regarded by many as one of Philosophy's greatest strengths -- as these two authors pointed out:
"Empirical, contingent truths have always struck philosophers as being, in some sense, ultimately unintelligible. It is not that none can be known with certainty…; nor is it that some cannot be explained…. Rather is it that all explanation of empirical truths rests ultimately on brute contingency -- that is how the world is! Where science comes to rest in explaining empirical facts varies from epoch to epoch, but it is in the nature of empirical explanation that it will hit the bedrock of contingency somewhere, e.g., in atomic theory in the nineteenth century or in quantum mechanics today. One feature that explains philosophers' fascination with truths of Reason is that they seem, in a deep sense, to be fully intelligible. To understand a necessary proposition is to see why things must be so, it is to gain an insight into the nature of things and to apprehend not only how things are, but also why they cannot be otherwise. It is striking how pervasive visual metaphors are in philosophical discussions of these issues. We see the universal in the particular (by Aristotelian intuitive induction); by the Light of Reason we see the essential relations of Simple Natures; mathematical truths are apprehended by Intellectual Intuition, or by a priori insight. Yet instead of examining the use of these arresting pictures or metaphors to determine their aptness as pictures, we build upon them mythological structures.
"We think of necessary propositions as being true or false, as objective and independent of our minds or will. We conceive of them as being about various entities, about numbers even about extraordinary numbers that the mind seems barely able to grasp…, or about universals, such as colours, shapes, tones; or about logical entities, such as the truth-functions or (in Frege's case) the truth-values. We naturally think of necessary propositions as describing the features of these entities, their essential characteristics. So we take mathematical propositions to describe mathematical objects…. Hence investigation into the domain of necessary propositions is conceived as a process of discovery. Empirical scientists make discoveries about the empirical domain, uncovering contingent truths; metaphysicians, logicians and mathematicians appear to make discoveries of necessary truths about a supra-empirical domain (a 'third realm'). Mathematics seems to be the 'natural history of mathematical objects' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.137], 'the physics of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1976), p.138; however these authors record this erroneously as p.139 -- RL] or the 'mineralogy of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.229]. The mathematician, e.g., Pascal, admires the beauty of a theorem as though it were a kind of crystal. Numbers seem to him to have wonderful properties; it is as if he were confronting a beautiful natural phenomenon [Wittgenstein (1998), p.47; again, these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.41 -- RL]. Logic seems to investigate the laws governing logical objects…. Metaphysics looks as if it is a description of the essential structure of the world. Hence we think that a reality corresponds to our (true) necessary propositions. Our logic is correct because it corresponds to the laws of logic….
"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less 'brutish' than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent 'indefinables'. Yet if 'the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple' [Russell (1937), p.xv (this links to a PDF); again these authors record this erroneously as p.v; although in the edition to which I have linked, it is p.xliii -- RL], then the mere intellectual vision does not penetrate the logical or metaphysical that to the why or wherefore…. For if we construe necessary propositions as truths about logical, mathematical or metaphysical entities which describe their essential properties, then, of course, the final products of our analyses will be as impenetrable to reason as the final products of physical theorising, such as Planck's constant." [Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.273-75. Referencing conventions in the original have been altered to conform with those adopted at this site.]
Indeed, anyone who questioned the validity of this dogmatic approach to 'ultimate truth' should rightly be classified as a "philistine", a "crude" materialist -- even an "empiricist", a "positivist" --, or they are simply dismissed out-of-hand, their ideas unworthy of comment in polite company. This is, of course, just one of the reasons why the ideas of the ruling-class always rule. Anyone who challenged such core beliefs was vilified for even so much as thinking to question this 'royal road' to 'knowledge'. Indeed, even today, anyone who questions the provenance of these Semi-Divine Verities is in danger of putting themselves beyond the pale of 'acceptable' thought. Philosophy -- genuine Philosophy -- must be prolix, baroque and, wherever possible, incomprehensible. This is one ruling-idea that still rules, and proudly so --, especially if you are a French 'Philosopher', your name is Bhaskar or Zizek.
The downside, of course, is that if, for any reason, the unique role that Philosophers have arrogated to themselves can be shown to be a complete fraud --, that is, if it can be shown that the complex, Byzantine structures Philosophers have constructed over the centuries are really "houses of cards" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) -- then the whole enterprise would cease to have a point. With no reason for its existence, Philosophy would become little more than the production of a steady stream of tortured prose, its works fit only for gathering dust in the basement stack of the local library --, or, perhaps better still, fit only for providing fuel for several large bonfires, as Hume wickedly suggested:
"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." [Quoted from here. Italic emphases in the original.]
[Some have complained that book burning is something only fascists do; I am not serious in suggesting this. The aforementioned books are fit for burning not that they should be! They should be confined to the basement stack of a library, as indicated above.]
However, few practitioners of this bogus art can afford to contemplate such an unappealing fate -- especially those whose livelihood depends on it. Closer to home, and for different reasons, the above indictment includes those Dialectical Marxists (i.e., all of them) who still refuse to see any link between the superstitious belief that there is a "rational" order to reality and the centuries-old endeavour to 'legitimate' and rationalise ruling-class power.
[As we will see in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, the above connection was patently obvious in the shape of the state ideology adopted by the ruling-classes of the 'really existing socialist' states in E Europe, the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and elsewhere. The "ruling ideas" promoted by that elite were plain for all to see.]
Hence, it has always been assumed that Philosophy must have a role to play in the pursuit of knowledge, even if only to provide employment for those caught up in the production of jargon-filled books and articles -- the intellectual equivalent of digging holes just to fill them in.
If the question is now put: "Why should there be a rational order to reality?", there seem to be only three possible answers: to (i) impress the superstitious, motivating, 'encouraging' and enforcing deference and subservience; (ii) legitimate the status quo; and (iii) provide a select few with good reason to continue their search for 'Superscientific Knowledge', thereby ingratiating themselves on those who hold the purse strings,
This tendency was aptly described by Francis Bacon as the "idols of the market place":
"There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market-place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies....
"The idols imposed by words on the understanding are of two kinds. They are either names of things which do not exist (for as there are things left unnamed through lack of observation, so likewise are there names which result from fantastic suppositions and to which nothing in reality corresponds), or they are names of things which exist, but yet confused and ill-defined, and hastily and irregularly derived from realities. Of the former kind are Fortune, the Prime Mover, Planetary Orbits, Element of Fire, and like fictions which owe their origin to false and idle theories. And this class of idols is more easily expelled, because to get rid of them it is only necessary that all theories should be steadily rejected and dismissed as obsolete." [Novum Organum, quoted from here.]
Except, of course, these philosophical gems weren't invented by the "vulgar", as Bacon would have it, but by elite thinkers; the "market-place" in this case would be academia.
However, these days, if you are a DM-theorist, you just don't raise such awkward questions. You don't even allow yourself to think them.
For if you do, someone might call you a philosophical radical, and then confuse you with someone who isn't content merely to re-package in dialectical form yet another lorry load of ruling-class gobbledygook.3b
Why, you might even be accused of not "understanding" dialectics!
[8] The Fetishisation Of Language
If thought and language are intimately linked, and if ruling-class ideology dominates and shapes the former, it would seem reasonable to conclude that alienated boss-class thought would be connected somehow with the systematic and ideologically-motivated distortion of language. This is indeed the view that Marx held:
"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381.]
"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 alone added.]
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch...." [Ibid., pp.64-65. Bold emphases added.]
And, as Marx pointed out, distortion and alienation like this doesn't grow or develop in a social and political vacuum.
Ordinary language is a social product devised over countless centuries by those who interface daily with the material world and one another, mediated by cooperative labour; because of its 'lowly' origin, it has had to endure repeated, politically-motivated attempts at distortion, denigration and vilification. For present purposes, however, the most significant of these arose out of, and because of, the nature and origin of class society.
[The details behind the transformation of ordinary discourse (at the hands of Traditional Philosophers) into what effectively became little more than a Secret Code will be fully explored in Essays Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen (summaries here, here, and here).]
However, the point worth emphasising here is that what had originally been the product of the social relation between human beings (i.e., ordinary language) was fetishised and transformed into what were taken to be the real relations between things, or even those things themselves. In this way, discourse was endowed with 'magical' power; those in the grip of this form of linguistic megalomania (outlined in earlier sections) were by these means given a licence to speculate in 'ivory towers', free from the constraints that social life imposes on us all. [Language "went on holiday", to paraphrase Wittgenstein.]
If, according to Traditional Philosophers, the "essential" nature of 'reality' is inaccessible to experience, then they had to appeal to the "light of reason", "intuition", "transcendental arguments", "thought experiments", and, of course, a surfeit of tailor-made jargon, in order to reveal its "secrets". Fetishised in this way, language itself became a surrogate for 'objective reality' -- or, to be more honest, language was confused with 'reality' as talk about talk was systematically conflated with talk about 'things'. Language was thus transformed into an abstract, magical code; linguistic categories (i.e., all those 'abstractions') were back-projected onto the world, implying that 'reality' was now in fact a reflection of discourse rather than the other way round. Traditional Philosophy thus became the well-spring of LIE, a doctrine predicated on the idea that if language somehow contains profound truths concerning 'ultimate reality', nature must be fundamentally linguistic, constituted by the word of some 'god' or other.
[These ideas will be further developed in Part Two, but more extensively in Essay Twelve.]
[9] The Ideas Of The Ruling-Class Always Rule
The above is but a brief sketch of the nature and provenance of the most abstract forms of ruling-class ideology -- thought-forms that can be seen to a greater or lesser extent in all forms of Traditional Philosophy, 'East' and 'West'. These "ruling ideas" rule largely because they not only serve the interests of each ruling elite, they also picture the world as that class has always wanted everyone else to see it. For them, a hidden world underlying appearances, governed solely by 'rational principles', constitutes 'ultimate reality'. If the state 'reflects' this hidden world, or gains its 'legitimacy' from that source, and if the latter is in turn the creation of some 'god', then the rule of the elite will have been 'legitimated' at the highest level. Their dominion, their hegemony, is, after all, just one aspect of the 'rational order of reality', as they saw things -- indeed, as the Apostle Paul himself put it:
"Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes whatever God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgement upon themselves." [Romans, 13:1-2. Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]
The rise and fall of different Modes of Production has had no fundamental effect on these ruling forms-of-thought. For well over two thousand years this over-arching ideology was based on dogmatically imposed concepts and categories, which were themselves built upon abstract and increasingly baroque foundations, all of which amounted to little more than a series of linguistic tricks and dodges, the results then peremptorily imposed on reality. In fact, there was no need to impose them overtly on reality; as we will see, they constituted reality. So, instead of their ideas reflecting the world, the world reflected their ideas. Traditional Theorists dictated to reality what it must be like and what it must contain.
Despite the many changes in content these strands of ruling-class ideology has undergone as the various forms of ruling-class power rose and fell, its form has remained remarkably constant throughout. [Any who think this violates certain principles enshrined in HM should read this and then perhaps think again.]
Indeed, it will take an overthrow of ruling-class hegemony and the elimination of class rule before humanity will finally rid itself of this alien-class thought-form.
Unfortunately, the traditional approach to knowledge has found its most fervent supporters and stoutest defenders among those who should know better: Dialectical Marxists. [An example of this supine approach can be found here (unfortunately, this link is now dead!); others can be accessed here and here.]
Indeed, as we saw in Essay Two, dialecticians are only too happy to concoct a priori theories of their own, imposing them on nature just like born-again traditionalists.
Because of that, ruling-class ideas have extended their "rule", and have now come to dominate Dialectical Marxism in its entirety.
Welcome To The Glorious New Abstractor Factory
Of course, allegations like these require far more support than the flowery rhetoric rehearsed above or they would be worth considerably less than the computer screen on which you, dear reader, now view them. Fortunately, the Essays posted at this site more than take up the slack.
Be this as it may, we first of all need to: (a) Highlight what is perhaps the original and now major source of the abstract ideas found in Traditional Thought and DM, (b) Reveal exactly what motivated their invention, and (c) Expose the disastrous effect this has had on Dialectical Marxism.
All Truth Is Concrete..., Er..., Except Perhaps For That Abstraction
With respect to truth, Lenin famously argued that:
"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract'…." [Lenin (1921), p.93.]
On the other hand, he also maintained the following:
"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely. From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Italic emphases in the original.]
"Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature." [Ibid., p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
At first sight, these passages don't appear to be consistent. In the first of them Lenin tells his readers that "all truth is concrete, never abstract"; in the second and third he argues that humanity approaches truth via increasing abstraction, and that "all scientific...abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely."
Admittedly, in the second pair of passages Lenin referred to "practice" as a key component in the "cognition of objective reality", but that doesn't explain how "all scientific…abstractions" could possibly "reflect nature more…, truly", when "truth is always concrete, never abstract" (emphases added). How can practice reconcile or harmonise a "never" with an "always"? How could an abstraction like "All truth is concrete, never abstract" (emphasis added, again) itself be true?
Of course, the epistemological theory under-pinning Lenin's thought is a little more sophisticated than these initial 'inconsistencies' might otherwise intimate. This suggests that the resolution of this 'difficulty' might require greater clarity concerning the meaning of words like "abstract” and "concrete" -- particularly as they are used by dialecticians --, at the very least. Indeed, it would be unfair to attribute to Lenin a fully-developed theory here since the above comments appeared in notebooks.
There appear to be at least two different senses of the terms "abstract" and "concrete" at work in DM.4
'Abstract', Sense1 -- AB1
This understanding of "abstract" is somewhat analogous to the traditional, Rationalist use of the phrase "abstract universal" (more on that presently) -- but, with several major differences.5 Even so, in DM circles this term is clearly linked to the apprehension (by 'Reason' perhaps?) of general concepts that give expression to, or which capture and "reflect" common elements connecting, underlying, or instantiated by concrete individuals, bodies or processes. But, these general concepts aren't accidentally or 'externally'-connected with these concrete particulars. That is, there is held to be some sort of logical or 'internal' connection linking individuals with the 'concept' they supposedly instantiate, or, even the connections they enjoy with one another. [On this, and the material posted under next three sub-headings, see also Appendix B.]
'Abstract', Sense2 -- AB2
This use of "abstract" emphasises the "one-sided" and "simple" nature of abstractions, how they are "removed from reality", "cut off", "separated or divorced from their interconnections", "unchanging", etc. In this case perhaps, a subtractive process (involving the mental disregard (abstraction) of particular features of each item given in experience), or maybe even a separating exercise (carried out 'in the mind') also seems to underlie the creation of abstract (general) concepts for some DM-theorists, given this understanding of the term.
'Concrete', Sense1 -- CON1
This sense of "concrete" is clearly linked with AB1 above and appears to involve objects and processes in their individuality (that is, they are viewed as individuals of a certain type), often as they are given in experience, depending on which part of the 'dialectical process of cognition' they make an appearance.
'Concrete', Sense2-- CON2
Again, this contrasts with its twin, AB2, and emphasises the interconnectedness of objects and processes in reality (reflected in our theories about them -- these two are often run-together in DM-circle, as we will see) --, their all-round relationship with, and development alongside, other objects and processes, as opposed to their separation in non-, or pre-, dialectical, 'commonsense', 'metaphysical', or 'formal' thought.6
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
In the first of the two passages quoted above, Lenin seems to be using "abstract" in sense AB2, but in sense AB1 in the second. This means he must be using "concrete" in sense CON2 in the first. These distinctions might help resolve the apparent inconsistency noted above. Anyway, a clearer picture of these terms as they appear in DM will, hopefully, emerge as this Essay proceeds.
[Spoiler: no such luck!]
Unfortunately, Lenin only succeeded in further confusing things when he added:
"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. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
In this passage, Lenin appears to be using both of these terms in three of the four (or possibly even all four) ways at once.
Similarly, John Rees argued that:
"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts from 'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very concept of 'fact' is itself an abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard a 'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions. Similarly, all science 'deductively anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by experimentation? The dialectic is, among other things, a way of investigating and understanding the relationship between abstractions and reality. And the 'danger of arbitrary construction' is far greater using an empirical method which thinks that it is dealing with facts when it is actually dealing with abstractions than it is with a method that properly distinguishes between the two and then seeks to explain the relationship between them." [Rees (1998), p.131. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[One might well wonder how it is possible to distinguish "abstractions" from "facts" if we are also told "facts" are "abstractions", let alone how a "mental generalisation" can help distinguish "actually existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions".]
At the beginning of this passage, Rees appears to be using "abstract" in sense AB1, while in the second half he seems to be employing it in sense AB2. In addition, even though he says that "facts" are "abstraction", it looks like he is using "fact" in sense CON2 -- when, for example, he claims that that facts help us discriminate among our beliefs. They could hardly do that if they were disconnected from other facts.
But, who can say? None of these ideas have been worked out with satisfactory clarity, detail or consistency by DM-theorists, as the first two Parts of Essay Three will show.
[The above passage from Rees (1998) will be analysed in more detail in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is unpublished).]
Nevertheless, the loose and ill-defined way these terms are employed in DM-circles mirrors Hegel's own obscure and inconsistent use.7
For example, if abstractions are divorced from reality, cut-off and separated from other things, how might they be employed to interconnect concrete objects and processes in nature, as Lenin argued? And, if "concrete" objects and processes are interconnected with everything, what makes them anything in particular? What individuates, say, a photon? If all photons are identical (and on some accounts, they are unchanging, too), and interconnected (in the abstract?), then what right have we to label them individuals or even particulars?8 Depicted this way, photons (but not just photons) look pretty abstract. Moreover, they appear to refute Engels's, Trotsky's and Hegel's a priori caveats about identity, as well as their ideas about change -- if, that is, each photons is on an individual basis deemed "concrete".
Moreover, according to Lenin, objects and processes only become "concrete" when they are interconnected with everything else in existence (and then perhaps even beyond):
"The gist of his theoretical mistake in this case is substitution of eclecticism for the dialectical interplay of politics and economics (which we find in Marxism). His theoretical attitude is: 'on the one hand, and on the other', 'the one and the other'. That is eclecticism. Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development but not a patchwork of bits and pieces. I have shown this to be so on the example of politics and economics....
"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties, qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world.... Formal logic, which is as far as schools go (and should go, with suitable abridgements for the lower forms), deals with formal definitions, draws on what is most common, or glaring, and stops there. When two or more different definitions are taken and combined at random (a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel), the result is an eclectic definition which is indicative of different facets of the object, and nothing more.
"Dialectical logic demands that we should go further. Firstly, if we are to have a 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, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly, dialectical 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. Thirdly, a full 'definition' of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel...." [Lenin (1921), pp.90-93. Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with conventions adopted at this site. Some paragraphs merged.]
However, if supposedly 'concrete' objects and processes are to count as "objective", or even concrete, they must already be interconnected in reality before any sentient being even attempted to so relate them. Or are we to suppose that the status of each 'concrete' object has to wait on some human being to designate them such before they are actually concrete? Does this mean that the Sun, for example, wasn't 'concrete' until a human being capable of cognising it in a dialectical sort of way decided it was 'concrete'? Perhaps there are 'subjective concrete object and processes' just as there are 'objective concrete objects and processes'? If so, one might well wonder what work the word "concrete" is actually doing. More to the point, what is there in reality that could possibly do all this relating and interconnecting, especially before sentient life evolved?8a
Are there non-physical links of the same kind between objects that somehow unerringly manage to locate, interconnect, and then collect together every single member of a given group, category, set, or class in the entire universe, like some sort of super-efficient bloodhound? A sort of universal 'metaphysical net' that never misses, skips or omits a single one? And when an object of one category changes into another, are the inter-galactic links which that object enjoys with other objects of that kind that are altered, or maybe severed, perhaps instantaneously, which allow it to be inter-linked with all the other objects of the new kind it has now developed into, everywhere across the universe, instantaneously, too? Or, is there some sort of delay as nature 'tries to catch up'?
If none of these is the case, then by what right have we to classify such objects and processes as 'concrete' if there is no 'objective' matters-of-fact here that collect them into the correct group, category or class, in the first place? If they objectively belong to such groups, categories or classes, they must have done so before a single human being thought about them -- as indeed, Lenin opined:
"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth." [Lenin (1972), p.148.]
So, the question returns: Exactly what was it that collected such objects and processes in the right sortal classes or groups before we evolved? No good looking to DM-fans for an answer; they haven't even asked that question, nor anything even remotely like it!
Apparently, posing such questions makes you 'pedantic'.
[I return to this topic in Part Two. I deal with Lenin's comments about Alizarin dye in Essay Thirteen Part One. Independently of that, although Lenin argues that the existence of this dye is "objective" he nowhere asks the above questions about it -- or even, given his own strictures, how can this dye be deemed "objective" before all its interconnections with the rest of the universe had been established? His faithful echoes also fail to consider such annoying 'pedantries', too.]
Of course, human beings might not at present know what all these interconnections are, or even be aware of most of them; but, as we have just seen, according to Lenin humanity will never know what they are. In that case, it seems that the objects they inter-link will never become either concrete or objective for us. If that is so, how can anyone conclude anything about a single one of them in the here-and-now? Whatever is said about these alleged interconnections -- as well as these supposed 'concrete' particulars -- will be infinitely far from the truth and must therefore stand almost zero probability of being correct.8b
It could be objected that these complaints are, at best, academic, at worst, thoroughly misguided. The four senses of "abstract" and "concrete" outlined above (if there are indeed four) shouldn't be thought of as separate or distinct, as seems to be the assumption motivating this Essay. They must be understood "dialectically".
Or, so it might be maintained.
But, as with other key DM-concepts, it is difficult to make sense of what its theorists could possibly be saying here (that is, should they offer the above reply), nor is it easy to form a clear idea of what they might conceivably mean when they use words like "concrete", "abstract" and "dialectical". This isn't to suggest that DM-theorists have put little effort into writing about these terms -- far from it --, but much of what has been published by them on this issue is about as clear as the Athanasian Creed.9 Hence, the employment here of yet another example of quasi-Hegelian jargon (i.e., "dialectical") in no way helps. Indeed, the way it is used by DM-supporters more than suggests this word works like a magic wand; wave it about enough times and any old ideas, no matter how unclear or confused they might happen to be, can be miraculously transformed into ideas blessed with crystal clarity.
[I have quoted numerous DM-theorists heroically trying to explain their ideas on this subject in Appendix B, as well as here and here, and in Part Two (here and here).]
Anyway, one thing seems reasonably plain: the generalisations dialecticians advance (in connection with the use of these terms) aren't based on any sort of evidence. After all, to what might a single DM-fan point or appeal? Hence, what is there here for a consistent materialist to agree with? To be sure, for an Idealist, like Hegel, all this makes some sort of crazy sense, but how might we make any sort of physical sense of it?
Since these notions (i.e., "abstract" and "concrete") can't be read from nature (although Hegelians and some DM-theorists might claim otherwise), the only conclusion is that they must have been foisted on it. In fact, not only were these two categories invented by non-Marxists -- and non-working class theorists, at that -- but dialecticians have been only too eager to appropriate them, selectively imposing them on reality in like manner.
[It is clearly impossible to derive either of these two notions from nature, or from any amount of evidence -- as will be argued in Part Two of this Essay (link above).]
Of course, dialecticians notionally follow Hegel, here -- but they then proceed to ignore the material flip that they say they have performed on his system (in order to put it back on its feet, or the "right way up"). This can be seen by the way that they not only view abstractions in the same rationalist light as Hegel, they employ many of the same 'arguments' he and other Idealists use.
Or to be a little more honest, they have uncritically swallowed Hegel's sub-Aristotelian logical blunders.
[More on that, below.]
"Concrete" And "Abstract" Imposed On Nature
In the past, and even before the evidence that we now possess even existed, Traditional Philosophers made a conscious decision to invent and then use abstract concepts in order to force 'knowledge' in certain favoured directions.9a We now know who made those choices, and they manifestly weren't individuals known for their lack of support for ruling-class priorities; indeed, they were made by Idealists, ideologues, theologians and Hermetic Mystics.
Here, for example, is Hegel (a 'theorist' not known for his socialist sympathies):
"To say 'This rose is red' involves (in virtue of the copula 'is') the coincidence of subject and predicate. The rose however is a concrete thing, and so is not red only: it has also an odour, a specific form, and many other features not implied in the predicate red. The predicate on its part is an abstract universal, and does not apply to the rose alone. There are other flowers and other objects which are red too. The subject and predicate in the immediate judgment touch, as it were, only in a single point, but do not cover each other.... In pronouncing an action to be good, we frame a notional judgment. Here, as we at once perceive, there is a closer and a more intimate relation than in the immediate judgment. The predicate in the latter is some abstract quality which may or may not be applied to the subject. In the judgment of the notion the predicate is, as it were, the soul of the subject, by which the subject, as the body of this soul, is characterised through and through." [Hegel (1975), p.237, §172. Bold emphases added.]
Naturally, this only serves to underline the claim made above (and in Essay Two) that subsequent dialecticians haven't broken with this conservative philosophical tradition. In fact, they have been only too happy to appropriate, defend and disseminate this dogmatic approach to knowledge, as well as trumpet its ruling-class origin. Here is Lenin doing just that:
"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]
[TAR = The Algebra Of Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]
Worse still, both of these terms (i.e., "abstract" and "concrete") appear to be abstract themselves. Neither would pass, for example, TAR's 'gastronomic test': "no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard" either of these 'concepts'. [Rees (1998), p.131.] To be sure, when vocalised or committed to paper these two words are material objects in their own right, but that fact alone can't ground 'the content' of either of them in the material world, nor can it legitimate their use. If it could, we should all have to start believing in "God" just as soon as that word had been spoken aloud or written down somewhere.
Far worse than that: according to Lenin it now seems that no one could even "eat (etc.)" a single concrete object:
"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. Italic emphases in the original; paragraphs merged.]
If not even an everyday tumbler is concrete unless it has been set against, and then interlinked with, an "infinite number of mediacies", who is there alive that could swear truthfully that a tumbler is in fact concrete? Assuming these connections are "infinite", then no matter how many interconnections we set up for it, there will always be an infinite number still left to connect, leaving any judgement we make about it stranded infinitely far from the truth with an infinitely high probability of being false.
[The response that only 'relevant' connections should be considered in this regard has been batted out of the park in Essay Ten Part One, here.]
Clearly, whatever applies to tumblers applies equally well to things we think we can eat; perhaps they aren't concrete, either? In that case, TAR's 'gastronomic, touchy-feely test' fails to pick out even concrete objects! If so, how it can be used to test whether something is 'abstract' or 'concrete', or distinguish the one from the other, is far from clear, to say the least.
Of course, it could be argued that whether we know it or not, concrete objects are still concrete for all that. But are they? Who says? And where is the infinite body of knowledge which would be needed to substantiate a 'cosmically' bold (abstract) claim such as that? Moreover, if Lenin is right that "all truth is concrete, never abstract", then the abstract claim that "whether we know it or not, concrete objects are still concrete" can't itself be true.
Such are the 'consolations' of 'dialectics'.
For example: Is, say, the apple you might pluck from a tree or buy in a shop now actually interconnected with everything in reality? Lest an impatient dialectician is tempted to snap back a hasty "Yes, of course it is!" in response to such an impertinent question, it is worth pointing out that that fact (if it is one) could never itself be confirmed, but must either be imposed on the said apple or accepted as an article of faith. In that case, whatever it is that dialecticians now claim they know about allegedly concrete objects (like that apple) must, it seems, be foisted on them, too, since no one at present would or could ever be justified in calling anything "concrete" unless they had pointed to the infinite number of "mediacies" Lenin insisted were required to that end, or had actually gathered that amount of evidence in support of such a hyper-bold contention:
"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…." [Ibid., bold added.]
Do we have this much information about apples?
Could we cope with it even if we had?
Again, if Lenin were right that "all truth is concrete, never abstract", then the abstract claim that the aforementioned apple is "actually interconnected with everything in reality" can't itself be true -- whenever it is asserted this side of the completion of the above infinitary task.
[This topic is discussed in greater detail in Essays Two, Ten Part One, Eleven Parts One and Two, and Thirteen Part One.]
As has already been pointed out, both of these words (i.e., "abstract" and "concrete") are time-honoured, philosophical terms-of-art, invented by thinkers intent on 'justifying' and rationalising the status quo, or the world-view upon which their patrons' hegemony was predicated. However, it is plain that even though these two words have since become highly clichéd by their over-use, DM-theorists uncritically appropriated them simply because they found them in Hegel's work (or the work of some other Traditional Theorist), and, apparently, for no other reason. In like manner, Hegel employed them simply because of their status as entries in the Idealist Philosophers' Phrase Book.
Even worse still, and as far as can be ascertained, no attempt has ever been made by DM-theorists to show precisely how a single abstract 'concept' can be derived from, or even be seen in, concrete particulars -- or from anywhere else, for that matter -- other than, of course, by importing that idea from Hegel and Traditional Thought. Nor is this surprising; no one has been able to demonstrate how this miraculous trick is humanly possible. To be sure, theorists have dreamt-up countless abstract terms over the centuries, and muttered various incantations over them as they were recruited into Traditional Philosophical discourse, but materialists should be no more impressed with verbal gymnastics like this than they are with those that supposedly support belief in God.
[This topic will be discussed in more detail in Part Two of this Essay, where it will be shown that the above controversial claims aren't just empty rhetoric.]
And yet, for all that, it is possible to show that these mythical beasts of lore, these 'abstractions', actually emerged out of rather more mundane, historically-specific, social and political causes, not the result of an 'inner, mental process of abstraction' --, causes that were in fact motivated by the ideological priorities of our ancient class enemies.10
Anyway, and despite this, what we actually find in DM-circles in place of evidence and supporting argument are vague attempts at justification; these wafer thin DM-rationalisations will be examined extensively in what follows, and in subsequent Essays.
This means that the entire edifice of DM-epistemology has been built on alarmingly insubstantial foundations -- in fact, as we are about to find out, these 'foundations' are all sand and no concrete.11
From Concrete To Abstract -- And Back Again
In the previous section, it was alleged that the origin and provenance of 'abstract concepts' renders them more than highly suspect. This sub-section and the rest of this Essay will examine those seemingly rash allegations a little more closely.
Consider once again Lenin's attempt to specify what our knowledge of a particular object consists in:
"[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, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity…." [Lenin (1921), p.93.]
Hence, according to Lenin, a fuller and more complete understanding of any particular must involve a consideration of its wider, perhaps law-governed connections with other particulars, other processes. Unfortunately, this is a strategy we will soon find there is good reason to question.
The first serious problem this passage faces is that these ever-widening 'law-governed' connections must themselves involve the use of general terms (or "abstractions" -- in sense AB1) right from the start. In that case, it seems that the dialectical process of cognition can't even begin.
It could be replied that the above objection is spurious, since, according to TAR knowledge actually starts with:
"…an abstraction from the inessential and accidental features of reality to grasp more clearly its key features…. Constant empirical work is therefore essential to renew both the concrete analyses and the dialectical concepts that are generalized from these analyses." [Rees (1998), p.110.]
This suggests that law-governed generalisations are themselves integral to dialectics. That is because human knowledge has:
"[Brought] to it a framework composed of our past experiences; 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…. Concepts and theories are necessary to interpret the world." [Ibid., p.63.]
As dialecticians themselves tend to argue: a reference to (and use of) general terms ('concepts'?) in the pursuit of knowledge is also required since neither science nor dialectics can rely solely on "surface appearances" or "immediate experience". The idea seems to be that while the latter might relate to, or temporarily shape, our initial view of things, philosophical and scientific knowledge both seek to locate and integrate nature's underlying law-governed "essences" by the use of further and more refined abstractions (or generalisations), subsequently tested in practice.
These ideas can be found in Marx's expressed opinions, too:
"[S]cience would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." [Marx (1981), p.956.]
"It would seem right to start with the real and concrete, with the actual presupposition, e.g. in political economy to start with the population, which forms the basis and the subject of the whole social act of production. Closer consideration shows, however, that this is wrong. Population is an abstraction if, for instance, one disregards the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn remain an empty phrase if one does not know the elements on which they are based, e.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price, etc. If one were to start with population, it would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and through closer definition one would arrive analytically at increasingly simple concepts; from the imagined concrete, one would move to more and more tenuous abstractions until one arrived at the simplest determinations. From there it would be necessary to make a return journey until one finally arrived once more at population, which this time would be not a chaotic conception of a whole, but a rich totality of many determinations and relations.
"The first course is the one taken by political economy historically at its inception. The 17th-century economists, for example, always started with the living whole, the population, the nation, the State, several States, etc., but analysis always led them in the end to the discovery of a few determining abstract, general relations, such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these individual moments were more or less clearly deduced and abstracted, economic systems were evolved which from the simple [concepts], such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, advanced to the State, international exchange and world market.
"The latter is obviously the correct scientific method. The concrete is concrete because it is a synthesis of many determinations, thus a unity of the diverse. In thinking, it therefore appears as a process of summing-up, as a result, not as the starting point, although it is the real starting point, and thus also the starting point of perception and conception. The first procedure attenuates the comprehensive visualisation to abstract determinations, the second leads from abstract determinations by way of thinking to the reproduction of the concrete.
"Hegel accordingly arrived at the illusion that the real was the result of thinking synthesising itself within itself, delving ever deeper into itself and moving by its inner motivation; actually, the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is simply the way in which thinking assimilates the concrete and reproduces it as a mental concrete. This is, however, by no means the process by which the concrete itself originates. For example, the simplest economic category, e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, population which produces under definite conditions, as well as a distinct type of family, or community, or State, etc. Exchange value cannot exist except as an abstract, one-sided relation of an already existing concrete living whole.
"But as a category exchange value leads an antediluvian existence. Hence to the kind of consciousness -- and philosophical consciousness is precisely of this kind -- which regards the comprehending mind as the real man, and only the comprehended world as such as the real world -- to this consciousness, therefore, the movement of categories appears as the real act of production -- which unfortunately receives an impulse from outside -- whose result is the world; and this (which is however again a tautology) is true in so far as the concrete totality regarded as a conceptual totality, as a mental concretum, is IN FACT a product of thinking, of comprehension; yet it is by no means a product of the self-evolving concept whose thinking proceeds outside and above perception and conception, but of the assimilation and transformation of perceptions and images into concepts. The totality as a conceptual totality seen by the mind is a product of the thinking mind, which assimilates the world in the only way open to it, a way which differs from the artistic-, religious- and practical-intellectual assimilation of this world. The real subject remains outside the mind and independent of it -- that is to say, so long as the mind adopts a purely speculative, purely theoretical attitude. Hence the subject, society, must always be envisaged as the premiss of conception even when the theoretical method is employed.
"But have not these simple categories also an independent historical or natural existence preceding that of the more concrete ones? Ça dépend. [That depends -- RL.] Hegel, for example, correctly takes possession, the simplest legal relation of the subject, as the point of departure of the philosophy of law. No possession exists, however, before the family or the relations of lord and servant are evolved, and these are much more concrete relations. It would, on the other hand, be correct to say that families and entire tribes exist which have as yet only possession and not property. The simpler category appears thus as a relation of simpler family or tribal associations with regard to property. In a society which has reached a higher stage the category appears as the simpler relation of a developed organisation. The more concrete substratum underlying the relation of possession is, however, always presupposed. One can conceive an individual savage who has possessions; possession in this case, however, is not a legal relation. It is incorrect that historically possession develops into the family. On the contrary, possession always presupposes this 'more concrete legal category'. Still, one may say that the simple categories express relations in which the less developed concrete may have realised itself without as yet having posited the more complex connection or relation which is conceptually expressed in the more concrete category; whereas the more developed concrete retains the same category as a subordinate relation.
"Money can exist and has existed in history before capital, banks, wage labour, etc., came into being. In this respect it can be said, therefore, that the simpler category can express relations predominating in a less developed whole or subordinate relations in a more developed whole, relations which already existed historically before the whole had developed the aspect expressed in a more concrete category. To that extent, the course of abstract thinking which advances from the elementary to the combined corresponds to the actual historical process." [Marx (1986), pp.37-39. (This links to a PDF.) Bold emphases alone added. capitals in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. This passage will be examine in more detail in Part Two.]12
"Beginnings are always difficult in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour -- or value-form of the commodity -- is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy." [Marx (1996), pp.7-8. Bold emphasis added. I have modified the first sentence to agree with the Penguin edition since it reads much better.]
This appears to mean that while scientists, and/or dialecticians, might have to begin with what look like concrete particulars given in experience (albeit understood indeterminately, at first), in order to gain genuine knowledge, or even 'relative truth', they must apply certain, perhaps specific abstract concepts to the phenomena (maybe deploying those that have been inherited from the work of previous generations -- or those that have been 'critically re-formulated' from whatever resources that are available) in order to interconnect, and hence account for, phenomena with increasing accuracy in a more all-rounded, determinate and "concrete" manner.
Or perhaps even better: scientists and dialecticians should begin with abstract concepts (or "frameworks)" and apply them to the phenomena in order to interconnect, and hence account for, objects and processes with increasing accuracy in a more all-rounded, determinate manner -- albeit, tested in practice. As Marx put it, the correct method would lead: "from abstract determinations by way of thinking to the reproduction of the concrete." [Marx (1986), p.38.]
Moreover, except perhaps at the very beginning of human 'consciousness', this process never actually starts from scratch (as it were); we use the gains of previous generations to assist in the advancement of knowledge. But, even this isn't sufficient; abstractions have continually to be referred back to the material world so that they can be tested against additional experience in order to be refined in practice (etc.). Even though human beings inherit generalisations, concepts and categories (abstractions) from the past, all of them are revisable in the light of novel experience, knowledge and practical activity. This process of revision constantly shapes and contours the never-ending search for understanding, achieving a different expression in each Mode of Production, but reaching its pinnacle, one presumes, in a fully socialist society.
This appears to be the import of Lenin's words (quoted earlier):
"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely. From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Italic emphases in the original.]
"Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature." [Ibid., p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Indeed, the above passage looks like an embellishment of Marx's own thoughts quoted a few paragraphs further back.
Again, these extra comments look as if they might help resolve the apparent inconsistency noted earlier on. Hence, it is now a little clearer what the dialectical search for knowledge (via the interplay between abstraction and practice) consists in -- it seem it must include one or more of the following considerations:
(1) The search for knowledge must begin at some point with a practical (or in some cases a theoretical) interface with the world, interpreted by means of general concepts (abstractions) inherited from previous generations, or fashioned as the need arises.
(2) From there onwards further abstract general ideas must be extracted from experience, or refined, borrowed, applied, deduced, critically constructed or modified by thought (depending on which 'dialectical' theory of abstraction one adheres to!). Used correctly, abstractions help reflect, represent and explain, with increasing accuracy, the essential features that underlie the surface appearances of nature and society --, but only if they are continually tested in practice. In order to do this, general and perhaps poorly understood abstractions must be broken down into their simpler parts, which, when they have been understood aright, must be re-combined, or re-assembled, so that the original abstraction is no longer a chaotic whole, but "a rich totality of many determinations and relations."
(3) To that end, newer abstractions must be introduced to re-interpret or theoretical process any novel processes, structures, particulars or relations (maybe as each new mode of production arises, or as the class war throws them up), which as a result will mean that the latter will be more fully understood because they will now be far richer in content since they are much more widely interconnected, and hence more concrete.
(4) Every stage must be checked against reality, as part of revolutionary and/or scientific practice; all traces of ruling-class ideology must be exposed and removed.
(5) Whatever emerges as a result must always be regarded as tentative and subject to further revision.
(6) As a result, absolute truth is only ever a theoretical goal, never an actual terminus.
Viewed in this way -- it we ignore much that has gone before in this Essay -- what Lenin said appears to be correct (in its own terms): all truth is concrete, not abstract. That is because all knowledge-claims must constantly interface with concrete reality, more and more widely understood, against an increasingly well comprehended, law-governed background.
However, further truths (or, rather, newer, more refined concepts that are closer to the truth, or even less 'relatively true', which in turn will allow further concrete truths to be discovered, developed or enriched) can only be shaped, discovered or grasped by means of wider abstractions that refine and correct previous sets of concrete concepts (by removing/resolving any contradictions, etc., that they might still contain or imply). This seemingly endless process helps reveal deeper and broader interconnections, making such truths ever more concrete, which yields a more all-round picture of objective reality (but, once again, only if the results are continually tested in practice).
In this light, it now looks as if Lenin was right (in terms of his view of 'the materialist dialectic') to emphasise both the abstract and concrete nature of scientific truth. The "dialectical interplay" between the abstract and the concrete -- here only superficially outlined (much has been omitted; more details are given in Appendix B) -- constitutes the central core of the DM-theory of knowledge, as Lenin and others see things.
Materialist dialectics stands -- or falls -- with it.
The above comments seem, therefore, to resolve an apparent incongruity noted earlier.
The problem is that, despite the fanfare, the DM-juggernaut can't actually get rolling, since it soon turns out it has no engine, diesel or battery!
DM-Epistemology: Set In Concrete?
DM Fails To Make It Out Of The Starting Blocks
The reason why the dialectical juggernaut can't even begin to roll is connected with answers that might be given to the following rather surprising questions:
(a) What if it should turn out that instead of beginning with abstract general terms in order to help refine experience along the lines outlined earlier, dialecticians without exception actually start with a set of abstract particulars -- or they begin with terms that turn out to be the Proper Names of these abstract particulars?
(b) What if dialecticians then attempt to advance from there by the use of yet more abstract particulars and they only ever end up with abstract particulars?
(c) What if general terms actually appear nowhere in the entire process?
(d) What if no concrete particular or process is ever actually the resultant?
As should seem obvious, an unhelpful answer to these four questions would only increase the suspicion that DM can't account for knowledge since generality will have been abstracted away, even destroyed, as a result; and if that is so, not only would DM-epistemology have run off the road and into a ditch, scientific knowledge would be in there with it.
A Name By Any Other Name Is Still A Name
[In this sub-section I first summarise the argument that attempts to show how the aforementioned "destruction of generality" came about; much of the rest of this Essay will fill in the details.]
Readers sympathetic to DM might be forgiven for thinking that the above allegations are completely misguided; dialecticians certainly do not do this. They don't remain stuck in an abstract, 'particularist' rut, as the earlier comments insinuate.12a
Nevertheless, as will soon become apparent, the process of abstraction, far from assisting in the discovery of knowledge concerning the 'essential' features of reality that underpin 'appearances', actually prevents that search from even starting. It does this by transforming general words/concepts into singular terms -- that is, it turns them into the Proper Names of 'abstract' ideas, categories or concepts.12b
If that is indeed so, the claim that DM begins with the general in order to interpret the particular is the opposite of the truth.
In fact, what really happens is that DM-theorists begin with the Proper Names of abstract particulars (which terms they inherited from previous generations of Traditional Theorists, like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, to name just a few); they then make a ham-fisted attempt to link these with the Proper Names of genuinely material particulars (such as that tumbler that exercised Lenin), all the while failing to notice that generality went out the non-dialectical window a couple of thousand years ago.
It is this ancient muddle that stalls the DM-juggernaut on the starting grid.
That initial false step finds DM-theorists -- following on Hegel's example -- re-interpreting sentences containing subject and predicate (general) terms as disguised identity statements.
Because of this, DM-apologists begin by eliminating the general terms they claimed were necessary in order to refine or interpret particulars given in experience -- which moves we were told were essential if anyone wants to loop the very first dialectical loop --, replacing them with the Proper Names of 'abstract objects'. Naturally, this just leaves them with a handful of lifeless singular terms.
Again, they do this by re-writing predicative sentences as propositions that express identity; it is this move that transforms the general terms they contain into the aforementioned Proper Names (or other singular terms).13 Hence, as we will soon see, "man", for instance, is turned into the Proper Name, "Man"; "is the same as" is transformed into the Proper Name, "Identity"; "is not the same as" now becomes the Proper Name, "Difference"; everyone in a given society becomes the singular term, "The Population", and so on.
The result of false steps like this doubles back, completely undermining DM-epistemology, so that instead of beginning with the general to account for the particular, DM-theorists use the Proper Names of abstract particulars (i.e., the Proper Names of abstract classes, groups, universals, categories, 'essences' or 'concepts') to account for what are supposed to be concrete particulars -- an impossible task even in its own terms.
Naturally, this explains the need for all the increasingly baroque and labyrinthine attempts to explain the "process of cognition" we find in books and articles on dialectics; they can't fail to be convoluted because of the intractable pseudo-problem with which dialecticians began. [Why it is a pseudo-problem will soon become apparent.]14
DM-theorists weren't, of course, the first to have erred in this respect; indeed, this fault runs right through Traditional Epistemology, from Ancient Greece right down to today. Its ubiquity is easily explained since it seems that these false moves and what caused them were impossibly difficult to spot.
Well..., not really: they were in fact staring us in the face -- and have been for over two thousand years!
But, for all the attention Traditional Theorists (and now dialecticians) have paid to it one would be forgiven for thinking these moves were well-hidden. In fact, DM-adepts continue to ignore them -- even after they have been brought to their attention!
As will be demonstrated presently, several familiar and everyday features of language must be wilfully ignored, distorted or reconfigured to make this traditional con-trick work. What had been in full-view all along -- the everyday use of general terms in ordinary language, invented by those who don't tend to make such crass mistakes (i.e., working people) -- highly educated individuals manage to overlook, confuse or deliberately misconstrue. And they have been doing this for over two thousand years. Indeed, the 'higher' the dialectician, the more likely they are to follow Traditional Theorists down this linguistic cul-de-sac -- and the more inured to their errors these hapless victims appear to be.
[Concerning the different 'levels' in the dialectical pecking order, see here.]
As noted above (and as will be demonstrated in Essay Twelve (summary here and here)) these moves were invented by Ancient Greek theorists. In that case, dialecticians have found themselves in bad company; and, as they should know, bad associations spoil useful epistemological habits.
It is ironic, therefore, that in order to account for concrete particulars (by the use of general terms), this inept dialectical segue has meant that general terms feature nowhere at all in their theory!
Hence, in the search for scientific knowledge, all that dialecticians have available to them are two different types of particulars (or the Proper Names thereof): 'the abstract' and 'the concrete'. Of course, the latter of the two, 'the concrete', is now left without the general background that had all along been touted for it; that is because the newly fashioned context has been transformed into a series of particulars, too.15
Hence, the DM-juggernaut not only lacks a starter motor (i.e., it is devoid of general terms), its fuel tank is empty and its way has also been blocked by a huge slab of concrete.
The rest of this Essay is aimed at explaining, and then substantiating, these seemingly wild allegations.
Are Indicative Sentences Just Disguised Lists?
In order to justify the above controversial claims, it is important to see how and why such a re-write of predicative sentences goes badly wrong, and why it can't work even after running repairs have been attempted.
As we will soon find out, the answer to these and other questions is connected with:
(i) The reason why not all words are names, and,
(ii) Why an indicative sentence can't be a list of words.
Although DM-epistemology supposedly begins with the general in order to qualify and refine each particular, the way that dialecticians frame their theory in fact denies it the capacity to do either.
Before my entirely novel criticism of DM can begin we must once again make a slight detour, and it is one that will introduce a method of analysis that will look rather odd to those unfamiliar with Analytic Philosophy and Modern Logic. However, its superiority over traditional methods of analysis will emerge soon enough; the reader's indulgence is therefore requested, once more.
[Those not particularly interested in the minutiae of my argument might prefer to skip the next sub-section and begin again here. However, several points that will be made later on (as well as those in other Essays published at this site) might not be fully appreciated by those who take advantage of this shortcut.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
First, a brief word of explanation is required for the rather odd-looking expressions used in these Essays -- such as "ξ is a socialist", or "ξ is a supporter of the Labour Party". Sentence schemas like these help illustrate certain features of (fact-stating) language relevant to the aims of this site. In fact, these aspects of language are familiar to all language users, as will soon become apparent. That is because they shed light on our ability to form true (as well as false) indicative sentences, and then draw inferences from them. We do this when we employ singular terms (e.g., Proper Names or Definite Descriptions) to replace gap markers like, "ξ" and "ζ" (used in sentence schemas, such as, "ξ loves ζ").
[Several examples of the use of these letters will be given presently, alongside an explanation of that use.]
A gap marker like ξ is essential here, for by suitably defining it in use, or more rigorously in a formal system, legitimate substitution instances (this term will also be explained) can be clearly specified. Why it is important to be precise here will also emerge as this Essay unfolds. An actual gap -- such as this, " loves ", or even a series of dots, as in "...loves...", won't do, since, of course, gaps can't be defined. So: " is a socialist" and "...is a socialist" are no good. A gap wouldn't be any use, of course, if we wanted to distinguish between sentences like these: "Brutus killed Caesar" and "Brutus killed himself". Plainly, both would become " killed " and "...killed...", if we removed the Proper Names and simply used gaps or dots. By employing suitably defined gap markers we can distinguish those two sentence forms as follows: "ξ killed ζ" and "ξ killed ξ", respectively.
[I have explained more in Note 15a.]15a
What counts as a "legitimate substitution instance" depends on whether we are speaking about, (a) he interpretation of sentence schemas in a formal language or a formal system, or whether we are, (b) Trying to make sense of the sentential patterns we use in everyday speech. As far as (a) is concerned, the formal pattern will probably be expressed in the following way: "F(ξ,ζ)" -- where "F( , )" stands for a two-place, first level (formal) linguistic function or predicate variable. [Again, these technical terms are explained in Note 15a, link above.]
An interpretation in this sense amounts to the replacement of the above schematic letters/sentences -- i.e., predicate expressions, linguistic functions (follow the link for an explanation of that term), or gap markers, for example -- with terms defined by the formal rules of the system itself (or implied by the natural language concerned) in order to form an ordinary indicative sentence. So, for example, a formal system might allow for the substitution of singular terms for the two Greek letters above, which when translated into English might yield the following sentences, or "substitution instances":
Y1: "Mount Everest is higher than Mount McKinley."
[Yes, I am aware Mount McKinley is now called Denali!]
Here substituting "Mount Everest" for "ξ", "Mount McKinley" for "ζ", and "ξ is higher than ζ" for "F(ξ,ζ)".
[Again, an explanation for the peculiar order of the letters in F(ξ,ζ) is given in Note 15a, specifically, here.]
Or:
Y2: "Romeo loves Juliette."
Substituting "Romeo" for "ξ", "Juliette" for "ζ", and "ξ loves ζ" for "F(ξ,ζ)".
Y3: "The River Thames loves Paddington Bear."
Substituting "The River Thames" for "ξ", "Paddington Bear" for "ζ", and "ξ loves ζ" for "F(ξ,ζ)".
As will no doubt be appreciated, some substitution instances fail to yield sentences that make sense to English speakers. In which case, as far as Option (b) from earlier is concerned, acceptable substitution instances will depend on what is counted as a legitimate ordinary language interpretation of the schematic letters involved. Such restrictions might be waved to some extent, or even completely ignored, in a formal language. However, since English isn't a formal language (to state the obvious!), there are no formal rules to guide us with respect to the vernacular, although there are rules of thumb that can and do provide a rough guide. For example, in relation to "ξ loves ζ", acceptable substitutions would normally be limited to sentences formed by the use of the names of, or the names for, a human being. [On the distinction between a "name of" and a "name for", see here.] Largely because of that, the vast majority of English speakers (if not all of them) would recognise Y3 above as non-sensical and Y1 and Y2 as legitimate indicative sentences (even if the latter relates to two fictional characters).
[To be sure, Y3 might make sense in poetry or fantasy fiction -- or maybe even as a coded message -- which is why I made the point that there are no hard-and-fast guidelines here, just rough rules of thumb.]
Now, there is nothing in language or logic that forces the above analysis on us, it just turns out to have rather useful 'spin-off benefits', as it were, which clearly recommend it (that is, in addition to the more formal advantages it has, allowing modern logicians to study inferences more precisely). [Again, there is more on this in Note 15a.]
So, from the semi-formal schematic expression, "ξ is the capital of France", we can form the following sentences using three names successively -- "Paris", "London" and "Rome" -- to replace ξ in each case, respectively:
F1: Paris is the capital of France.
F2: London is the capital of France.
F3: Rome is the capital of France.
And so on. As noted above, some of these will be true, some false, and some might change from true to false, or vice versa, as circumstances arise. Plainly, these propositions all share a common pattern which is expressed by the semi-formal schema, "ξ is the capital of France".15b
Now, consider an example of an object supposedly given in experience -- indeed, one to which Lenin himself referred --, a simple glass tumbler. We might want to say the following about it:
E1: This tumbler is made of glass.
E1 appears to express a fact about a particular, this tumbler (possibly picked out by a pointing gesture or a nod), but that object isn't concrete, yet -- or not concrete in the right sort of DM-sense. Hence, so key features of the dialectical process must now be applied to it. According to the above dialectical circuit, we must interconnect this aspiring particular with other features of reality by employing (or maybe even by refining) an abstract general concept (or concepts) in relation to it.
But, E1 already contains a use of a general concept (or predicate expression) "ξ is made of glass", which, of course, isn't the name of anything, general or particular. Moreover, the sentence formed by combining the singular, demonstrative term, "This tumbler", with the concept/predicate expression, or linguistic function, "ξ is made of glass" (i.e., thereby forming E1) isn't a name, either.16
In that case, in E1 we don't seem to have a particular (or even an "individual") upon which we can begin to inflict some dialectics.
It might be wondered why these seemingly irrelevant linguistic concerns have been allowed to distract us when it is perfectly plain what is meant -- that if E1 were true, it would provide us with an example of a particular (or an individual), namely, the said tumbler, perhaps picked out by the reference of the indexical phrase: "This tumbler (here)."
E1a: This tumbler (here) is made of glass.
Unfortunately, whether or not that is so can in no way help us make sense of the 'dialectical process' under consideration here. On its own, and without an elaborate (implied) context (and historically-conditioned social background) the phrase "This tumbler" would say nothing at all. Indeed, it only succeeds in picking out the said tumbler because of the complex social and linguistic practices surrounding its normal use -- and, of course, the significance of pointing gestures.17
On the other hand, if this phrase is meant to, and even manages to, pick out this and only this tumbler, and nothing else, it would be operating as a Proper Name, or some other singular designating expression (at best), which point isn't being contested here (at least, not yet).
Of course, the phrase itself may be used to say something when combined with a linguistic-functional expression, such as "ξ is made of glass", but that would clearly involve the use of general terms again.
However, even if DM-epistemology were 100% correct, the dialectical process can't begin with bare particulars (whatever they turn out to be!), as everyone, including DM-theorists, agrees. It requires the use of general terms. That is, the particulars DM-theorists envisage have to be particulars of a certain type. So, a tumbler isn't just a lump of glass, or a body of matter. It is an item of glassware intended for a certain purpose. It is also why this Essay takes the line it does; it is aimed at demonstrating that no matter how this 'process' is re-packaged and sold to us by DM-fans, no sense can be made of it, as we are about to find out.
[This topic will be dealt with presently and in Note 18 (link below).]
In that case, perhaps the following example might succeed in picking out a particular:
E2: This tumbler is made of this lump of glass.
However, the phrase "lump of glass" still contains a general term, namely, "glass".18
In case anyone is tempted to object that DM-theorists in fact begin with the general in order to refine the particular -- and because of that the argument in this Essay is thoroughly misconceived --, it is worth recalling that the whole point of this exercise is to show that while DM-theorists might say this is what they do, it isn't what they actually do. What they in fact do is re-interpret sentences like E1 as identity statements. This involves the re-configuration of expressions like the following:
A1: NN is F,
as:
A2: NN = F*.
[Where "NN" is a Proper Name and "F*" a nominalised or particularised predicate expression (like "Man", "Manhood", or "runner"). Additionally, in A2, the "=" sign is interpreted as one or more of the following: a symbol for (i) The identity relation, (ii) Class inclusion, or (iii) A part/whole attribution -- or, indeed, all three at once! (I have employed an F* here, as opposed to the more usual F to indicate that this use of a predicate letter variable is non-standard.) A word is particularised when it is changed from a general to a particular term; when, for instance, a common noun is transformed into a Proper Noun or Definite Description -- for example, "man" into "Manhood", "beauty" into "The Beautiful" -- or a general verb, such as "runs", is also converted into a Proper Noun, in this case, "Runner". These moves will be explained at length as Essay unfolds, alongside their philosophical, logical and ideological significance). However, on this see also Note 01 of Part Two.]
As we will see, it is this initial wrong-turn, or distortion, that 'allows' DM-theorists to derive several counter-intuitive conclusions from ordinary sentences that employ perfectly innocent-looking predicate expressions.
Moreover, it is this linguistic move that saves DM-apologists the job of actually having to abstract anything at all --, which is fortunate since that task is impossible to perform, let alone describe, with anything other than empty platitudes or vague and confused 'thought experiments'.
By means of that 're-analysis' of ordinary predicate expressions dialecticians imagine they can bypass the 'abstractive process', all the while claiming that it has been carried out! This motivates the belief that they can access abstractions at will, when all they have done is conjure the Proper Names of abstract particulars out of less than thin air -- such as "Man", "Consciousness", "Identity", "Difference", "The Population", "abstract labour", or "Being".
The Proper Names of these abstract particulars are then used to flank, on the right-hand side, a transmogrified "is", which now works as an identity sign, directly facing the original singular term, on the left -- as in A2:
A2: NN = F*.
This re-configures the hackneyed DM-sentence "John is a man" -- which we will meet later -- into "John is identical to Man", "John is identical with mankind", or even "John = Man".
In order for that to happen, the "is" of predication has been transformed into an "is" of identity --, plainly in order to hold this implausible theory together and provide some sort of 'rationale' for what supposedly follows from it.
Maybe, then the following will work?
E3: This tumbler is composed of these n Silicon atoms.
Once more, E3 contains yet more general terms (for instance, "atoms").
We needn't labour the point; indeed, it is one that dialecticians themselves accept -- but, alas, only when it has been buried under a heap of obscure Hegel-speak.
There is a fundamental logical principle at stake here that can't be side-stepped, by-passed or ignored. Whatever is done to try to describe a particular, or an individual in this way, it will always involve the use of general terms.19
Against this, it could be argued that it might be possible to refer to particulars or individuals by means of an identifying indexical description, such as the following:
E4: This is a tumbler.
[Accompanied perhaps once more with a pointing gesture.]
But, the problem with E4 is that the word "tumbler" is now a general term.
Even a pointing gesture on its own, followed by the word:
E4a: "Tumbler",
would be of no help. Unless Proper Names, and only Proper Names, are used to pick out such aspirant 'concrete particulars' (but on that, see below), there is no way around this obstacle. For example, no one supposes that the word "Tumbler" is the name of only that piece of glassware; i.e., that this is that particular tumbler's Proper Name!
This means we face a logical (but not an epistemological, psychological or ontological) barrier before we can even begin to loop the first dialectical loop -- a logical condition in relation to which DM-theorists at least pay lip service.
As noted above, one way to avoid this difficulty might be to be to try to represent concrete particulars by the use of Proper Names. Unfortunately, Proper Names only function as such in combination with other linguistic expressions that don't operate in that way. That is because letters or sounds on their own can't work as names without the right sort of linguistic and social context.
[Suppositions to the contrary not only fall foul of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument, but also of several comments Marx made about language.]
Some readers might find this point difficult to appreciate because, as regular language users, they automatically recognise the use of Proper Names in ordinary homophonic contexts, and hence they automatically recognise the occurrence of linguistic expressions conventionally assigned to this grammatical category -- even when they are used in isolation. Many jokes trade on that fact.20
However, sounds propagated in the air, inscriptions committed to paper or printed on a screen can't count as Proper Names when they are totally divorced from the complex social and linguistic background mentioned above. Rule-governed, socially-sanctioned sentential contexts and practices are required to turn such uninterpreted marks or noises into words with a specific mode of signification, and thus into names.
["Inscription" here applies to physical marks on a page/screen/wall/blackboard/whitescreen/cavewall that aren't considered random, but are held to be the product of intentionality, part of a natural-, or even a formal-language -- or perhaps even a work of art, no matter how 'primitive'.]21
Indeed, uninterpreted objects or processes in nature are by themselves incapable of determining the meanings of any marks or sounds we use to talk about whatever it is we talk about.
That is, of course, because uninterpreted objects and processes lack social organisation, practical skills or intellect.
Naturally, that is just a roundabout way of saying that uninterpreted objects and processes can't determine a rule; only human beings can do that (in practice), since language is a rule-governed product of our social being, not a superficial aspect of discourse's own syntactical being.
Not even a series of Proper Names can pick out anything true or false of 'concrete particulars', or anything else for that matter. That is because such a series would, at best, constitute a list, not a sentence (still less a proposition). Consider, for example, the following:
E5: London, Lenin, Amazon, Venus, Morning Star, Coronation Street, Tony Blair, Proxima Centauri.
Lists like this say nothing -- even if they have a use, as here, to make that very point! We could, perhaps, imagine a sense for E5, but only by articulating it with general terms or with words that function other than as names.
[This "imagined sense" might involve the answer to a question like: "Which eight Proper Names and titles appear most often in the novels of Woodruff Durfendorfer?" In such circumstances, E5 would now become something like this "These eight names and titles appear most often in the novels of Woodruff Durfendorfer: London, Lenin, Amazon, Venus, Morning Star, Coronation Street, Tony Blair, Proxima Centauri."]
We can perhaps see this if instead of E5 we were confronted by this list of 'inscriptions':
E5a: Scou$nge, To&*f, R£%gter, Giy**^fwas, ££sa%reter, 6TRddwer, 9Ohye33$.
If someone were to assert that these were Proper Names, much more than their say-so would be required. We would need to know in which natural language any of them are actually used, and in which viable sentences in that language. This minimal requirement is perhaps easier to see when we are confronted with inscriptions that we don't already recognise as plausible examples of Proper Names. A list of words we already recognise as Proper Names (in, say, E5) perhaps obscured that fact.
Moreover, even if a list of the Proper Names of objects or individuals were replaced by another list formed out of the words we have for concepts or abstract general terms, it would make no difference; it would still say nothing, as the next two examples illustrate:
E6: Identity, Substance, Matter, Form, Flux, Space, Time, Part, Whole, Mode, Particular, Absolute, General, Essence, Trope, Appearance, Entity, Thing-in-Itself.
E7: Female, glass, redness, anger, jealousy, knowledge, change, cause, honesty, eigenvector, humanity, justice, isomorphism.
E6 and E7 have no sense, and say nothing (in that respect), since they are also lists. To repeat, in order to gain a sense these terms would have to be articulated with expressions that don't function as names, general or Proper.21a
At this point it could be argued that we might be able to pick out a targeted or a specific particular by the use of a Proper Name, in the following manner:
E8: Karl Marx.
Undoubtedly, this Proper Name designates the individual Karl Marx, but that is only because of all the social and historical stage-setting which already surrounds its normal use, and the fact that it is both a name for and a name of a man. That background involves the use of countless sentences like the following:
E9: Karl Marx is the author of Das Kapital and was born in Trier in 1811.
Without this context in general, the word "Karl Marx" could be the name of the man at the delicatessen, or a new brand of Vodka, or even that of the winner of the three-thirty at Newmarket. In fact, without such a background this inscription might not even be a compound word, let alone a name, general or Proper.22
The aforementioned detour ends at this point; back to the main feature.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
We are now in a position to see how and why dialecticians (i) Turn all predicate expressions into the Proper Names of abstract particulars and why (ii) That transforms sentences into lists, preventing them from saying anything at all.
As Essay Twelve Part Two will show, Ancient Greek Philosophers faced a serious problem. It was abundantly clear to them that concepts (although they weren't called that then!) -- or what were presumed to be the referents of general terms -- couldn't be picked out in any straight-forward sense. That is, they weren't the sorts of things we experienced or encountered in the everyday world in the same way that the referents of the Proper Names of individuals or genuinely material objects are (again, that isn't necessarily how they would have put this point all those years ago!). For example, if you lived back then, while you could look at, meet, shake hands with, or engage in argument with Socrates, you couldn't do any of those things with justice, mortality, time -- or even 'Manhood'. You couldn't even meet or point to all dogs, cats, tables, chairs and wine bottles in existence at that point in time, let alone in the past or the future.
But, it also seemed clear to them that such general terms must represent something, otherwise their use would signify nothing at all; they would be "empty words" (Flatus vocis, as Medieval Nominalist, Roscelin maintained). When we say general things about objects in nature or society we aren't simply producing aimless sounds.
Here, for example, is Parmenides (as reported by Simplicius):
"What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot." [Barnes (2001), p.81.]
"What is there to be said and thought must needs be: for it is there for being, but nothing is not." [Quoted in Kirk et al (1999), p.247.]
About which the authors of Kirk et al had this to say:
"Parmenides' summary...says in effect that any object of thought must be a real object, confirms despite its obscurity that his rejection of 'is not' is motivated by a concern about what is a possible content for a genuine thought." [Ibid. p.247.]
So, if someone says "Vladimir Putin is a man", while "Vladimir Putin" (at the time of writing) certainly picks out an identifiable individual in the physical universe, "man" doesn't seem to designate anything obvious. What then does it designate? It must refer to something. If so, what? According to Parmenides, what it designates must exist. But where does it exist, and in what form?22ab
[We still do not know the answer to these questions, not because they are too difficult for our finite minds, but because they are the result of linguistic chicanery; hence they are no more legitimate than asking these questions about chess: "Ok so who gave planning (i.e., zoning) permission to build that castle over in the corner? And who actually performed the wedding ceremony for the King and Queen? While we are at it exactly where was that Bishop consecrated, and are those pawns in a union?"]
In spite of the fact that the alleged referents of general terms don't appear to exist in the everyday world for anyone to point to (or to identify in any other way),22aa some sense had to be given to their mode of signification (i.e., the grammatical role they occupy and how they contribute to what a sentence can be used to say, truly or falsely). It seemed reasonable, or even natural, therefore, to model the denotation of general terms on something that already worked: on the direct reference achieved by the use of the Proper Names of 'concrete individuals', like Socrates or Alcibiades. Those names managed to pick out identifiable particulars in reality, so it was tempting to think that the same must be the case with general words. Hence, based on the successful 'naming relation', and despite appearances to the contrary, general words were believed to work because they actually named something. If such words were capable of representing things to us, they couldn't be the names of non-existents -- they would have to be the names of 'entities' which must exist somewhere, even if whatever that was remained invisible or inscrutable to us.
Unfortunately, this syntactical segue (i.e., regarding the designating role occupied by Proper Names as the model for all words) now initiated a completely futile and fruitless 2400-year-long search to find these newly invented entities -- the supposed referents of general terms --, soon to be given such grandiose titles as: "abstractions" (aphairesis -- Urmson (1990), p.20; Peters (1967), pp.20-21), "Concepts", "Categories", "Ideas", "Forms", and "Universals".
The following spurious questions then forced themselves on Traditional Theorists: Do these 'abstractions', or 'Universals', exist in the 'mind'? [Conceptualism.] Or in 'heaven'? [Platonic or Old-fashioned Realism.] Or in 'God's Mind'? [The theological version of Platonic Realism.] Maybe in the objects themselves? [A half-way house between Conceptualism and Realism, echoed in many forms of modern-day Scientific Realism.] Or perhaps nowhere at all? [Nominalism.] Or could they even exist in some other suitably obscure region or aspect of 'Being Itself'? [All stations between Scepticism and Platonic Realism.]
Every single one of these proposed 'solutions' appealed to something invisible, intangible, non-physical, and ultimately inscrutable as the supposed referent of such words. Just as Proper Names referred to, or could be used to refer to, identifiable individuals/objects in the world around us, so these other words did likewise with respect to these ghostly, but not at all easily identifiable, 'abstractions', 'Concepts', 'Categories', 'Ideas', 'Forms', and 'Universals'.
Fortunately for Traditional Theorists, each and every one of these abstractions was completely inaccessible to the senses (otherwise the jig would have been up on day one). Indeed, they were incapable of being accessed by any means other than by pure thought (just as Plato intimated), having long ago been emptied of all content because they had been abstracted far away from material reality by a privileged, elite group of thinkers, all of whom were nearly as cut-off from everyday life as the abstractions they so effortlessly conjured up -- just as Marx himself had pointed out (on this, see Note 3b).
[The political and ideological significance of these remarks will be explored in Essay Twelve.]
Hence, in short, because general words seemed incapable of picking out 'general objects' in nature -- there being no such thing, of course, as a 'general dog' (what would a general dog even look like?), or whatever it was that all dogs supposedly held in common, which can't exist in nature (why that is so will be explored in Part Two) -- the assumption that all words were names of some sort naturally led to the conclusion that general words must refer to, or name, otherworldly objects like this -- otherwise, of course, they would simply be vacuous.
And that is why highly influential Greek Philosophers, Logicians and Grammarians turned general words into the Proper Names of just such otherworldly 'objects'. The theories they subsequently concocted in order to 'justify' such moves were merely window-dressing.
Named objects clearly exist (if, that is, we ignore for now the names of the 'gods', mythical beasts and fictional characters, etc.) -- we see them around us all the time. Because of this seemingly incontrovertible fact, the nominalisation and particularisation of general words appeared to give them some sort of content, or substantiality ('ousia'), allowing them to represent 'things' as they are 'in-themselves' behind 'appearances' (i.e., as they are 'essentially'), but which 'essences', unfortunately, were now no longer part of the material world -- or, at least, not in any obvious way.22a0
Hence, it seemed to such theorists that some account could be given of the meaning or the denotation of general words that feature in predicative expressions. If they were interpreted as the Proper Names of the Forms, of certain Universals -- or, in some cases, the Proper Names of Categories (later, "Concepts" or "Ideas") --, propositions that contained them could be employed to represent or reflect the 'hidden world' that these theorists now claimed lay behind 'appearances', and which gave them some sort of substantiality.
Philosophers then awarded themselves a licence to hunt down and then uncover the "essential", underlying (later a priori) structure of 'reality' (or 'Being') by means of this newly invented 'process of abstraction', which they also imagined could achieved by thought alone.
Of course, if a given theorist also believed in the existence of a supremely rational 'God' (who, so myth and fable had it, created the world by the word of 'His' 'mouth'), then the temptation became irresistible to regard the Proper Names of the 'Forms' (etc.) as the names of the corresponding 'Ideas' in 'His Mind' -- or, at least as the names of the 'Forms' that resided with 'Him' in 'Heaven' -- which 'He' had used as exemplars when creating the world. Just like 'Him', they were mysterious, obscure and far removed not only from the physical world, but they were totally immune from easy disconfirmation by those disreputable, impertinent and annoying materialists.
[As noted earlier, the first alternative above is present (in a modified form) in Plato's work, the second in the work of Christian Platonists -- like, for example, St Augustine, St Anselm, St Bonaventure --, as well as the theories of Neo-Platonists (such as Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus), quasi-Platonist/Aristotelians like Leibniz, as well as in the ideas of philosophers who profoundly influenced scientists like, for instance, Newton -- the Cambridge Platonists. (On this, see Note 22a.)]
Subsequently, these unchanging Ideas (the referents of general words) 'came to life' in Hegel's work as he endeavoured to re-animate them in order to compensate for the fact that earlier generations of philosophers had killed them stone dead.
This accounts for Hegel's ham-fisted attempt to criticise the LOI, why the 'rational' approach he adopted was so important for him, and why this meant that his entire programme had already run off the rails long before he began to work on it. [More on that later.] Traditional Philosophers (other than the Neoplatonists and Hermetic Mystics) had left him with lifeless and changeless 'concepts', and the LOI was now seen as the main culprit -- when that 'law' in fact arrived relatively late on the scene, indeed, by many centuries. However, in his haste to rectify this pseudo-problem, Hegel only succeeded in injecting even more formalin into these moribund 'concepts', as we will soon discover.22a
[LOI = Law of Identity.]
Unfortunately, the above re-configuration of predicate expressions as the Proper Names of abstract particulars destroys the capacity ordinary language has for expressing generality (why that is so will be explained below) --, or, rather, it does so with respect to the jargonised language Traditional Philosophers substituted for certain targeted words in the vernacular.
We can actually see this happening in the thought of the Early Greek Philosophers (the full details will be laid out in Essay Twelve (summary here and here)). These theorists found that there were no words available to them in the vernacular Greek of their day that allowed them to speculate about the nature of these newly invented abstractions. Hence, they simply manufactured their own terminology --, or they borrowed and then transformed jargon from earlier myths and Theogonies. Consequently, words like "Being", "Logos", "Fate", "The Unlimited", "Nous" -- and "abstraction" (aphairesis) -- were co-opted and then put to no good.
However, in order to cope with the many and varied forms of generality available in the vernacular, these thinkers found they also had to appropriate and then make use of words that were already in circulation in every day life. These they nominalised and particularised into "Justice", "Knowledge", "Beauty", "The Table", "Man", "Manhood", "The Equal", and later, "Identity" and "Difference" -- turning ordinary general words into the Proper Names of these newly minted abstract particulars.22a1
As the late Professor Havelock pointed out:
"As long as preserved communication remained oral, the environment could be described or explained only in the guise of stories which represent it as the work of agents: that is gods. Hesiod takes the step of trying to unify those stories into one great story, which becomes a cosmic theogony. A great series of matings and births of gods is narrated to symbolise the present experience of the sky, earth, seas, mountains, storms, rivers, and stars. His poem is the first attempt we have in a style in which the resources of documentation have begun to intrude upon the manner of an acoustic composition. But his account is still a narrative of events, of 'beginnings,' that is, 'births,' as his critics the Presocratics were to put it. From the standpoint of a sophisticated philosophical language, such as was available to Aristotle, what was lacking was a set of commonplace but abstract terms which by their interrelations could describe the physical world conceptually; terms such as space, void, matter, body, element, motion, immobility, change, permanence, substratum, quantity, quality, dimension, unit, and the like. Aside altogether from the coinage of abstract nouns, the conceptual task also required the elimination of verbs of doing and acting and happening, one may even say, of living and dying, in favour of a syntax which states permanent relationships between conceptual terms systematically. For this purpose the required linguistic mechanism was furnished by the timeless present of the verb to be -- the copula of analytic statement.
"The history of early philosophy is usually written under the assumption that this kind of vocabulary was already available to the first Greek thinkers. The evidence of their own language is that it was not. They had to initiate the process of inventing it....
"Nevertheless, the Presocratics could not invent such language by an act of novel creation. They had to begin with what was available, namely, the vocabulary and syntax of orally memorised speech, in particular the language of Homer and Hesiod. What they proceeded to do was to take the language of the mythos and manipulate it, forcing its terms into fresh syntactical relationships which had the constant effect of stretching and extending their application, giving them a cosmic rather than a particular reference." [Havelock (1983), pp.13-14, 21. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Links added.]
Havelock then shows in detail that this is precisely what the Presocratic Philosophers succeeded in doing: inventing abstract nouns, eliminating verbs in place of these newly-coined nouns, and transforming the verb "to be" in the required manner.
Thus was born the so-called 'problem' of Universals (the 'problem' of the "One and the Many"), a family of insoluble conundrums predicated on the above distortion of ordinary language, and nothing more -- again, just as Marx noted.
Nevertheless, these seemingly insignificant linguistic moves had profound implications for the Philosophy of Language and the Philosophy Logic that the Ancient Greeks bequeathed to later generations of ruling-class theorists. FL was now regarded as an abstract science -- perhaps even the formal wing of psychology and ontology --, whose adepts in fact studied the 'laws of thought', the language associated with which was itself a secret code that contained (and thus was capable of revealing) the very secrets of 'Being'. Here is George Novack:
"Logic is the science of the thought process. Logicians investigate the activities of the though process which goes on in human heads and formulate laws, forms and interrelation of those mental processes." [Novack (1971), p.17.]
[FL = Formal Logic.]
Novack was simply echoing a widely-held belief among traditionalists, as was indeed Engels:
"In every epoch, and therefore also in ours, theoretical thought is a historical product, which at different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different contents. The science of thought is therefore, like every other, a historical science, the science of the historical development of human thought. And this is of importance also for the practical application of thought in empirical fields. Because in the first place the theory of the laws of thought is by no means an 'eternal truth' established once and for all, as philistine reasoning imagines to be the case with the word 'logic'." [Engels (1954), p.43. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]
And so was Lenin:
"Logic is the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge…. The laws of logic are the reflections of the objective in the subjective consciousness of man.... [These] embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature." [Lenin (1961), p.182. Bold emphasis alone added..]
So, too, was Trotsky:
"Hegel himself viewed dialectics precisely as logic, as the science of the forms of human cognition.... What does logic express? The law of the external world or the law of consciousness? The question is posed dualistically [and] therefore not correctly [for] the laws of logic express the laws (rules, methods) of consciousness in its active relationship to the external world.... Thought operates by its own laws, which we can call the laws of logic...." [Trotsky (1986), pp.75, 87, 106. Trotsky is apparently referring to Hegel's Introduction to The Science of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999), pp.43-64. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
This form of metaphysical, pseudo-logic cast a long shadow over much of 'western' thought (and that includes DM). The original, Ancient Greek syntactical false step outlined above (and further analysed in this Essay) exercised a profound influence on all subsequent strands in Traditional Philosophy, setting the parameters of 'acceptable' debate among 'serious thinkers', and forming the scaffolding around which the "ruling ideas" that Marx spoke about could be built. This abstract (quasi-Platonic) approach to knowledge also had a lasting effect on the way science and mathematics have been interpreted ever since.22b
Fast forward a couple of thousand years and we can see the effect this grammatical segue has had on the philosophical 'logic' inherited by European theorists -- but more specifically by German Idealists, forcing their thought in the direction taken by Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and especially Hegel. The bowdlerised 'logic' they inherited from Medieval and Renaissance logicians appeared to freeze-frame reality into fixed forms, logical straight-jackets comprised of the Proper Names of these Abstract Particulars. And, as we are about to see, that is what motivated Hegel's criticism of the LOI, as well as the view he took of the supposed limitations he claimed to have discovered in Aristotelian Logic. Given that general terms had been obliterated -- or rather frozen as the supposed referents of a set of Proper Names -- because of this ancient syntactical screw-up, no wonder Hegel saw in them no 'motion', no change. [On this, see Kenny (2006), pp.11-13. Also see the references listed here.]
Unfortunately, instead of criticising the defective logic that had created these 'changeless forms', he compounded the problem with a few novel blunders of his own!
However, as things transpired, Hegel's 'analysis' turned out to be an unintended and unwitting reductio ad absurdum of the entire 'abstractionist project' (indeed, as the young Marx and Engels saw, albeit imperfectly). Hegel thus performed a great service for humanity, albeit inadvertently: his system is so obviously based on a series of logical blunders that no one with an ounce of materialist good sense would ever take it seriously. By unintentionally pushing these errors to their limit, Hegel completely undermined the credibility of the entire genre.
Marxist Dialecticians uncritically appropriated the syntactical mess Hegel dumped on all who take him seriously -- except, of course, they imagined that in their hands it could be inverted and put back 'on its feet', revealing its inner, 'rational' core after the 'mystical shell' had been paired away. But, as should seem obvious (to those with the aforementioned ounce of materialist good sense), rotating a logical blunder through any number of degrees has absolutely no impact on its status as a blunder. Without giving careful thought (or any thought) to the syntactical origin of these sub-Aristotelian clangers, and without considering for one moment the deleterious effect this catalogue of errors might have on HM (outlined below), dialecticians have only succeeded in saddling Marxism with an unworkable 'theory of knowledge'.
Unfortunately, late in life Aristotle began to move in this direction, too, laying the foundations for the so-called Term Logic that dominated the Middle Ages, inflated into a full-blown theory by Medieval and Renaissance Logicians. A core principle of this theory came to be known as the Identity (or Essential) Theory of Predication.22c
It is this mis-begotten theory, along with its 'philosophical' implications, which lies at the heart both of dialectics and much of Traditional Philosophy.
It is indeed one of the "ruling-ideas".
So, when dialecticians make use of the analysis of subject-predicate sentences developed in and by this ancient tradition they not only turn their own propositions into lists -- we will soon see exactly how this happens --, they actually prevent the names they think they are using from being general names, to begin with. That is because these moves destroy the capacity language has for expressing generality, which, as we have just seen, is essential if Proper Names are to function as names, in the first place.
Hence, given the Identity Theory Of Predication, in order to be able to refer to 'concepts', or 'abstractions', theorists found they had to turn predicate expressions themselves into the Proper Names of those Abstract Particulars.22d
In that case, a simple sentence like the following:
E10: Blair is a man,
must now become:
E11: Blair [some form of attribution inserted between these two halves] Manhood.23
For instance:
E11a: Blair is Manhood.24
The effect of this can be seen if we examine E11a a little more closely. If both "Blair" and "Manhood" are singular terms, which they are, then despite appearances to the contrary, no predication has actually taken place. That is because individuals can't be predicated of individuals -- or, rather Proper Names can't be predicated of individuals also named by a Proper Name (why that is so is explained in Note 24a0 and Note 24ab).24a0
Given this view of things, nothing will have been said of or about Blair. Of course, on the surface it seems that something has been said of Blair, but that is where the Identity Theory kicks in. [More on this presently.]
Now, an ordinary predication (like the one expressed in E10, which says something of a named individual), seemed to many to be all too insubstantial. As noted above, ascriptions like this don't appear to pick out anything in the world that is actually attributable to Blair -- i.e., nothing that can be pointed to or identified in any obvious way which is true of him. So, while on the one hand we have the material object named "Blair", on the other, what is said of him seems to be something altogether intangible. Since we can't point to anything in the world called "man", or "Manhood", it looks like E10 isn't really saying anything true of Blair! Ordinary language appears to be misleading us, and, therefore, seems to be defective.
In that case, sentences like E10 must be put in 'correct logical order' so that sense can be made of them. Hence, we need a new 'theory' that replaces predication with something a little more substantial. [Of course, there were other reasons for these moves; they will be examined in Part Two.]
E10: Blair is a man.
However, it is important to remind ourselves that this 'problem' arose because of the adoption of the primitive idea that all words only gain meaning if they are names -- or, as here, Proper Names. [Why that idea was in fact adopted will be examined in Essay Twelve.]
So, the traditional account went something like this: since "...man" in E10 isn't a name of anything that can be identified in the manner described above, it can't be attributing anything to Blair -- unless, that is, it is in fact a disguised Proper Name.
Because of this seemingly innocuous syntactic segue, there was a pressing need to try to identify the 'something' that could serve as the referent of the predicate "...is a man" (or, in traditional logic, simply, "a man", or even just "man"). In order to rectify this, the general term was particularised so that it could now refer to an abstract idea, or Universal -- with each of the words "Man"/"Manhood" becoming the Proper Name of the Universal 'Man'/'Manhood'.
In this way, propositions like E10 were now held to contain two Proper Names, with an attributing or linking term that supposedly connected them -- i.e., these two Proper Names become the subject term ("Blair"), and the 'predicate name' ("a man" or "Manhood"). The copula, "is", was now recast as an "is" of identity (e.g., in E11, and E11a), and was no longer simply an "is" of predication. As a result, this analysis came to be known as the "Two-name theory of predication". [More on this presently.]
E11: Blair [some form of attribution inserted between the two halves] Manhood.
E11a: Blair is Manhood.
[Paradoxically, both of these terms were sometimes also viewed as predicates as well as Proper Names! An example of radical confusion of this order can be found here.]
However, in order to account for "the unity of a proposition" (more on that knotty problem later) in sentences that contain two Proper Names (so that it didn't simply collapse into a list), something a little more powerful than the copula "is" of predication (used in E10) would be required, linking both halves. In addition, this new linking term must allow propositions like E10 to say something of Blair that we could point to -- at least, internally (in 'the mind'), 'abstractly', but later perhaps as an Idea, or Concept. This new linking term must relate the subject (the Proper Name "Blair", or the man himself -- as we will see, these were often conflated) to the object (now designated by another Proper Name), to which the old predicate allegedly referred (i.e., "Man"). Failing that, this linking term must at least represent this relation -- i.e., it must represent the link between what "Blair" stood for and what "man" stood for, and it must do this in language, or, at least, it must do this in harmony with the 'laws of thought', in 'the mind'. [But, again, the two were often run together.]
In that case, E10 would be true if and only if "Blair" referred to one and the same thing as "Man" (or "Manhood"); there had to be an 'internal', non-accidental connection between these two terms that reflected a similar link between whatever it was in 'reality' they supposedly designated. Nothing less could reflect the 'essential' nature of Blair; anything else would merely reflect what was 'accidentally' true of him, which 'accidental truths' were of no interest to philosophy, or science. If these ideas were to count as a valid, 'acceptable' re-presentation of "the deity's" knowledge (the only 'true knowledge' there is, by definition, or so it was once believed), then an 'accidental relationship' would only ever be radically deficient, and certainly couldn't represent genuine knowledge, philosophical knowledge, knowledge of 'essence'. The identity relation solved this problem. As a spin-off, it indirectly identified our 'mortal minds' with the eternal 'mind of god', since those who thought this way would be in harmony with 'his' thoughts.
This notion found a clear echo in what subsequently became the main problematic of German idealism, Subject/Object Identity -- or the 'identity of thought and Being', a spurious relation that also exercised Engels.23a
E10: Blair is a man.
E10a: Blair Man.
E10b: Blair (relating expression) Man.
Hence, as should seem obvious, this new linking term had to be a relational expression of some sort; it had to relate one Proper Name to another Proper Name, or, at least, what they represented (as in E10b), and it had to do so "essentially".24aa
That is because the "is" of predication in E10 is simply that -- it is just an "is" of predication, a handy linguistic devise that facilitates attempts to describe or attribute something of someone or something. But, in that case, if E10 is now held to contain two Proper Names, not one, it would seem to be asserting one individual of another (or, rather, asserting a Proper Name ("Man"/"Manhood") of an individual (Blair) -- again, in Traditional Thought, these were often run-together). That is, "a man" was now being viewed as the disguised Proper Name of an abstract particular, 'Man' or 'Manhood'. So, E10 would be 'asserting' that the object that was the referent of the old predicate (again, 'Man', or 'Manhood') was 'true' of the object that is the referent of the subject term, "Blair".
And yet, no object can be true of another object.
[Once more, why that is so is explained in Note 24a0 and Note 24ab (link below).]
So, this apparent predication can't be a genuine predication, it must express a disguised relation between two objects ('Manhood' and Blair, now designated by two Proper Names, not one).24ab
The former predicate ("a man") would, under this 'analysis', vanish right before our eyes; its real, 'essential', or 'below-the-surface', nature, or logical role now having been exposed as a Proper Name, not a predicate, with the copula "is" becoming the required relational expression -- the "is" of identity.
So, even though your very own eyes or ears might tell you that "...is a man" (or "man") is a predicate expression (used to describe someone or attribute something to that individual), your mind (suitably 're-educated') tells you it is a disguised Proper Name.
Such is the 'persuasive power' of Idealist 'Logic'!
However, when there is in fact a relation of identity in ordinary language, between two named objects (or between two singular terms, depending on how we read it), conjoined by an "is" (as we will see is the case in E12, below), we uncontroversially have a statement of identity, not of predication, to deal with. A false analogy drawn between these two distinct uses of "is" suggested to Traditional Logicians and Grammarians that the "is" of predication must really be an "is" of identity.
Out of twisted logic and grammar like this there arose a new 'theory' -- one that was in fact driven by a much more ancient doctrine working in the background: that all words are really names (Proper or general) by means of which we re-present, or mirror, the divine order to ourselves, and we do this by naming its contents, just like Adam named all the animals -- recorded at Genesis 2:19.
This in turn suggested to the aforementioned traditionalists that although we can't actually touch, taste, smell or see the things that these new 'predicate' Proper Names reflect, or represent to us, that doesn't in fact present a problem since these 'entities' (i.e., whatever the old predicate 'really' referred to) are hidden 'beneath' or 'behind' 'appearances'. From there it was but a short step to the idea that all true knowledge must relate to, or arise from, a relation set up between 'The Knower' and this secret, non-material world, anterior to experience -- 'The True Known' --, which is more real than the material world we see around us.
The world of secret 'essences' was conjured into existence by such verbal tricks -- and nothing more.
This hidden 'world', of course, isn't the 'proper concern' of common folk, whose 'defective' and materially-grounded language had supposedly created 'philosophical problems' like this (i.e., the 'problem' of predication), in the first place. The 'unwashed' were allegedly trapped in the world of 'appearances', lost in a fog of 'commonsense' and 'formal thinking'. In stark contrast, 'genuine philosophers' were not only highly qualified, they were capable of seeing through all this 'confusion' right into the heart of 'Being', thanks to this glitzy new 'theory'.24a
So, following the lead given by Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern philosophers (such as John Scotus Eriugena -- but not Jean Buridan, whose theory was rather more complex -- and, of course, more overtly by Hegel himself), DM-theorists were persuaded to accept the elitist idea that the articulation of names by the use of the connective "is" (in sentences like E11, and then E11a) in fact expresses a relation between a named individual and another named abstraction, now interpreted as an abstract particular, 'Manhood'.25
E11: Blair [some form of attribution inserted between the two halves] Manhood.
E11a: Blair is Manhood.
Now, since particulars (i.e., named objects) can stand in some sort of relation to one another, this appeared to solve the 'problem' created by the 'disappearing predicate' puzzle, mentioned earlier.
And that is why, under Hegel's influence, the "is" of predication came to be the "is" of identity in 'Materialist Dialectics'.
[As we will see, the usual justification advanced for these ancient moves is little more than an elaborate smokescreen.]
In order to see how this trick works in more detail, consider the following:
E12a: Cicero is identical with Tully.
["Tully" was Cicero's other name.]
The "is" in E12 is plainly, and uncontroversially, one of identity; no problem with that.
That is, both of these seem to be instances of the relational expression "ξ is identical with ζ".
[However, the extra "is" in E12a can't itself be an "is" of identity on pain of infinite regress, but must be one of prediction. More on that below.]
Nevertheless, difficulties soon arise if this relational form is used as an archetype upon which all apparently ('philosophical') subject-predicate propositions are to be modelled.
When that happens, E10 and E11 have to be re-written as follows:
E13: Blair is Manhood.
{The other two were:
E10: Blair is a man.
E11: Blair [some form of attribution inserted between the two halves] Manhood.}
Given the traditional theory, E13 would then be interpreted as:
E14: Blair is identical with Manhood.
The (alleged) identity relation between Blair and the abstract particular, 'Manhood', is now plain for all to see. The particular (Blair) is now said to be identical with the 'Universal' ('Manhood') -- which means that just as "Tully" is a Proper Name in E12, "Manhood" is the Proper Name (of an abstract particular), in E14.
E12: Cicero is Tully.
E12a: Cicero is identical with Tully.
E14: Blair is identical with Manhood.
In this way, abstractions could be conjured into existence to order as the other-worldly correlates of some of the common nouns used in ordinary language --, or, and far more likely, the other-worldly correlates of the jargonised expressions that Philosophers have been inventing ever since Anaximander was knee-high to baby goat.
If Proper Names designate material particulars, then certain common nouns must really be the Proper Names of abstract particulars --, which exist, well..., where?
[For Plato, they were located perhaps in 'heaven'; for dialecticians..., um..., er..., better not ask! If you do, you risk being accused of not "understanding" dialectics.]
This is the 'reasoning' that underpinned, and then initiated, the aforementioned futile two thousand five-hundred year search for these ethereal beings -- motivated, as we will see, by ruling-class priorities and interests.
However, to spoil the fun: defective reasoning like this can only be expressed in the Indo-European family of languages (but see the qualifications mentioned here), where subjects, copulas and predicates abound. Different language groups had to rely on other linguistic tricks to give life to their own, home-grown strains of parasitic, regressive ruling-class ideology.
[More on this in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here).]
Unfortunately, as noted above, because of this syntactic segue, generality was totally eliminated. In E14, we no longer have the general expression "ξ is a man", but the Proper Name of an abstract particular, 'Manhood'.
Indeed, this can be seen from the fact that it would make no sense at all to interpret E10 as expressing an identity relation between Blair and a predicate (or even between his name and a predicate expression).
E14: Blair is identical with Manhood.
E10: Blair is a man.
How could Blair -- or his name (if we avoid the 'use/mention' bear trap, here) -- be identical with a rather minor grammatical feature of the Indo-European family of languages -- or what it supposedly stood for? How could Blair/"Blair" be identical with a predicate, or even with a Universal?
But, to many, it did seem to make some sort of crazy sense to see E10 as expressing an identity between Blair and an abstract concept, or an abstract particular, something for which the predicate ("a man") was now taken to be a Proper Name.26
Unfortunately, our consideration of the malign consequences of the idea that all words are names hasn't yet run its full course.
If all words are indeed names, then the "is" of identity must name the identity relation, too. [We can see this move actually happening here.] That was the point of the use of the word "attribution" in E11:
E11: Blair [some form of attribution inserted between the two halves] Manhood.
But, this can't be correct. It doesn't even look correct.
That can be seen if an attempt is made to treat this controversial "is" as just such a Proper Name (of the identity relation); E12 would become:
E15: Cicero Identity Tully.
Or, perhaps:
E16: Cicero Identity Relation Tully.
[E12: Cicero is Tully.]
[In E15 and E16, the "is" in E12 has been replaced in both cases by its supposed Proper Name, and the phrase "some form of attribution" with what "is" supposedly attributes; in this case, the "Identity Relation".]
As is now plain, neither E15 nor E16 is capable of saying anything (true or false), for they are both lists.27
Admittedly, in many contexts the word "is" works quite happily as a relational expression for identity, as we saw in E12. But, even then, the "is" of identity names nothing, since it isn't a name, it is a verb. Treating all words as names clearly turns sentences like this into lists, and since lists say nothing, that move destroys the capacity we have in language for saying anything at all.
To sum up: in E10, where a clear predicative use of a general noun is being expressed, the misreading of the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity reveals that an earlier decision had already been taken to interpret predicate expressions as the Proper Names of abstract particular. Any subsequent 'grammatical adjustments', or arguments, that were advanced in support (i.e., re-configuring "is" as a relational expression of identity), were invented so that they were now 'consistent' with that earlier metaphysical move, itself made for ideological reasons.
[What those reasons were will be revealed in Essay Twelve -- summary here.]
E10: Blair is a man.
It is this move -- not the attempt to process particulars by means of 'abstractions' given in thought, nor yet as part of an endeavour to access or use 'pure' concepts or categories of 'reason', or even re-christening the diminutive verb "is" as the name of "Being", or of "Identity" --, it is this syntactic segue which kick-started this philosophical wild goose chase, and then the sub-Aristotelian 'logic' Hegel cobbled together, unfortunately now echoed in 'Materialist Dialectics'.28
"John" -- And The Entire Universe
So, the mythical 'process of abstraction' was motivated by the syntactically inept re-write of general terms as the Proper Names of abstract particulars, detailed above. In turn this linguistic conjuring trick was itself based on an earlier move that interpreted predicate expressions as the Proper Names of the "Forms", or of "Universals", and later "Ideas", "Categories" and "Concepts". Clearly this 'process' was based on an uncheckable, occult capacity which some claim they possess -- i.e., the 'ability' to process concepts in the privacy of their heads at the flick of a verb. These phoney moves originally arose out of the actual abstraction -- i.e., the removal, cutting-off, alienation, and thus the distortion -- of concept expressions from their usual context in ordinary sentences used in everyday life. Again, as Marx noted:
"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 alone added.]
"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381.]
This was achieved by physically abstracting ordinary predicative expressions (out of simple propositions like E10), turning them into the Proper Names of abstract particulars, thus distorting them, Traditional Philosophers (and later, DM-theorists) were thus able to magic into existence a whole new branch of Super-Knowledge (Metaphysics and 'dialectics') out of less than thin air.
E10: Blair is a man.
Just as scientists study the material world, so it seemed Philosophers could study this hidden world of Super-Facts, Super-Laws, 'Essences', 'abstractions', and 'necessities'.29
Of course, Traditional Philosophers (and their latter-day, conservative progeny -- Marxist Dialecticians) paid no heed to the actual use of general words in everyday language. They had excellent, class-motivated reasons for ignoring the vernacular. [What these are will be explored in Essay Twelve (summary here).] Unfortunately, DM-Traditionalists also had excellent (but this time entirely petty-bourgeois) reasons for emulating this approach. [They have been exposed in Essay Nine Part Two. This ideologically-, and politically-motivated re-configuration of predicative propositions was in fact something to which the early Marx and Engels themselves drew attention (on that, see Note 30 and Part Two).]
Nevertheless, the alleged validity of moves like this were (and still are) 'justified' by the endless stream of 'philosophical knowledge' they seemed capable of generating. The fact that Traditional Theorists in effect managed to do this on the cheap, so the speak -- without having to bother with all those expensive, time-wasting experiments, or, indeed, without having to bother with prosaic facts that had been 'sullied' by their contact with vulgar "appearances", or, indeed, without having to take account of the constraints that social life places on language and communication -- was, of course, an added bonus.
The profound ramifications of this philosophical wrong-turn needn't concern us here, but it is possible to highlight the effect it has had on DM by revealing how the misconstrual of the "is" of predication as the "is" of identity expressed itself more locally, on the dogmatic theory dialecticians, en masse, then imposed on the world.
In fact, as will soon become clear: this linguistic dodge motivated, and still motivates, practically every single DM-theory.
Indeed, this move lies at the heart of the metaphysical beast, for here we have exposed the source of Dialectical Marxism's Dilithium Crystals.
[Apologies for that mixed metaphor!]
Dialectics Emerges From Logical Confusion
First, the Identity Theory of Predication is central to Hegel's criticism of the LOI (details can be found here and in Appendix E), whereby he deliberately conflated the LOI ("stated negatively") with the truth-functional implications that hold between contradictory propositions (i.e., he intentionally confused it with the LOC). This egregious mix-up 'allowed' him to 'derive' a spurious contradiction from the 'negative form' of the LOI and that in turn 'enabled' him to galvanise and energise his Ideal Universe by means of the double negation of the results of these mix-ups. But, these moves were only possible because of the systematic confusion of predicate expressions and predicates themselves with Proper Names, relations, objects, abstractions, concepts and an entire litany of other Hegelian oddities.
[UO = Unity of Opposites; LOI = Law of Identity; LOC = Law of Non-contradiction.]
As we are about to see, Hegel, like other Traditional Theorists, confused predicate expressions (which are artefacts of language) with extra-linguistic objects, relations and concepts, thereby conflating talk about talk with talk about the world. This then 'enabled' him to think that if he was able to think something -- i.e., 'dialectically' develop certain 'concepts' via a series of 'negations' -- then the universe itself must run on those lines, too. It was but a short step from there for him to conclude that his thought processes were actually an expression of the development of 'Reality'/'Being'/'God'. That would, of course, mean he was as deluded as those poor souls who think they are 'god'.
[And we think it wise to take philosophical and logic advise from this confused individual?!]
If there is no difference between a proposition, for instance, and its supposed object -- or, rather, if there is no difference between a proposition and the Proper Name of an object -- it became 'natural' to think that a contradiction alleged to exist between two propositions also expressed a relation between two objects or processes so referenced. As a result of such false steps these objects/processes were now said to be in 'dialectical' union or 'tension' with one another. This wrong turn is indeed the source of all those DM-'contradictions', which were no longer seen as purely linguistic expressions, but as objects/processes/relation -- even opposing forces -- in their own right. Talk about talk again confused with talk about the world.
[Much of the above, and what follows, will only be fully understood by those who have read this and this, parts of which have been reproduced in Appendix E.]
Moreover, when predication is conflated with the identity relation -- or, when the "is" of predication is reconfigured as an "is" of identity --, it becomes easy to claim that an object is now only its 'essential' self when it is put into a special sort of relation with its unique Hegelian 'other' -- its internally-linked 'opposite', which 'other' often turned out to be whatever was given a Proper Name by the back end of a suitably doctored proposition -- i.e., but only after it had been 'dialectically processed' by Hegel.
This move now fed into the belief that:
(i) Reality itself is fundamentally contradictory,
(ii) Everything in existence is a UO, comprised of a given object or process and its dialectically-linked 'other',
which then morphed into the dogma that,
(iii) All 'true knowledge' is of the 'infinite', expressed by whatever these doctored predicates were now supposed to 'designate'.
As we will also see, this not only motivated the thesis that,
(iv) Everything is interconnected,
but also the dogma that,
(v) Motion and change are inherent properties of matter,
as well as the idea that,
(vi) There are in fact no genuine falsehoods, just closer approximations to Absolute Truth,
and hence the doctrine that,
(vii) 'Truth is the Whole',
and then finally the belief that,
(viii) 'Freedom' is just the dialectical flip-side of 'necessity'.
From this seemingly insignificant logical blunder, a whole web of DM-theses were spun, which were then woven into a complex, 'mystical tapestry' by generations of diligent dialectical digits.
Behind all this ran the parallel idea that,
(ix) 'The process of abstraction' is what 'enables' each adept to make a series of surprisingly easy discoveries concerning fundamental aspects of reality -- but generated from thought alone -- without leaving the comfort of their non-dialectical armchairs.
So, the 'historic' discovery that the universe is populated with, and hence powered by, 'contradictions' wasn't based on experiment, observation, or any of the sciences -- nor yet on the practice of a revolutionary party --, but on this Hegelian logical blunder! The confusion of predicate expressions with the Proper Names of abstract particulars, and the "is" of predication with the "is" of identity, is the real source of the entire DM-menagerie.
Theses From Thought, Dogma From Daydreams
As we have seen, the traditional approach to philosophical 'knowledge' was founded on the following four guiding ideas:
(1) Reality is populated with "essences", hidden 'beneath appearances', which underpin every material object and process in existence. Allied with this is the dogma that the universe has an underlying 'rational' structure, and that 'reality' (logically and not accidentally) depends on this structure -- something that can be apprehended by the application of thought alone.
(2) When viewed in the 'right way', general terms are in fact disguised Proper Names, of which a select sub-group designate these "essences".
(3) Ordinary words are totally unsuitable for expressing these deeper, essential, 'philosophical truths' -- even if they dimly hint at them (when they have been suitably doctored by the 'process of abstraction', a psychological faculty allegedly possessed by, or exercised in, the 'mind', and helpfully identified for us without the use of a single experiment, set of observations or even a consulting couch!). A more muscular approach to theory is therefore required so that "speculative thought" is capable of 'allowing' Traditional Theorists to gain (easy) access to the 'hidden secrets' governing and inter-linking these 'essences' -- the results of which are (miraculously) valid for all of space and time. Unfortunately, these Cosmic Verities can't be apprehended by the senses, which means that this approach to knowledge lies ways beyond inspection or confirmation, and hence it is free from democratic control. Despite this, these 'essences' definitely exist -- or, so Traditional Philosophers would have us believe -- which is a doctrine that was 'substantiated', not by scientific evidence or research, but by the use of incomprehensible jargon.
(4) Although the existence of these 'cosmic verities' can't be confirmed by any known physical means, that just shows they are more fundamental than anything accessible to the senses, and so their existence can only be 'verified' by indirect, purely 'rational' means. While we can't see them, or detect them in any way, shape or form, the logical structure of our sentences tells us they are more real than any of the material objects and processes in the world around us, or even those studied by the sciences. We know this by a 'law of cognition', or 'the light of reason'.
No problem there then...
Naturally, this means that these "essences", these 'abstractions', have had to be imposed on nature and society.30
Normally (i.e., to a normal, materially-grounded human being -- like, say, a worker) the occurrence of the word "is" in everyday sentences would usually herald an incipient description, ascription, or predication –- i.e., it would suggest to that ordinary individual that someone was about to say something about someone or something, such as: "The boss is a crook", "This strike is too passive", or "The Morning Star is out today".
Plainly, these sentences don't mean that The Morning Star is identical with whatever it is that is out today, or that the boss is identical with a crook! (Which one?) Or even that the boss is identical (or, indeed, is and is not identical) with the 'Essence of Crook'!
[For example, "The Morning Star is out today" is true under different circumstances to "The Morning Star is identical with whatever it is that is out today." The Tory Daily Telegraph is out on the same days as the Morning Star, so it too will always be "out today". And yet the Morning Star isn't identical with the Daily Telegraph. Hence, when "The Morning Star is out today" is true "The Morning Star is identical with whatever it is that is out today" will be false. So, the second sentence isn't a paraphrase of the first.]
Except under the influence of a mind-altering drug, or quart bottle of vodka, why would anyone conclude that the second example above means that the said strike was identical with too passive?!
[Resist the temptation to laugh at this point, but there is one deeply devoted dialectical disciple who does think this of the boss, that he is identical with a crook --, for example, check this out! -- and he maintained that rather odd belief even after his error had been exposed for all to see. Worse still, three years later he still thinks this! (Read the sorry tale here, along with my reply.)]
Sentences like these wouldn't be interpreted as some sort of hint that there was a profound philosophical truth hidden somewhere in the linguistic undergrowth only capable of being uncovered by a posse of suitably-trained philosophical word-jugglers and predicate-manglers.
Indeed, predication itself wouldn't normally be taken to be directed at the unearthing of a Pandora's Box of hidden "essences" that supposedly underlie appearances, and which may only be winkled-out by the use of a super-duper "is" of identity. Of course, that is plainly why no ordinary speaker would come up with such an implausible 'theory', but it is why, in its modern and most sophisticated form, only an arch Idealist and Hermetic Harebrain (Hegel) would actually do that -- and be praised for it by those who claim to be materialists!
In stark contrast, and on the basis of (1)-(4) above, only those who have a far less secure grip on material reality than ordinary humans -- i.e., ruling-class hacks, Traditional Philosophers, and, on the 'left', LCDs and HCDs -- will conclude that they alone can with ease spot such coded messages mysteriously buried in our everyday sentences. All they have to do is "reflect" on them, re-write them in their 'correct' logical form, and the need to test the resulting 'propositions' with repeatable experiments can conveniently be side-stepped.
[LCD = Low Church Dialectician; HCD = High Church Dialectician; follow the above links for an explanation.]
Of course, such easy moves were originally performed (in the Ancient World) by those who enjoyed more leisure time than is good for any human being.
In this way then, it seemed plain to this exclusive band of intrepid abstractors that each diminutive "is" always hides an identity that expressed a relation between an individual and an invisible "essence", camouflaged behind an otherwise innocent-looking outer façade -- the union of a letter "i" with a letter "s" (or other diminutive letters in different languages) --, to form the truly magical word, "is".
For ease of reference it might be helpful to call this approach to discourse and its handy connection with 'philosophical knowledge': "Language Implies Essence" -- or LIMPE, for short.31
The disastrous impact on dialectics of this retreat from the material-world into a LIMPE-esque, parallel universe may best be appreciated by considering the use dialecticians themselves have made of the following overworked sentence (in this case, taken from Lenin):
H1: John is a man.31b
Given LIMPE, H1 isn't just saying something about John, as only 'vulgar materialists' would rashly conclude. Far from it; it alerts The Philosopher -- nay The Dialectician --, to a hidden relation that exists between two named entities -- John and the abstract universal, Man (Humanity, Mankind, or Manhood -- depending on which strain of Traditional Myth-making a given theorist is trying to promote). But, since it isn't possible to predicate one individual thing of another, the original predication must be reconfigured in the above manner, so that it now becomes an ascription of one or more of the following:
(A) A class membership relation between an individual and a named group, class, category, collection or set.
(B) An identity relation between a named individual and another particular, individual or 'general' concept, class, category, collection or set (picked out by a Proper Name or some other singular term).
(C) An identity relation between two classes, groups, concepts or ideas.
(D) A partial or complete 'containment' relation between subject and predicate terms, or sets and elements of the same.32
Ever since Plato and Aristotle's set this band-wagon rolling, metaphysicians of every stripe have seized on one or more of the above as the 'correct' analysis of a superficially simple sentence like H1 -- a form of words, it is worth noting, that wouldn't even puzzle a working-class child.32a
Indeed, it takes an expensive education and years of training -- or leisure -- to misconstrue ordinary language so comprehensibly.
[FL = Formal Logic; LOI = Law of Identity.]
For DM-fans, one or more of the above alternatives also motivates the allegation that FL is based on the LOI.
The reasoning behind this appears to be something like the following:
(1) Predications are disguised identity statements.
[Some might object that only certain predications -- so-called 'essential predications' -- are identity statements. I have dealt with that objection below, here and here, as well as in Appendix D. The example that Hegel himself used, "The rose is red", is by no means an 'essential predication.]
(2) But, identity statements can't adequately reflect changing reality since they attribute unchanging natures to objects, or at least to the relations that exist between them. In the present case, this would involve the relation that supposedly exists between John and 'Manhood', or, indeed, the Rose and 'Redness'. So, ordinary language, 'commonsense' and 'formal thinking' plainly put objects and processes into unchanging categories.
(3) Ordinary discourse and FL are therefore defective (at least at this level of dialectical analysis, even though they are perfectly adequate in their own limited sphere, everyday life) That is because they are based on the idea that things don't change; they attribute "this" or "that" unchanging property to objects and processes, asserting, for example, that John is identical to a universal, 'Manhood'.
[Quotations from the DM-classics and 'lesser' DM-clones that express the above ideas can be accessed here.]
The argument continues:
(4) What I have called 'Spinoza's Greedy Principle' [SGP -- which neither Hegel nor Spinoza even attempted to justify] is now called into action, as a result of which we are informed that every determination is also a negation. [On this, see Note 33, and Appendix D. I have debunked the SGP here and here.]
(5) So, a correct 'dialectical' analysis of propositions like H1 reveals the following, deeper truth: ordinary language vaguely alludes to an identity between subject and predicate names (or the objects they supposedly designate; as noted above, Hegel continually mixes the two up, and so do his latter-day groupies, DM-theorists). But, this can't be correct, because no particular can be identical to a universal. This then leads "speculative reason" 'dialectically' to the opposite conclusion that the subject of such an ascription of identity (i.e., "John"), or what its name designates (in this case, John) isn't and can't be identical with the said predicate (now interpreted as a named abstract particular). So, in reality John can't be identical with this predicate, or with what it 'names' (i.e., John isn't identical with 'Man', or 'Manhood'). 'Thought' is thus led (by Spinoza's Principle) to the negation of this putative identity (via H1a and H1b).
H1: John is a man.
H1a: John is identical with Manhood.
H1b: John is not identical with Manhood.
H1c: John is not not identical with Manhood.
(6) But, this, too, can't be the entire truth, since John is essentially a man -- in which sense he is identified by his essence. This leads 'thought' back in the opposite conclusion, once more, to the negation of the former negation, yielding the final result that John is not not identical with Manhood (i.e., H1c) -- which now means that all of the concepts involved in this word-play are understood in a new and more 'determinate' light. This astounding conclusion now expresses an 'essential' truth about John -- and, indeed, about everything else in the entire universe, since a similar 'analysis' will reveal that every object and process is essentially connected with its own unique Hegelian 'other', in a negative and then in a 'doubly negative' sort of way, along similar lines. This 'liberating analysis' isn't available to those who are trapped either by 'formal thinking' or 'commonsense'. Or, of course, those who just don't 'understand' dialectics.
(7) So, not only is "thought" driven to opposite poles in its bid to differentiate an object like John from all others (and this we are told necessarily involves, in every single case, negativity -- that is because, clearly, John is not Peter, not Fred, not Tarquin…, neither is he a mountain, a planet, a coffee mug, a toilet plunger, a meteorite...), "thought" is then forced to conclude that no individual object could be identical with a universal. In that case, John is not mankind. But, as we saw, a further consideration of his 'concept', his 'essence', tells us he is also not not-mankind, which means his original identity needs revising -- or, made more 'determinate'.
(8) John is thus made 'determinate' by negation -- as is everything else. In which case, the whole determines the part and the part determines the whole, via negativity.
(9) Hey presto, it is now 'obvious' that everything in existence has negativity (or 'difference') programmed into it, simply because dialectically-'enhanced' subject-predicate propositions reveal this hidden truth to those with the eyes to see -- and it is this negativity which powers the entire universe.
The Big Bang from the Big Re-write.
Which is why this approach to 'logic' was earlier said to be the source of the Dialectical Dilithium Crystals: by these means DM-Superscience was 'powered by little other than Sloppy Syntax. No wonder then that HCDs think "negativity" has "power" -- indeed, rather like Satan, Shiva and Ahriman of Mystical Theology. This is just one more (ancient) ruling-idea that still rules.
LIMPE thus encourages dialecticians to draw the conclusion that not only do our words and concepts contain contradictions (John is identical with, not identical with, and then not not-identical with, "Manhood"), concepts themselves clearly change as a result of 'internal developments' like this -- but only if "Reason" is allowed to reprocesses them "dialectically", at a higher level. This 'logical development' reflects parallel changes in Ideal Reality. Or, even better: when this 'development' has been given a 'materialist flip', it supposedly reflects changes that take place across the entire universe independently of thought.
So, John is now not not-identical with "Manhood"; in fact John is now a NON-person; the NON powers him along -- he is a 'self-developing' being.
[On the serious, if not fatal, difficulties these ideas create for dialecticians, see Essay Eight Part One.]
[NON = Negation of the Negation.]
This means that 'concepts' and processes not only have 'negativity', and hence "movement", built into them, they develop as "new content" emerges, courtesy of the irrepressible NON. This in turn implies that things and processes (now irrevocably confused with words) possess "identity-in-difference" [IED], instead of plain and simple material identity.
After having been suitably processed (i.e., Dialectically Mangled), all our words have dialectics built into them, or so the DM-Cliff Notes tell us. And it is this that 'allows', nay encourages, even requires dialecticians impose their doctrines on nature and society -- and then pretend they haven't done just that!
However, because ordinary language resists such 'moves' it is accused of being limited, paradox-friendly, dominated by 'commonsense' and 'formal' or 'static' thinking.
[In fact, as we will see, this is the exact opposite of the truth.]
So, when H1:
H1: John is a man,
is examined in more detail, in a "speculative" sort of way, free from the usual constraints social interaction places on the use of language -- hence, if 'Reason' is alienated from social being, if language "goes on holiday" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) -- and we re-write H1 as H1a, we may now 'rightly' conclude that John couldn't possibly be identical with all men.
H1d: John is identical with Man.
From there it is but a short hop and step to the 'derivation' of the aforementioned dialectical contradiction -- for, according to H1b, John both is and isn't identical with all men, the same and yet different from the pack. But, because of the NON, he is also not not-identical with all men; he is thus identical and not identical with his own 'other' (H1c), his Ideal alter-ego --, which is an artificial abstraction that has no material correlate, conjured into existence courtesy of the garbled 'logic' imported from the scribblings of a Hare-Brained Hermetic Mystic.
H1: John is a man.
H1a: John is identical with Manhood.
H1b: John is not identical with Manhood.
H1c: John is not not identical with Manhood.
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
This now traps the hapless John in the dialectical machinery, a super-charged contraption that also powers the rest of the universe, since he is now a UO, a unity of Identity and Difference. As a result of the logical properties LIMPE has imposed on him he must of necessity undergo dialectical change, an inter-galactic process into which he has now been press-ganged.
This is the key to understanding the self-movement of everything in existence, according to Lenin:
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing…." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Bold emphasis alone added.]
However -- and to spoil the metaphysical merriment --, the only evidential support this creative word-juggling has ever enjoyed is this ambitious re-write of ordinary language predicative sentences that use the verb "to be", the inner 'logic' of which itself depends on a crass misreading the surface grammar of a rather unimportant sub-set of sentences found only in the Indo-European family of languages -- and nothing more!
You just couldn't make this up.
Except, you needn't bother; Hegel and his groupies have already done that for you.
[1] - The Totality And Universal Interconnection
Several other myth-begotten creatures of DM-lore owe their existence to this syntactical surgery -- for instance, the mysterious "Totality". A reading of the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity motivates the idea that everything must be interconnected.
The 'reasoning' goes something like this:
(1) If, as in H1-H1c below, John is both identical and not identical with a universal, and this universal has the infinite built into it (otherwise it wouldn't be a universal), then John is only himself when he is viewed in infinite dialectical connection with everything else of the 'same' sort.
(2) If John is now put in a similar relation with all the predicates applicable to him (including all the negative examples expressed in propositions like "John is not Blair", or "John is not the Pope", "John is not an interstellar dust cloud", required by the SGP), then he is in fact only an individual of the sort he is because of the seemingly endless and infinite (negative or positive) connections he actually has with everything in existence (i.e., all those "mediacies" that Lenin spoke about), which connections give him his 'determinate' nature -- if we but knew what the latter was in all its infinite glory. That is why Engels said what he did about the "asymptotic" path to knowledge. Moreover, all these properties and relations are "internally related" to John -- not externally, or contingently, but 'logically' -- every last one guaranteed by the alleged import of a re-configured participle of the diminutive verb, "to be", namely "is".
H1: John is a man.
H1a: John is identical with Manhood.
H1b: John is not identical with Manhood.
H1c: John is not not identical with Manhood.
(3) By these means John assumes truly cosmic significance; the whole of reality is linked to him and makes him what he is, essentially. Not only that, but everything else is conditioned in like manner by John in return. John is now at the centre of an intricate web of identities and differences spanning right across all that exists, for all of time. This unassuming individual is now situated at the very heart the meaning universe -- and so is everyone and so is everything else. All of reality defines John, all of reality is what gives meaning to his existence and substance to his nature, and he returns the favour to all that exists (the part is determined by the whole and the whole by the part). To that extent, all of 'Being' depends on him, and he depends on all of 'Being' in return. "As above, so below", as the old Hermetic saying put things. [On that, see below.]
And all this from a single sentence written in Indo-European grammar!
Who'd have thunk it?
Even so, one small step for John is a huge step for mankind. Innovative logic like this can't be confined, corralled or restricted to just one individual; it has quite expansive, if not imperialist aspirations as humanity itself now assumes universal significance. The fate of our entire species now takes centre stage in John's meaning universe (and not just his) -- the fate of every last atom of which is 'determined' by the semi-Divine Logic built into 'reality' courtesy of DL. Hence, whatever happens to John, or to humanity, is interconnected with everything in existence, and vice versa. Indeed, each of us has our cosmic role assigned to us by such linguistic flummery: as above, so below:
"This phrase comes from the beginning of The Emerald Tablet and embraces the entire system of traditional and modern magic which was inscribed upon the tablet in cryptic wording by Hermes Trismegistus. The significance of this phrase is that it is believed to hold the key to all mysteries. All systems of magic are claimed to function by this formula. 'That which is above is the same as that which is below'...Macrocosmos is the same as microcosmos....
"To the magician the magical act, that of causing a
transformation in a thing or things without any physical contact, is
accomplished by an imaginative act accompanied by the will that the wanted
change will occur. [A quintessentially Maoist idea, too -- RL.] The magical act and imaginative act becomes one and the same.
The magician knows with certainty that for the change to occur he must will it
to happen and firmly believe it will happen. Here it may be noted that magic and
religion are akin: both require belief that a miracle will occur. [Or, indeed, a
'great
leap forward' -- RL.]
"To bring about such a change the magician uses the conception of 'dynamic
interconnectedness to describe the physical world as the sort of thing that
imagination and desire can effect. The magician's world is an independent
whole, a web of which no strand is autonomous. Mind and body, galaxy and atom,
sensation and stimulus, are intimately bound. Witchcraft strongly imbues the
view that all things are independent and interrelated.' These concepts pivot
on the belief that all things come from the One Thing, or First Cause, and 'Its
power is integrating, if it be turned into earth.'" [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Links added.]
"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 (2008), p.13. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged. More on this here and here.]
[DL = Dialectical Logic; LIE = Linguistic Idealism; UO = Unity of Opposites.]
[2] - The Unity Of Opposites
Not only is John related to the Whole, he is what he is because of that dialectically-enhanced diminutive verb, "is", which implies he both is and is not identical (and then not not-identical) with an infinite concept.33 Indeed, and in this way, every person, atom, and microscopic speck in the entire universe, every process in nature and society, for all of time, has assigned to it its rightful, 'mediated' place in the Infinite Whole. Every single object and process is identical with, and not identical with, and then not not-identical with its unique Hegelian 'other', guaranteed by a 'logic' that smuggled identity into sentences in place of boring old predication.
H1: John is a man.
H1a: John is identical with Manhood.
H1b: John is not identical with Manhood.
H1c: John is not not identical with Manhood.
As Lenin noted:
"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is that each different thing, each particular, is different from another, not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion....' Quite right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite." [Lenin (1961), p.260. Bold emphasis alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995a), pp.278-98; this particular quotation coming from p.285. Lenin was clearly using a slightly different translation.]
Indeed, as Hegel argued, this idea is integral to his doctrine of reflection:
"Difference as such contains its two sides as moments; in diversity they fall indifferently apart; in opposition as such, they are sides of the difference, one being determined only by the other, and therefore only moments; but they are no less determined within themselves, mutually indifferent and mutually exclusive: the self-subsistent determinations of reflection.
"One is the positive, the other the negative, but the former as the intrinsically positive, the latter as the intrinsically negative. Each has an indifferent self-subsistence of its own through the fact that it has within itself the relation to its other moment; it is thus the whole, self-contained opposition. As this whole, each is mediated with itself by its other and contains it. But further, it is mediated with itself by the non-being of its other; thus it is a unity existing on its own and it excludes the other from itself.
"The self-subsistent determination of reflection that contains the opposite determination, and is self-subsistent in virtue of this inclusion, at the same time also excludes it; in its self-subsistence, therefore, it excludes from itself its own self-subsistence. For this consists in containing within itself its opposite determination -- through which alone it is not a relation to something external -- but no less immediately in the fact that it is itself, and also excludes from itself the determination that is negative to it. It is thus contradiction.
"Difference as such is already implicitly contradiction; for it is the unity of sides which are, only in so far as they are not one -- and it is the separation of sides which are, only as separated in the same relation. But the positive and negative are the posited contradiction because, as negative unities, they are themselves the positing of themselves, and in this positing each is the sublating of itself and the positing of its opposite. They constitute the determining reflection as exclusive; and because the excluding of the sides is a single act of distinguishing and each of the distinguished sides in excluding the other is itself the whole act of exclusion, each side in its own self excludes itself.
"If we consider the two determinations of reflection on their own, then the positive is positedness as reflected into likeness to itself, positedness that is not a relation to an other, a subsistence, therefore, in so far as positedness is sublated and excluded. But with this, the positive makes itself into the relation of a non-being -- into a positedness. It is thus the contradiction that, in positing identity with itself by excluding the negative, it makes itself into the negative of what it excludes from itself, that is, makes itself into its opposite. This, as excluded, is posited as free from that which excludes it, and therefore as reflected into itself and as itself exclusive. The exclusive reflection is thus a positing of the positive as excluding its opposite, so that this positing is immediately the positing of its opposite which it excludes.
"This is the absolute contradiction of the positive, but it is immediately the absolute contradiction of the negative; the positing of each is a single reflection. The negative, considered on its own over against the positive, is positedness as reflected into unlikeness to itself, the negative as negative. But the negative is itself the unlike, the non-being of an opposite; therefore its reflection into its unlikeness is rather its relation to itself. Negation in general is the negative as quality, or immediate determinateness; but the negative as negative, is related to the negative of itself, to its opposite. If this negative is only taken as identical with the first, then it, too, like the first, is merely immediate; and so they are not taken as mutual opposites and therefore not as negatives; the negative is not an immediate at all. But now, since it is also just as much a fact that each is the same as its opposite, this relation of the unlike is just as much their identical relation.
"This is therefore the same contradiction that the positive is, namely, positedness or negation as self-relation. But the positive is only implicitly this contradiction, whereas the negative is the contradiction posited; for the latter, in virtue of its reflection-into-self which makes it a negative in and for itself or a negative that is identical with itself, is accordingly determined as a non-identical, as excluding identity. The negative is this, to be identical with itself in opposition to identity, and consequently, through its excluding reflection to exclude itself from itself.
"The negative is, therefore, the whole opposition based, as opposition, on itself, absolute difference that is not related to an other; as opposition, it excludes identity from itself -- but in doing so excludes itself; for as self-relation it is determined as the very identity that it excludes.
"...Contradiction resolves itself. In the self-excluding reflection we have just considered, positive and negative, each in its self-subsistence, sublates itself; each is simply the transition or rather the self-transposition of itself into its opposite. This ceaseless vanishing of the opposites into themselves is the first unity resulting from contradiction...." [Hegel (1999), pp.433, §931-939. Bold emphases alone added. This continues in mind-numbing, brain-cell-crunching fashion for another ten pages! Only masochists should read any further.]
[This topic is explored more extensively in Essays Seven Part Three and Eight Part Three.]
This view of reality pictures the logical structure of sentences mirroring the logical 'essence' of 'Being'; everything is simultaneously both at the centre of an infinite web of relations and at its periphery; all are at once insignificant and all are at the same time cosmically important (a 'unity of opposites'). Part and Whole are interlinked, inter-determining and inter-defining one another.34
Moreover, while John isn't all of mankind, he is somehow dialectically united with every human being by their shared 'essence'. This fact allows necessity and contingency to enter into the picture. Hence, John is contingently a man (in that he is this particular person); but he is also necessarily a man because an abstract universal so identifies him as such and constitutes his essence. John is in fact a UO -- he is both man and non-man (i.e., while he is plainly not all men, he shares an 'essence' with all men), revealing his 'essence' as identity-in-difference.
[3] - Necessity And Contingency
However, the essential nature of each particular (such as John) isn't immediately apparent to any of our senses. Nevertheless, while the logical properties fundamental to each individual might appear to be expressed by an "is" of predication, those with a 'dialectical third eye' can 'see' that predicative sentences are in fact identity statements -- something that 'speculative reason' alone is capable of revealing by the simple expedient of examining -- and then changing -- the logical structure of a few innocent-looking sentences. Of course, the rest of humanity -- those lost in a fog of 'formal thinking' -- well, they just don't "understand" dialectics.
This means that John is in reality other than he seems: John's material properties only appear to be contingently interrelated to those of other objects and processes around him. This misperception is either the result of a 'commonsense' failure to see things 'in the abstract' -- i.e., essentially --, or because of a failure to connect the abstract with the concrete in dialectical union/tension.34a
But, below the surface, where neither human sight nor scientific equipment can penetrate, the necessary connections that exist between individuals and universals may easily be ascertained -- only if they are viewed in the right manner (i.e., 'essentially' and 'dialectically', but, manifestly, not materially).
Indeed, those connections are revealed to each DM-adept, not by observation and experiment, but by the 'careful' dialectical analysis of a suitably 'doctored' sentence about John!
DM-wizards, well-versed in these esoteric arts, are now uniquely placed to unmask cosmic-wide truths lying 'below the surface'; verities unavailable to lesser souls who stumble around, lost in a haze of 'static thought', whose ideas are dominated by that truly awful intellectual bully, the "abstract understanding" -- an aspect of the human psyche unknown to the psychological sciences, even to this day.
By these means, dialectical acolytes can now extrapolate from nouns to necessity, and concepts to contingency, arguing that both of these govern all of reality. That is because -- sure as eggs both are and aren't eggs -- a covert reference to the now de-personified Greek gods, Moira and Tyche (Fate and Luck, Necessity and Contingency) had all along been buried in language, had we but known it.
However, no one is quite sure who managed to hide such super-facts in the vernacular, since they have been buried so deep that only those who have quaffed the dialectical Kool Aid are capable of discovering them for the rest of humanity. Who could have guessed they could be unearthed by inspecting innocent-looking linguistic facts about 'John' and his 'Manhood', expressed in a soporifically banal sentence about 'him'? Who could have guessed that the 'logical force' of negation, which has very helpfully been revealed to us by DM-fans, controlled him and every last one of us -- as well as the most distant galaxies in the universe?
However, it isn't too clear whether or not this 'hidden force' only began to control us when some bright spark first came out with tokens of the following type-sentence: "(Insert your favourite name here) is a man" -- just as it isn't too clear if the universe is controlled in this way only if a sexist sentence that mentions John, but not Joan, is chosen -- and one of both are related to "man", but not "woman".
The conundrum that counterposes chance to necessity is, therefore, no sooner posed than solved by innovative logic like this, which is able to map-out everything in the entire universe, employing the Hermetic jargon found in a book with no maps, and even less genuine logic, written by that arch-mystic Hegel. John's local nature, and all that happens to him (and every atom in his body) throughout his life is 'determined' by these universe-wide 'essences', although he is at the same time 'free' because of his subsumption under cosmic 'law' -- this 'contradiction' paradoxically 'solved' by its merely being called a 'contradiction'!
[On this 'get-out-of-jail-free' card, see here.]
Through all of this, dialecticians imagine they are actually examining reality itself, and not just the supposed implications of a handful of doctored sentences, or 'concepts', supposedly about seemingly insignificant parts of it. As noted earlier -- and contrary to what one might have expected of those who still claim to have the word "materialist" somewhere in their job description -- expert 'dialectical insight' like this isn't based on careful empirical work; it is the result of the exercise of a rare gift, the ability to view an ordinary indicative sentence in two distinct ways at the same time:
(a) Superficially, comprised of a subject and a predicate -- mirroring the surface appearance of things, which is adequate enough for materially-bound individuals, every day life, and those who take language at face value -- such as, say, workers -- but certainly not for 'philosophers', who know better.
And:
(b) More profoundly, as an identity statement that reveals the underlying identity-in-difference at work in all objects and processes, and which reflects the abstract/concrete nature of reality --, 'knowledge' of which is the special preserve of our very own, self-appointed, Dialectical Superscientists (i.e., those with the dialectical equivalent of 'Second Sight').
Hence, a sort of intellectual gestalt-switch operates in each dialectically-tuned mind, which allows those suitably blessed to hop back and forth between two differing interpretations of the word "is", as it features in this tiny sub-set of sentences, found in just one family of languages.
Given the truth of LIE, language thus contains a secret code that conceals an even bigger cosmic secret -- the DM-equivalent of the Kabbalah, or even The True Bible Code.35
Dialectics, far from being an "Algebra of Revolution", is much more an "Abracadabra of Confusion".
Guilty As Charged
Engels Nails His Colours To An 'Ideal' Mast
The linguistic hocus pocus described in earlier sections of this Essay represents the real dialectical "path of cognition" -- the 'philosophical pilgrimage' toward enlightenment along which path all aspiring novices must pass at least once in their lives, the DM-equivalent of The Hajj. It has nothing to do with the mythical 'process of abstraction' touted by the official DM-brochure.
This isn't just my say-so; the above allegation is easily confirmed by a consideration of the following passages from the DM-classics:
"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the 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…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), pp.457-58, and Marx and Engels (2004), pp.463-64. Bold emphases added.]
"'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.234-35. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]
"Abstract identity (a=a; and negatively, a cannot be simultaneously equal and unequal to a) is likewise inapplicable in organic nature. The plant, the animal, every cell is at every moment of its life identical with itself and yet becoming distinct from itself.... The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate there is something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject…. That from the outset identity with itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is self-evident." [Ibid., pp.214-15. Italic emphases in the original.]
Engels clearly saw no problem with his derivation of what look like scientific conclusions -- which apply to everything in existence -- from a re-configuration of the 'logical' structure of a handful of unrepresentative sentences: "the lily is a plant, the rose is red."
He also failed to notice that this approach conflicted with his own sharp criticism of Hegel's 'method':
"All three [laws -- RL] are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought." [Engels (1954), p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]
But this is precisely where Engels found this example of sub-Aristotelian 'logic'. There is no way he could have deduced these ideas from a scientific investigation of nature, only from an artificial 'analysis' of a tiny sub-set of sentences (the subject-copula-predicate form that takes an "is", found almost exclusively in the Indo-European family of languages), the conclusion then airily imposed on reality!
So, while Engels might have thought he was analysing nature in the raw, he was in fact reproducing Hegel's misguided interpretation of the logical properties of a un-important sub-section of Indo-European grammar. He even reproduced, unchanged, Hegel's own examples!
The fact that he was deluding himself can be seen by his use of the phrase "self-evident" in the last sentence of the second passage quoted above:
"Abstract identity (a=a; and negatively, a cannot be simultaneously equal and unequal to a) is likewise inapplicable in organic nature. The plant, the animal, every cell is at every moment of its life identical with itself and yet becoming distinct from itself.... The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate there is something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject…. That from the outset identity with itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is self-evident." [Ibid., pp.214-15. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Substantive truths about the world may be evident following upon an investigation that manages to find relevant evidence, but they can't be self-evident -- not unless they can attest for themselves.
In that case, Engels's use of the phrase "self-evident" was either an inappropriate hyperbole or it was an unconscious give-away. When something is self-evident it provides evidence on its own behalf; naturally, that would make it auto-interpreting and self-authenticating, implying that it is an agent of some sort, and therefore quasi-human. In fact, the phrase "self-evidence" is only rightly applicable if a deduction has been made (by a human being) from the supposed meaning of certain words, which is why no supporting evidence would be necessary. For example, no evidence is required to establish the 'truth' of, say, "A regicide is king-killer", or "A vixen is a female fox". Hence, this give-away tells us that Engels's conclusions follow from language and thought alone, not from evidence.
If Engels were serious in his use of this term -- and it must be recalled that this passage comes from unpublished notebooks, so they might not represent his more considered thoughts --, it would reveal just how deep his Idealism had sunk into his thought, as George Novack and Maurice Cornforth pointed out:
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
"Our party philosophy, then, has a right to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just as they are…without disguises and without fantasy…. Marxism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a 'system' as previous philosophers have done, and then try to make everything fit into it…." [Cornforth (1976), pp.14-15. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]
However, in that earlier passage, Engels appears to attribute intelligence to linguistic expressions and not just to the humans who employ them:
"The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate there is something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject…. That from the outset identity with itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is self-evident." [Engels (1954), pp.214-15. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Self-evidence, as noted above, emerges (if or when it does) from a 'conceptual' or linguistic analysis of certain words, phrases or propositions, for which extraneous evidence is irrelevant -- as our use of that term itself suggests ("self-evident"). Now this rather strict epistemological condition -- self-evidence -- could only be satisfied if the linguistic expression itself were tautological, or where, perhaps, it might even strike its appraiser as a trivial, linguistic 'truth'. So, if things were as Engels airily asserted, then nature could only contain self-evident truths if it were a huge tautology, if it had trivially-true sentences plastered all over it, or if it were itself language-, or concept-like (as indeed Ancient Theologians supposed it to be, well over two thousand years ago).
However, nature isn't made of subjects and predicates, nor has it been fly-posted with trivially-true indicative sentences by a mischievous agent acting under orders from 'Being Itself'. Engels surely knew this. The only conclusion possible, therefore, is that he, too, had been seduced by LIMPE -- as also seems to have been the case with all subsequent dialecticians.
[LIMPE = Language Implies Essence -- explained earlier.]
Be this as it may, and as we will see here, the "self-evidence" to which Engels refers is in fact the exact opposite. Another rather fitting 'dialectical inversion' for readers to ponder.
Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks contain similar passages that illustrate the 'power' of 'innovative' Hegelian 'logic'. A particularly good example (and one which almost single-handedly commits all of the dialectical sins outlined earlier) is the following:
"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.359-60. Bold and italic emphases in the original; paragraphs merged.]
Admittedly, Lenin did go on to mention the general support the sciences provided for this rather odd view of language, but he failed to say how a finitely large body of evidence (even if he had produced any, which he didn't) could possibly confirm the truth of his sweeping generalisations. Nor did he even so much as try to account for the fact that his theory is based on a crass misreading of a diminutive verb found almost exclusively in the Indo-European family of languages -- which, of course, means that what he says can't be a "property of all human knowledge in general".36
For example -- and linguistic juggling to one side --, what confirmatory evidence could there possibly be for the following?
"[O]pposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc…. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence…." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
We needn't bother searching through the archives for the missing evidence since Lenin was quite open and honest about the real source of this dialectical flummery, it follows from Hegel's conclusions about what he says we say; it follows from language:
"Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized)…. [F]or when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
"Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the alternation, reciprocal dependence of all notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain connection with all the others." [Ibid., pp.196-97. Bold emphases alone added.]
Lenin is quite clear here: dialectics follows from the logical properties built into sentences, from what we say (or, rather from what Hegel says we say) -- not from a "careful" or scientific study of the world.
But, as we can now see, what Hegel and Lenin concluded doesn't even follow from a 'careful study' of what we do in fact say!
[The real source of all this Hegelian Hocus Pocus has been exposed here.]
Finally, this African America protester from the 1960s isn't pointing out that he is 'identical to a man' (why that is so is explained here):
Figure One: I Am A Man
Is Reality Covered With Dialectical Messages?
It could be objected that propositions are quite uncontroversially used to convey information; human cognition reflects reality accurately when this information is drawn from nature and society, tested in practice. Hence, it could be argued that Lenin was simply outlining the consequences of this uncontroversial fact, pointing out that the logical structure of language couldn't fail to mirror the deep structure of reality if language is part of the world, and part of our relation to that world and to one another. That being the case, human beings may legitimately infer substantive truths about the nature of reality from language, since nature's dialectical structure will already have been 'programmed' into discourse as a result of the interplay between cognition and practice, reflected in the use of language by countless generations of human beings.
Indeed, that was the crux of an argument published recently by a Maoist:
"Lenin claims that the statement 'John is a man' is already charged with contradiction. How? Here, the inclusion of mathematical symbols can assist us in understanding the scandal. Could we say that 'John is a man' translates to 'John=Man'? That would suggest that either the term 'John' or the term 'Man' really is superfluous, that it would suffice to say 'John is John' or 'Man is Man.' However, we know we are conveying something non-trivial. We are saying that John belongs to the category of man (we could use the logical symbol ϵ). Does this resolve the problem, though? From a more philosophical point of view, it is in fact correct to say that John is 'man,' for there is no 'man' in the abstract, and our abstract notion of 'man' is really only cobbled together from the common aspects of all individual men. Thus, it turns out that the simple relationship 'John is a man,' which we all understand, conveys a really complex notion: the identity of an identity (John=Man) and a non-identity (John≠Man), coexisting in contradiction. Dialectics is the appreciation that even the barest expression 'John is a man' is making an interesting argument!
"Marx says 'Capital is labour.' But, how can this be? Capital is the opposite of labour! So there Marx goes, explaining that capital is labour, via the commodity cycle. As it turns out, the mere expression of a contradictory relationship carries the implication that there exists a process whereby one can reach the other. This is how contradiction is deeply tied to change.
"The word 'change' is apt because really there are very many ways that one concept may turn into its opposite. Perspective determines whether we are still or in motion. Space determines whether a gesture is rude or polite. With time we see the living become the dying, and the dying give birth to the living." [Day (2019). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[Readers will no doubt have noticed that the validity of the above depends of the Identity Theory of Predication, which comrade Day nowhere even attempts to justify. It falls apart otherwise. Below I have analysed a more detailed, earlier rehash of the above argument (in Jackson (1936)), as well as several other points raised in Day's article itself later in this Essay.]
But, if that were so, why all the pretence that DM-theses are only acceptable if they have passed rigorous empirical examination, or have to be tested in practice? If truths about nature are so easily obtained -- that is, if they can be ascertained merely by examining the structure of a few sentences --, why all the pointless rigmarole of trying to deny that DM is a "master-key" that opens all doors to knowledge?
"Dialectics and materialism comprise the basic elements of the Marxist cognition of the world. But this by no means implies that they can be applied in any field of knowledge like an ever-ready master-key. The dialectic cannot be imposed on facts, it must be derived from the facts, from their nature and their development. Only painstaking work on boundless material gave Marx the ability to erect the dialectical system of economics on the concept of value as realized labour." [Trotsky (1973), p.233. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
"The dialectic is not a magic master key for all questions. It does not replace concrete scientific analysis. But it directs this analysis along the correct road, securing it against sterile wanderings in the desert of subjectivism and scholasticism." [Trotsky (1971), p.68.]
"[The laws of dialectics] are not, as Marx and Engels were quick to insist, a substitute for the difficult empirical task of tracing the development of real contradictions, not a suprahistorical master key whose only advantage is to turn up when no real historical knowledge is available." [Rees (1998), p.9.]
"'[The dialectic is not a] magic master key for all questions.' [Quoting Trotsky -- RL.] The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Ibid., p.271. In all of the above, bold emphases alone added.]
Here are several more DM-statements along the same lines:
"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976), p.13. Bold emphasis added.]
"We all agree that in every field of science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.
"Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line." [Engels (1954), p.47. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"In this way, however, the whole dogmatic content of the Hegelian system is declared to be absolute truth, in contradiction to his dialectical method, which dissolves all dogmatism...." [Engels (1888), p.589. Bold emphasis added.]
"But [Marx's] way of viewing things is not a doctrine but a method. It does not provide ready-made dogmas, but criteria for further research and the method for this research." [Engels to Werner Sombart, 11/03/1895; Marx and Engels (2004), p.461. Bold emphasis added.]
"Idealism and metaphysics are the easiest things in the world, because people can talk as much nonsense as they like without basing it on objective reality or having it tested against reality. Materialism and dialectics, on the other hand, need effort. They must be based on and tested by objective reality. Unless one makes the effort, one is liable to slip into idealism and metaphysics." [Mao, quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
"Precisely because Marx's dialectic is a materialist one, however, it does not start from intuition, preconceptions or mystifying schemes, but from a full assimilation of scientific data. The method of investigation must differ from the method of exposition. Empirical facts have to be gathered first, the given state of knowledge has to be fully grasped. Only when this is achieved can a dialectical reorganization of the material be undertaken in order to understand the given totality. If this is successful, the result is a 'reproduction' in man's thought of this material totality: the capitalist mode of production." [Mandel (1976), p19. Bold emphasis added. (This links to a PDF.)]
[Many more statements like these have been quoted in Essay Two.]
But, why is it that only a sub-set of all the indicative sentences that can be formed in just one family of languages contains these 'hidden clues'? And even then, why does the grammar of these sentences have to be altered (from the predicative-, to the relational-form) to make them say what Idealists, and now DM-fans, want it to say. And why do it in a way that actually destroys the capacity of language to say anything at all?
To be sure, if language does in fact contain such hidden truths about reality (programmed into its structure, say), then it could indeed serve as just such a 'master key', and there would be no quibble. We could as a result openly admit our Idealism, loud and proud -- i.e., admit that substantive truths are obtained from thought, or from language, alone. It would then at least be clear that DM is based, not on an inversion of Hegel, but on a wholesale reversion to Hegel.
Nevertheless, this picture of the relation between thought and language was in fact committed to paper (or, indeed, parchment) long before the required evidence had turned up; metaphysical chicanery like this dates back to Anaximander, reaching classical form in the writings of Greek Philosophers like Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, Pseudo-Dionysius and Iamblichus -- the original progenitors of DM. In their work, empirical evidence didn't (and couldn't) have featured, let alone have an impact. And that isn't just because there wasn't much to speak of all those years ago. Nor could evidence justify the idea that reality is mirrored in this way in or by discourse, or reveal that there are 'essences' hidden behind 'appearances', and then inform us that every object and process in the entire universe is interconnected --, or even that everything is a UO, riddled with 'contradictions'. In fact, only if language is distorted in the way indicated above can it be made to say such convenient things.36a
However, it is now reasonably clear what it is that 'justifies' such dialectical dogmatism: a commitment to LIMPE, motivated by the idea that reality has its own logical form, and a form that just happens to mirror Ancient Greek -- and more widely, Indo-European --, grammar; and distorted grammar, at that. In which case, this whole sordid affair begins to make a little more sense. The fact that there were clear political and ideological reasons why thinkers who belonged to, or were patronised by, the various ruling-elites the class war has inflicted on humanity -- who were pre-disposed toward making such moves, and whom the dialectical-classicists were only too happy to tail-end -- only serves to underline this point.37
Again, it could be argued that since human knowledge has grown over many centuries, the input from practical activity can't fail to have been reflected in language. If so, DM-theorists are only extracting from language what had already been put there.
This response has the merit of substantiating the allegations advanced above (and in Essay Twelve Part One): in common with every other metaphysical system, DM is based on the fetishisation of language. That is, it is predicated on the view that language, far from being a means of communication, is 'really' a secret code that has profound truths about nature and society encoded within it. As will be shown in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is published), this approach to knowledge is based on the RRT. [Further discussion of this topic will be postponed until then; a summary of the argument can be accessed here.]
[RRT = Reverse Reflection Theory -- this is the theory that says the world reflects language, not the other way round -- basically it denies that language reflects the world.]
Nevertheless, the situation is far worse than the above might suggest; that is because Lenin made unqualified claims about all of reality for all of time (without exception) based on an examination of a few simplistic and unrepresentative sentences --, and even then, like Hegel, he had to doctor their grammar to make these ideas 'work'.
Even if the labours of previous generations of heroic abstractors had encoded into language all they knew, or thought they knew, about anything and everything, that wouldn't be enough to substantiate this theory. Lenin's claims were meant to apply to all of reality for all of time, way beyond the meagre knowledge or intellectual powers of these plucky ancestral abstractors, even had there been any. Plainly, these brave abstractors couldn't have programmed into language anything of which they were ignorant. So, Lenin's bold, universal extrapolation of dialectics right across all of reality for all of time actually projected this theory way beyond anything our ancestors could possibly have known, which, naturally, means that his words were indeed imposed on the facts.37a
But even worse still: How would it be possible to guarantee that the information allegedly encoded in language is correct if there is no conceivable way it could be checked? For all Lenin knew, this encoded linguistic 'data' could have been totally wrong. Indeed, given DM-epistemology, there is in fact no way to distinguish truth from error. [More on that in Part Four of this Essay.]
An appeal to practice would be no help, here; as we will see in Essay Ten Part One, practice can't distinguish truth from error, either.
But, even if practice could do all that is claimed for it, no amount of evidence would be sufficient to substantiate the sort of claims Lenin made above (or those recorded in Essay Two); the conclusions he drew about the nature of the entire universe -- from a single sentence-type! -- were of an order that puts them way beyond any conceivable body of evidence. As such, his theory could only ever have been based on a thoroughly traditional, a priori view of reality, subsequently reflected back onto nature, and with just this tiny 'linguistic fig-leaf' of an excuse for cover.
Moreover, had Lenin gone about his daily agitational business uttering the kind of sentences he considered philosophically significant (such as "John is a man"), comrades would rightly have questioned his sanity. Just why such agitationally-, and propagandistically-challenged sentences were deemed significant is, therefore, something of a dialectical mystery.38
Theism From Thought, Too?
Despite this, there are other reasons beyond those aired above for rejecting this view of language. Indeed, it is instructive to compare Lenin's conclusions about "John" with the following sentences, which presumably DM-theorists will want to reject:
H2: God is our father.
H2a: God is a father.
That repudiation might perhaps be prompted by the fact that H2 and/or H2a express an ideologically-motivated belief for which there isn't one shred of acceptable evidence (nor could there be). But, if that is so, and to be consistent, we should also repudiate the following sentences (from Lenin) for similar reasons -- i.e., for lack of evidence:
H3: The individual is different from the universal.
H4: The opposites are identical.
[H1: John is a man.]
There is no evidence for the truth of either these sentences, or at least none that isn't itself based on an ancient, garbled analysis of grammar, and only that.
But, of course, a search for 'evidence', even if one had ever been attempted, wouldn't make it that far, for the above are pseudo-grammatical, or metaphysical statements, the 'truth' of which supposedly follows from the meaning of the words they contain. No wonder then that Hegel and Lenin imagined they could extrapolate from the assumed truth of H3 and H4 (or from "S is P"-type propositions/'judgements' -- where "S" stands for "Subject" and "P" for "Predicate") to a set of theses that is supposedly true everywhere and everywhen. If, however, the above combinations of words possesses no sense, then neither H3 nor H4 is capable of being true or false (or even 'dialectically' both). [Why this is so is discussed in detail in Essay Twelve Part One, summary here.]
Moreover, at this point it is worth recalling that given certain definitions of the word "God", H2/H2a are in fact a tautologies! We can be reasonably sure that this imputed 'logical status' of those two sentences wouldn't be sufficient to guarantee their acceptance by a single atheist. No dialectician in her or his left mind would accept an argument that claimed that the whole truth of theology is contained in such propositions. We surely wouldn't agree with the claim that just because assorted priests and mystery-mongers -- who might be tempted to conclude that the past endeavours of intrepid religious abstractors and grammarians had programmed into language profound truths about the nature of the 'Godhead' --, that that fact alone (not that it is one!) forces us to accept this example of Divine Logic as Super-Empirically-true.38a
H2: God is our father.
H2a: God is a father.
Well, the same should surely be concluded about H1, H3 and H4. In fact, DM-theorists should only feel confident about their derivation of such a priori 'truths' from such sentences if they are prepared to acknowledge, say, the validity of Anselm's infamous "Ontological Argument" for the existence of 'God', since that argument manages to wring similar Super-Cosmic Verities about 'divine reality' from equally tortured prose.
H1: John is a man.
H3: The individual is different from the universal.
H4: The opposites are identical.
OK, Comrades, Reach For The Prozac!
Nevertheless, there are several serious problems with Lenin's reasoning, which require resolution before questions can even be raised about the support his theory might or might not gain from what little 'evidence' there is.
H1: John is a man.
Lenin clearly interpreted the "is" in H1 as an "is" of identity (and later perhaps as an "is" of class inclusion). But, because it plainly isn't one of identity in the vernacular, both Lenin and Hegel imagined they could 'derive' several counter-intuitive conclusions from the incongruity they had artificially introduced into such sentences in this way.39 However, instead of concluding perhaps that Hegel's "genius" had misled him -- or that this wasn't the only way (or even the most obvious, natural, or sane way) to interpret such simple sentences -- Lenin proceeded to weave several lengths of dialectical cloth from these slender threads of woolly thought.
"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.359-60. Bold and italic emphases in the original; paragraphs merged.]
The fact that the "is" of H1 isn't one of identity can be seen from Lenin's own use of it. Consider one of his more 'abstract' sentences:
H5: "[T]he opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical."
[H1: John is a man.]
From this we can perhaps extract two embedded sentences:
H4: The opposites are identical.
H6: The individual is opposed to the universal.
[H4 plainly contains a cognate of "is" -- namely, "are".]
However, if "is" always indicates identity -- and could be interpreted as an expression of the form "ξ is identical with ζ" -- then we should be able to re-write H4 and H6 in the following manner:
H7: The opposites are identical with identical.
H8: The individual is identical with opposed to the universal.39a
[In H7, the verb "are" (from H6), and in H8 the verb "is" (from H6), have been replaced by "are identical with" and "is identical with", respectively, on 'sound' dialectical lines. (The reason why these terms have been highlighted in bold will soon become apparent.)]
It doesn't take any dialectical logic at all (and no bourgeois prejudice whatsoever) to see what nonsense results from this 'brilliant' Hegelian insight. Nor is it difficult to foresee the infinite task Lenin's 'analysis' holds open to those who have swallowed this theory as he, or anyone else, tries to say what the meaning is of each bold "is" (or the meaning of each bold "are") that recurs in "is identical with" (or in "are identical with") in H7 and H8, respectively, now made explicit in H9 and H10:
H9: The opposites are identical with identical with identical.
H10: The individual is identical with identical with opposed to the universal.
Here, the bold "is" from H8 and the bold "are" from H7 have been replaced with what we are told they really mean -- namely "is identical with" and "are identical with", respectively (both highlighted in bold again) -- to yield the nonsensical result we see in H9 and H10. In turn, two more similar replacements by their supposed 'dialectical' equivalents yields these gems:
H11: The opposites are identical with identical with identical with identical.
H12: The individual is identical with identical with identical with opposed to the universal.
And so on to infinity...
Lest anyone thinks this is unfair to Lenin, or even Hegel, they are invited to try to say for themselves what the "is" in "is identical with" itself means (without thereby abandoning Hegel's theory!).
Neutral onlookers can only wish such brave souls plenty of luck, and hope they are blessed with boundless patience, limitless supplies of paper and ink -- and, of course, plenty of Prozac.
It is worth recalling, though, that the above collapse into incoherence has only arisen because dialecticians insist that the "is" of predication is really an "is" of identity -- i.e., that it is the same as "is identical with". By assuming this (again, with no proof), they themselves would be forced to use another "is" to reveal this good news to the rest of us -- as in:
H13: The is of predication is an is of identity.
But the middle "is" in bold in H13 cannot -- ex hypothesi cannot! -- be one of mere predication. It, too, according the Hegel has to be one of identity (in that it tells us what is or identity 'essentially' are). In that case, we would obtain the following from H13:
H14: The is of predication is identical with the is of identity.
And then:
H15: The is of predication is identical with identical with the is of identity.
As each alleged "is" of predication is suitably replaced by an "is identical with" with which it is supposed to be identical. If anyone wants to go down that route, they, too, will require an endless supply of painkillers and anti-depressants. But, more fool them; they have been warned!39b
On the other hand, those who hold that the "is" of predication is in reality just that (i.e., an "is" of predication -- or better, that "is" is part of the predicate expression to begin with!) aren't faced with such an infinite and morale-sapping task. That is because they seek neither to revise nor re-write ordinary language in such Idealist terms, replacing an ordinary "is" with another sort of "is" -- a dodge that 'allows' metaphysicians to think they can transform predicates into the Proper Names of abstract particulars as and when it suites them.
So, when genuine materialists say things like "Blair is a warmonger", they aren't saying that Blair is identical with a warmonger (which one?), they are merely saying that the description "warmonger" applies to the individual named "Blair".
No "is" anywhere in sight.
You can put the Prozac away now, comrades; that ancient philosophical pseudo-problem has been dissolved.40
[I have dealt with the objection that since the above aren't "essential judgements" or "essential predications" this entire argument is flawed from beginning to end, here, here, and here.]
George Novack's Descent Into Syntactic Confusion
However, the morbid (if not prurient) interest in John's manhood isn't confined to Lenin. We find a similar but less cautious version of it in comrade Novack's widely circulated book:
"This law of identity of opposites, which so perplexes and horrifies addicts of formal logic, can be easily understood, not only when it is applied to actual processes of development and interrelations of events, but also when it is contrasted with the formal law of identity. It is logically true that A equals A, that John is John…. But it is far more profoundly true that A is also non-A. John is not simply John: John is a man. This correct proposition is not an affirmation of abstract identity, but an identification of opposites. The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same is far more and other than John, the individual. Mankind is at the same time identical with, yet different from John." [Novack (1971), p.92. Bold emphases added.]
Contrary to what Novack imagines will be the reaction of any "addicts of formal logic" who might stumble across his book, they will find little in this passage to worry them -- or, indeed, prompt them to kick the habit. However, they will find much to amuse and bemuse them, just as they will find even more that will put them off Marxism forever -- that is, if they conclude that this is the best example of 'advanced logic' that Marxist dialecticians can come up with!
The highly clichéd DM-version of the LOI (that Novack also employs -- i.e., "A equals A") will be examined in detail in Essay Six, but Novack's own brand of superior logic immediately changes it into "John is John" (and not even "John equals John"). Novack then reproduces his own version of Hegel's egregious confusion of the "is" of predication with the "is" of identity -- a switch that Novack nowhere even attempts to justify or defend. [On that specific confusion, see below.]
It is worth asking therefore whether Novack (or any other dialectician) would try to pull the same syntactic trick in relation to the following sentence:
N4: John is a centimetre taller than his brother Jim.
By no stretch of the imagination could this be read as:
N5: John is identical to a centimetre taller than his brother Jim.
Or even:
N6: John equals a centimetre taller than his brother Jim.
[Concerning the obvious objection that N6 is really:
N6a: John equals someone who is a centimetre taller than his brother Jim, the reader is re-directed here for my response.]
Nor would he (they) try it out on the following:
N7: John is angry with his boss.
If we were to apply 'Novackian logic' to N7, we would get these misbegotten sentences:
N8: John is identical with angry with his boss.
N9: John equals angry with his boss.
Mischievous readers might like to suggest what dialecticians would do with the following:
N10: John is taller than Sheila, shorter than Mike, but just as heavy as Simon.
N11: John is planning to go on strike this week and he has just printed the strike leaflets.
N12: John is not himself today; he ate a dodgy curry last night.
N13: John is the equal of any comrade in the party.
N14: John is unequal to the task set him by the strike committee.
N15: John is convinced that dialectical logic is wrong about the copula "is" being an "is" of identity.
It could be objected that both Hegel and Novack are only interested in analysing "essential predications", not ordinary predictions, since the former do involve identity, while the latter don't. Again, that objection has been defused here, here, and here.
Be this as it may, Novack then pulls an unrelated schematic sentence out of thin air (i.e., "A is also non-A"), which, with respect to John, he immediately mistranslates -- recall, this is Novack's own example! Hence, instead of using "John is also non-John" --, which would have been an obvious absurdity even though it is a correct translation of his own schematic sentence (i.e., "A is also non-A") -- Novack turns his attention to a non-equivalent paraphrase of it, namely "John is not simply John" -- which, plainly, would have been a translation of "A is not simply A". So, the schematically equivalent, non-negated version of that sentence (which is the necessary logical foil that Novack needed to set up a spurious IO) should have been "A is simply A", which nowhere appears in the above passage.
Even so, based on what Novack does say, "A is simply A" -- or "John is simply John" -- must have been the version of the LOI he had in mind, given that he then went on to use "John is not simply John" to contradict it. But, who apart from John is going to get excited about that version of the LOI? Is there a formal logician this side of the Kuiper Belt who would want to defend "A is simply A" as a legitimate, even if simplistic, form of the LOI? It manifestly isn't a classical example of the LOI. It isn't even Novack's example!
[IO = Identity of Opposites; LOI = Law of Identity.]
As we delve deeper into the murky depths of Novackian 'logic' we find the reasoning becomes even more perplexing. How, it might be wondered, is the simple sentence "John is a man" the expression of an IO? Surely, "John is a woman" would have been a better choice? Or maybe: "John is Peter"? Or perhaps even: "John is an ape-like ancestor of the human race"?
But, given the fact that such dialectically-interconnected 'entities' are supposed to "struggle" with and then turn into their 'dialectical opposites' (witness Plekhanov's clanger, below), and the fact that opposite tendencies (in objects or processes) eventually become apparent in the changes that emerge (because of the aforementioned "struggle" that is on-going in everything, and between all things, if Lenin is to be believed), doesn't this mean that John is about to become every man -- as he too changes into his 'opposite'? If John is in fact the opposite of all men, then surely he must one day become all men -- and they must likewise become him -- that is, after struggling with each and every single one of them -- if the DM-classics are telling us the truth!
[Anyone who doubts that this universal punch-up is a direct consequence of this crazy 'theory of change' should follow the first of the three links in the previous paragraph, check out what the DM-classicists themselves had to say about 'dialectical change', and then perhaps think again.]
In this universal, futuristic John-like world -- and world-like John --, where every man (or woman?) has become John and John has morphed into them, all struggle would surely cease, for then it would be true that John is everyone and everyone is John. In this universal Johnsville, the class struggle would surely come to an end, for then nothing would be the opposite of John, and the earth would be one huge John-centred tautological love-in.
Of course, if John is to turn into everything that he is not, then the entire universe will one day become this unfortunate character; Johntology of this peculiar sort seems to be the final denouement of the Big Bang, given such 'logic'. Wags might even call this the "Johntological Argument". On the other hand, if John isn't supposed to turn into everything he is not, then the Dialectical Gospels must be wrong, for they assure us that everything in the entire universe must "inevitably" turn into its own opposite, and vice versa.
[The counter-claim that each object/process has its own 'unique dialectical opposite', and hence won't turn into 'everything that they are not', was neutralised in Essay Eight Part Three, as well as here and here.]
Alternatively, back in the real world, if John is to turn into his opposite, he must become a man (as indeed he must if he is the opposite of "a man", as Novack asserts). In that case, what the dickens is he now? Is he a non-man, a sub-human, a rodent...? It seems he must be one or more of these if he has to become his opposite -- which opposite DL assures us is "a man". So, despite appearances to the contrary, "John is a man" really means the following (i.e., as soon as we don our 'dialectical specs' and reject the prejudices of 'commonsense' and 'bourgeois formal thinking'): John is (perhaps) an untermensch, for only then would it be possible for him to turn into his opposite -- "a man"!
On the other hand, and returning to an earlier point, if John and all men are opposites and subject to inevitable struggle, then it must be the case that all men are opposing or struggling with John. Is he therefore a sort of inter-galactic Donald Trump, whom everyone despises and would gladly slap insensible if they got half a chance? Is the entire human race therefore ganging up on this hapless character?
If not, then what is the point of this Novackian 'analysis'? Even in DM-terms it makes no sense.
Of course, Novack does make some sort of an attempt to substantiate this prize specimen of Super-Duper-Dialectical 'logic' by an appeal to the principle of class inclusion (or even of class identity!), in the following manner:
H1: John is a man.
N16a: John is a member of the class of men. [I.e., paraphrasing Novack's: "The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same...."]
N16b: John is identical with the class of men. [Alternative paraphrase of "The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same...."]
If, as appears to be the case, Novack really did believe that H1 meant the same as (or implied) N16b, then his understanding of English was seriously defective. Novack never seems to have questioned the sense of asserting that an individual is identical with a class; no ordinary speaker (not the worse for drink, drugs or 'dialectics') would do this -- nor would anyone still in possession of their sanity. Indeed, if someone were to claim that John (or anyone else) was identical with a class that is as large as the class of men -- if we include women and children (!!), this class so far numbers possibly in excess of 107 billion individuals! --, that might prove sufficient grounds to send this rather odd individual off to seek professional help.
Clearly, N16b could only ever be (sort of) true if John was the only man left alive (compare this with M5, below: "John is the strike committee now -- since everyone else has been arrested"). But, even if H1 could be read as a disguised class inclusion statement (i.e., as N16a above would have it), it would still be impossible to extract from it all that Novack thought he could. Even Novack seems to half-recognise this since he had to substitute the following for N16a:
N17: Mankind is at the same time identical with yet different from John.
N16a: John is a member of the class of men. [I.e., paraphrasing Novack's: "The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same...."]
But, the first half of this (i.e., N17a) is false -- in fact, it is so bizarre, Novack should have been advised to resume taking his medication:
N17a: Mankind is identical with John.
H1: John is a man.
Quite apart from the fact that N17a changes the subject of the sentence (from John to Mankind), it plainly isn't true that mankind is identical with John (and H1 can only be made to say so on the basis of yet more 'innovative' grammar; i.e., confusing the "is" of predication with the "is" of identity). Even a New Labour spin doctor would have had problems twisting H1 into so grotesque a shape. At the very best, Novack might have been able to argue that John and the rest of 'mankind' share their common humanity, or at least a range of genetic, psychological, and social 'properties' or characteristics, and he might then have been able to infer from this that they are all equally human. But, anyone who went down that route should rightly be awarded a prize for "Stating The Bleeding Obvious" (to paraphrase Monty Python).
On the other hand, any normal person reading H17a would surely take it to mean that John is perhaps the only survivor of a horrific worldwide catastrophe of some sort, that John was all that was left of mankind -- and that therefore John is mankind (or, humankind); i.e., he is their sole representative left alive -- The Omega Man!
But then, how are we to make sense the second half?
N17b: Mankind is different from John.
Again, the (normal) way to interpret this would be to regard it as suggesting that John might not actually be human, or maybe not fully human. Perhaps he is half-animal, a clone, or maybe an alien? But if so, what is all the fuss about? Indeed, would there be such a fuss if the sentence had been "Joan is a man"?
But, shouldn't N17b be:
N17c: Mankind is identical with different from John,
if the "is" of N17b is replaced by "is identical with" that we are assured it should be?
Or even:
N17d: Mankind is identical with someone who is different from John,
if we replace the "is" with "is identical with someone who is", along the lines we will meet below? And yet, both of these are susceptible of yet another infinite regress, like the one we met here.
Be this as it may, N17 would surely be re-interpreted -- and far more honestly -- as one or more of the following:
N18: John is all that is left of humanity because he is a clone -- making him different from other men -- who, because he was a defective and resentful clone, proceeded to wipe out the entire human male population.
N19: John is the sole survivor of a nuclear war, but unfortunately the radiation neutered him, making him different from other men.
N20: John finally 'came out' and acknowledged he was gay, while the rest of the male population had sex-change operations (making John different from all other men), every one of whom died as a result.
N21: John is the only man left on earth, but he is very popular with the remaining women because of his unique sensitivity, a trait which distinguishes him from all other men, who no longer exist having been wiped out by their angry womenfolk for their sexist disregard of their feelings.
[N17: Mankind is at the same time identical with yet different from John.]
These (and possibly several other alternatives) would be the only way to interpret the odd sentences Novack thought it wise to inflict on his readers.
In that case, the only "horrifying" thing about all this is that Novack imagined such stilted English (compounded by the sort of reasoning that all but the seriously deranged would surely disown) was anything other than an insult to ordinary workers -- none of whom would ever talk this way.
Finally -– and independently of the above -- Novack failed to inform us precisely what justified him 'deriving' such profound, scientific-looking truths from a few rather odd-looking sentences. Exactly what could possibly sanction the bold theses Novack 'inferred' from this tortured prose about John's identity/sexuality -- that is, over and above an appeal to the assumed existential import of a few contingent features of a minor sub-branch of Indo-European grammar (which he misconstrued anyway)?
After all, Novack had argued as follows in another of his books:
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
Has all the supporting evidence Novack insisted upon been lost in the same anti-dialectical fire that seems to have consumed Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Mao, and Trotsky's data?
Comrade Jackson's Hare-Brained Assault On Language
[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]
So much for the use to which John's manhood is subjected by an OT of Novack's undoubted stature. However, we find John cropping up all over the place; even STDs can't resist commenting on him and his cosmically-significant sexuality. Here is a passage from a dusty old (but classic) Stalinist text from the 1930s:
"The central fallacy involved in all metaphysical reasoning is -- expressed in terms of logic -- the complete confusion of the relations between the categories of Particular and General: of Unique and 'Universal.' Thus, for instance, if I affirm: 'John is a Man' I affirm that 'John' is a particular specimen of the general (or 'universal') category 'Man'. I understand what 'John' is by subsuming him under (or 'identifying him with') the wider category 'Man'. Metaphysical reasoning proceeds on the tacit or explicit assumption that the general category 'Man' and the particular category 'John' exist independently of each other: that over and above all the Particular 'Johns' in creation (and 'Toms,' and 'Dicks' and 'Harrys' and so on) over and above all particular men, there exists somewhere -- and would exist if all particular men ceased to be, or had never been -- the general category 'Man.'...
"The dialectical method traverses this rigid metaphysic completely. The category 'Man' includes, certainly, all possible 'men.' But 'Man' and 'men', though distinct, separate, and separable logical categories, are only so as logical discriminations, as ways of looking at one and the same set of facts. 'Man' -- is -- all men, conceived from the standpoint of their generality -- that in which all men are alike. 'Men' is a conception of the same fact -- 'all men' -- but in respect of their multiplicity, the fact that no two of them are exactly alike. For dialectics, the particular and the general, the unique and the universal -- for all their logical opposition -- exist, in fact, in and by means of each other. The 'Johniness' of John does not exist, cannot possibly be conceived as existing, apart from his 'manniness'. We know 'Man' only as the common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other men -- from that generality 'Man' by means of which we classify 'all men' in one group.
"It is the recognition of this 'identity of all (logical pairs of) opposites,' and in the further recognition that all categories form, logically, a series from the Absolutely Universal to the Absolutely Unique -- (in each of which opposites its other is implicit) -- that the virtue of Hegel's logic consists…. Let us now translate this into concrete terms. John is -- a man. Man is a category in which all men (John, and all the not-Johns) are conjoined. I begin to distinguish John from the not-Johns by observing those things in which he is not -- what the other men are. At the same time the fact that I have to begin upon the process of distinguishing implies…that, apart from his special distinguishing characteristics, John is identical with all the not-Johns who comprise the rest of the human race. Thus logically expressed, John is understood when he is most fully conceived as the 'identity' of John-in-special and not-John (i.e. all man (sic)) in general.
"…When I affirm that 'John is a man' I postulate the oppositional contrast between John and not-John and their coexistence (the negation of their mutual negation) all at once. Certainly as the logical process is worked in my mind I distinguish first one pole, then the other of the separation and then their conjunction. But all three relations -- or better still, the whole three-fold relation -- exists from the beginning and its existence is presupposed in the logical act…." [Jackson (1936), pp.103-06. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original. Several paragraphs merged.]
Anyone who has struggled through to the end of this passage might emerge from that ordeal a little puzzled as to how John is actually capable of being a "particular specimen" of the general (or 'universal') category "Man" -- that worry not helped by the author's liberal and sloppy use of quotation marks.
[The single ones given in the above passage were in fact double quotes in the original; they were changed to single quotes because of the conventions governing their use adopted at this site. (See W1, below, where the originals have been restored.)] That is because, once encased in such quotes, "John" becomes a word not a man. And "Man" itself is another word, not a category, class or concept.
[As we have seen several times, sloppy DM-syntax goes hand-in-hand with the confusion of talk about talk with talk about the world -- i.e., the conflation of words with what they supposedly refer to (that is, if they refer, in the first place). On that, see here.]
I have to confess, try as hard as I might, I couldn't quite see the first word ("John") physically contained in the second term ("Man"), as it seems it should, according to comrade Jackson.
W1: If I affirm: "John is a man" I affirm that "John" is a particular specimen of the general (or "universal") category "Man". I understand what "John" is by subsuming him under (or "identifying him with") the wider category "Man".
Perhaps I just don't 'understand' dialectics...
Even so, my concern has in no way been allayed by the author's casual reference to the "category 'Man'" to which "John" supposedly belongs (he being a "particular specimen" of it), since it is even more difficult to see how a word like "Man" can be both a category and a word all in one go. On the other hand, if the word "John" is in fact an example of the category named by "Man", the latter must include both men and words as exemplars -- which might help explain John's continual oscillation between the two.
And, it won't do to complain that comrade Jackson was merely summarising the traditional "metaphysical" analysis of this tediously overworked sentence, since not only do his own criticisms depend on these confusions, his subsequent 'dialectical analysis' does, too. Nor will it do to suggest that Jackson is using a different convention, which means that his use of quotation marks doesn't imply that "John" is word, but a category, as he claims. Readers can check for themselves (if they have access to Jackson's tome): there are no stated conventions anywhere in the book.
Jackson's careless use of language and quotation marks (alongside his serial confusion of use with mention) isn't of course unrelated to the innovative and rather self-important 'reasoning' the above passage exhibits, the most startling example of which is the turn toward the "concrete" near the end:
"Let us now translate this into concrete terms. John is -- a man. Man is a category in which all men (John, and all the not-Johns) are conjoined. I begin to distinguish John from the not-Johns by observing those things in which he is not -- what the other men are. At the same time the fact that I have to begin upon the process of distinguishing implies…that, apart from his special distinguishing characteristics, John is identical with all the not-Johns who comprise the rest of the human race. Thus logically expressed, John is understood when he is most fully conceived as the 'identity' of John-in-special and not-John (i.e. all man) in general." [Ibid., p.105.]
[We might note in passing the bourgeois individualism obvious in this quotation; comrade Jackson seems to think he learnt all this, and did all that 'distinguishing', by himself, in the comfort of his own head! And worse, he thinks we all do likewise. Of course, as expected, he neglected to supply, quote or even reference the evidence that might substantiate such innovative psychology.]
Indeed, it might well be wondered how all men could have been successfully conjoined in, or recruited to, the one category Man? That category is surely abstract -- it doesn't walk the earth, breathe, talk, or even work for a living. And yet all men do most of these things at some point in their lives. In what sense then are all men embroiled in this peculiar abstraction?
Again, as the late Fraser Cowley pointed out:
"The open sentence 'x is a spider' determines a class only because 'spider' signifies a kind of thing. It is by being one of that kind...that a value of x is a member of the class. To identify something as a spider, one must know what a spider is, that is, what kind of thing 'spider' signifies. Kinds of things can come to be or cease to be. The chemical elements, kinds of substances, are believed to have evolved. The motorbike -- the kind of vehicle known as a motorbike -- was invented about 1880. The dodo is extinct. There is no obvious way of producing sentences equivalent to these in terms of classes. The class of dodos and the class of dead dodos are not identical: though all dodos are dead, a dead dodo is not a dodo....
"Since a kind is to be found wherever there are particular things of the kind, it can have various geographical locations. The lion is found in East Africa. Lions are found in East Africa. It makes no difference whether we say 'the lion' or whether we say 'lions': what is meant is the kind of animal. To say that it can be seen in captivity far from its remaining natural habitats does not contradict the statement that it is found in East Africa. A kind is not a class: the class of lions is nowhere to be found...." [Cowley (1991), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
In like manner, we might wonder what has become of John if he belongs to a class that is nowhere to be found anywhere on the planet.
Other questions soon force themselves on us: Is a category a sort of 'ethereal club' that all males sign up to, or into which they are inducted, at birth? Alternatively, are they all metaphysically conscripted, as it were, at the moment of conception -- their membership card perhaps taking the form of certain sets of chromosomes? Or, are they only honorary members, waiting patiently in line for recruitment until some bright spark (like comrade Jackson) helpfully remembers to abstract them into it?
If so, what were they in the meantime? 'Limbo men'? Or, just plain, unvarnished ordinary men -- i.e., males, but now without quotation marks holding them in a vice-like grip --, and hence as naked as the day before they were unceremoniously 'abstracted' without their consent?
As seems clear, comrade Jackson was relying on his own understanding of what look for all the world like ordinary words in order to derive several counter-intuitive conclusions following on from Hegel and Lenin's lead. But, if he was being sincere in what he wrote, then, like Novack, his comprehension of English looks about as reliable as his 'logic'. Are we really supposed to believe (could anyone believe -- did this comrade actually believe!?) that we may only begin to distinguish characters like John from all the "not-Johns" by observing "those things in which he is not -- what the other men are"? Imagine, then, this author meeting, say, the real John for the first time. Would he have to wait until he had considered all the "not-Johns" (who "comprise the rest of the human race") before he could distinguish John from anyone else? If so, how on earth could he even begin?
[We might well wonder exactly who comrade Jackson thought he was the first time he looked in the mirror. Perhaps this: "At least I'm not-John"?]
Until this comrade had met every other member of the human race, given this view, he wouldn't be able to tell any of these uncategorised, shapeless entities apart. But, the very same rigmarole must surely apply to all these "not-Johns", too. With respect to every single one of them, therefore, this comrade wouldn't be able to distinguish such formless shadows from the rest until they had also been distinguished them from all the "not-not-Johns". In turn, he couldn't do that until he had examined all of these amorphous spectres and distinguished them from…, well what? Even worse, he wouldn't be able to call either of these ghostly classes "the not-John group", or "the not-not-John category" until he knew who John himself was! But, ex hypothesi, he couldn't do that until all the rest had been identified..., and so on and so forth.
Neither side of this dialectically bent coin is identifiable without the other already having been; indeed, they both fall flat together. In which case, the dialectical spin into which John is now allegedly locked can't be rendered 'determinate' at any point -- despite the fact that comrade Jackson assures us that these relations are somehow objectively there before we even begin to think about them!
Lest the reader concludes that this comrade is right, and that we do indeed need to be able to distinguish John-like characters from what they are not, before we can know who or what John is, it might prove helpful to consider a slightly less pragmatically-challenged sentence about him, such as this:
W2: John is the first comrade to win a lottery jackpot.
Do any of us have to meet a single lottery jackpot winner in order to know what this is telling us? Do we really need to be introduced to every comrade who hasn't won a jackpot in order to do that? What about every non-comrade who has won one? Or, indeed, every non-comrade who hasn't?
Perhaps this example isn't of the 'right type' in that it doesn't use a genuine universal term. Consider then the following:
W3: John isn't an insect.
Lest again it be thought that we would have to meet every single insect before we knew who or what John is, we only need recall that according to David Attenborough's recent TV programme on these wee beasties, there are 200,000,000 of them for each one of us.
Good luck to any brave dialecticians who think they are up to that challenge!
Again it might be thought that W3 isn't a positive affirmative universal proposition. Well, putting to one side the hopelessly confused notion, "positive affirmative proposition", beloved of obsolete logic texts, consider this:
W4: John is not a non-mammal.
This isn't a negative proposition (or if it is, its two negatives 'cancel', to use that obsolete jargon for the moment), but it is universal. Now, just try and work out the introductory protocols one would have to observe to be able to distinguish John from all those non-mammals, if comrade Jackson is to be believed. Dialectical sleuths would have to visit the outer fringes of the universe and introduce themselves to every single proton (surely these are non-mammals?), in order to be able to figure out who John is. And that would only represent the beginning of such an Herculean, of not Sisyphean, task.
[I return to consider 'affirmative' and 'negative' propositions, below.]
Is John really worth all this trouble?
And what about this recalcitrant example?
W5: John is everything that Tony Blair is not.
Is this proposition positive, negative, affirmative, universal, singular...? While we wait for a reply to that unanswerable question, bored readers might like to figure out who they would have to bump into in order to understand it. And then, how they would go about that unwelcome quest if they don't yet understand the sentence that prompted that aimless exercise in the first place!
[Which sentence, of course, they wouldn't yet understand since they could only grasp it at the end of that tedious time-taking task! And if they don't understand it yet, how would they know what to do in order to confirm it?]
Nevertheless, an earlier paragraph in the above passage claimed that the ability to distinguish John from other men must be understood in the following way:
"We know 'Man' only as the common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other men -- from that generality 'Man' by means of which we classify 'all men' in one group." [Ibid., p.104. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Or:
W6: We know "Man" only as the common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other men -- from that generality "Man" by means of which we classify "all men" in one group. [Original quotation marks restored, again.]
Once more, the careless use of quotation marks in W6 (apparent in Jackson's use of the word "Man" to express the "common characteristic of all particular men") only succeeds in prompting the following question: Do all men actually share in common the letters "M", "a" and "n", as the emphasised clause suggests? [That is because the clause in question concerns the word "man", which is, plainly, comprised of those three letters.] Are we now to conclude that every man has a sort of metaphysical tattoo etched on them at birth -- or, maybe, at conception?
Is this what the following comment implies?
"But all three relations -- or better still, the whole three-fold relation -- exists from the beginning and its existence is presupposed in the logical act…." [Ibid., p.106. Bold emphases alone added.]
Does the above mean that:
W7: In the beginning was the word "Man"?
Is this, therefore, the Logical Adam that gave life to us all?
This example of 'path-breaking logic', courtesy of comrade Jackson, appears to suggest that we can infer substantive truths about reality from the logical relation (or, maybe, from that which is "presupposed in the logical act"), which appears to hold between concepts, or perhaps even between words themselves (or is it between letters?).
If so, this might help explain why this comrade thought it unnecessary to mention any of the evidence that must exist (somewhere?) that substantiates this latest example of LIE. Where, then, are the autopsy reports that confirm that all of humanity (including women) are branded with the mystic letters "M", "a", and "n"? Where, too, is the data from astronomy that verifies the fact that alongside the primeval goop that comprised the material of the Big Bang (if it contained any, and if there was one) there was indeed this Dialectical Trinity, a "whole three-fold relation" that "exist[ed] from the beginning"?
Perhaps this is all unfair parody and sarcasm at comrade Jackson's expense when he is no longer here to defend himself? Maybe the word "Man" is really meant to refer to a characteristic that all men share? But, that means "Man" must be the Proper Name of that characteristic -- so it can't be a characteristic itself. Anyway, do women possess this trait? Or, are we to suppose that the latter have "Woman" in common? What about transsexuals? Are these individuals born with some sort of spelling mistake? Indeed, if someone had a sex change operation, would this mean that the surgeons involved had to erase and then insert a few new marks into this patient's 'metaphysical bar code'?
Of course, the real reason this author had to employ such stilted and wooden English (peppered with all those incautious quotation marks) -- and which is easily lampooned as a result -- is that if he had tried to use ordinary language (as Marx suggested he should) he wouldn't have been able to serve his readers this bowl of dialectical goulash. That is why, as soon as he translated what he fancied he thought he meant into the specialised terminology he unwisely lifted from Hegel (festooned with all those quotation marks), his reasoning became incoherent.
No wonder DM has never actually seized the masses if this is the gobbledygook dialectical militants used to -- and still do -- dish up!
Thalheimer's Dialectical Disaster
We encountered the following example of Dialectical Legerdemain in Essay Two, but it is worth repeating it here if only because it spares us yet more prurient gossip about John and his much ballyhooed 'Manhood':
"This law of the permeation of opposites will probably be new to you, something to which you have probably not given thought. Upon closer examination you will discover that you cannot utter a single meaningful sentence which does not comprehend this proposition.... Let us take a rather common sentence: 'The lion is a beast of prey.' A thing, A, the lion is equated with a thing B. At the same time a distinction is made between A and B. So far as the lion is a beast of prey, it is equated with all beasts of that kind. At the same time, in the same sentence, it is distinguished from the kind. It is impossible to utter a sentence which will not contain the formula, A equals B. All meaningful sentences have a form which is conditioned by the permeation of opposites. This contradiction [is] contained in every meaningful sentence, the equation and at the same time differentiation between subject and predicate...." [Thalheimer (1936), pp.168-69. Bold emphases added.]
Thalheimer has clearly allowed DL to corrupt his memory since it made him forget about the countless sentences that aren't of the form that he assures us we can't avoid using (i.e., "A equals B"). Fortunately, Thalheimer refuted this peculiar idea of his at the very beginning of the above paragraph: "This law of the permeation of opposites will probably be new to you, something to which you have probably not given thought." That sentence and countless others in his book manifestly aren't of the form "A equals B". This is surely logic for simpletons, not socialists.
Independently of the above, it might be interesting to consider how comrade Thalheimer would have interpreted this sentence:
T1: President Trump is one cent short of a dollar.
Is he really identical with "one cent short of a dollar"?
And, what of the following?
T2: Trump isn't the racist to whom I was referring.
Good luck to anyone who wants to translate that into dialectical gobbledygook.
Of course, the source of this comedy of errors is Hegel's Logic. Here is a passage we met earlier:
"The Judgment is the notion in its particularity, as a connection which is also a distinguishing of its functions, which are put as independent and yet as identical with themselves not with one another.
"One's first impression about the Judgment is the independence of the two extremes, the subject and the predicate. The former we take to be a thing or term per se, and the predicate a general term outside the said subject and somewhere in our heads. The next point is for us to bring the latter into combination with the former, and in this way frame a Judgment. The copula 'is', however, enunciates the predicate of the subject, and so that external subjective subsumption is again put in abeyance, and the Judgment taken as a determination of the object itself. The etymological meaning of the Judgment (Urtheil) in German goes deeper, as it were declaring the unity of the notion to be primary, and its distinction to be the original partition. And that is what the Judgment really is.
"In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition: 'The individual is the universal.' These are the terms under which the subject and the predicate first confront each other, when the functions of the notion are taken in their immediate character or first abstraction. (Propositions such as, 'The particular is the universal', and 'The individual is the particular', belong to the further specialisation of the judgment.) It shows a strange want of observation in the logic-books, that in none of them is the fact stated, that in every judgment there is still a statement made, as, the individual is the universal, or still more definitely, The subject is the predicate (e.g. God is absolute spirit). No doubt there is also a distinction between terms like individual and universal, subject and predicate: but it is none the less the universal fact, that every judgment states them to be identical.
"The copula 'is' springs from the nature of the notion, to be self-identical even in parting with its own. The individual and universal are its constituents, and therefore characters which cannot be isolated. The earlier categories (of reflection) in their correlations also refer to one another: but their interconnection is only 'having' and not 'being', i.e. it is not the identity which is realised as identity or universality. In the judgment, therefore, for the first time there is seen the genuine particularity of the notion: for it is the speciality or distinguishing of the latter, without thereby losing universality....
"The Judgment is usually taken in a subjective sense as an operation and a form, occurring merely in self-conscious thought. This distinction, however, has no existence on purely logical principles, by which the judgment is taken in the quite universal signification that all things are a judgment. That is to say, they are individuals which are a universality or inner nature in themselves -- a universal which is individualised. Their universality and individuality are distinguished, but the one is at the same time identical with the other.
"The interpretation of the judgment, according to which it is assumed to be merely subjective, as if we ascribed a predicate to a subject is contradicted by the decidedly objective expression of the judgment. The rose is red; Gold is a metal. It is not by us that something is first ascribed to them. A judgment is however distinguished from a proposition. The latter contains a statement about the subject, which does not stand to it in any universal relationship, but expresses some single action, or some state, or the like. Thus, 'Caesar was born at Rome in such and such a year waged war in Gaul for ten years, crossed the Rubicon, etc.', are propositions, but not judgments. Again it is absurd to say that such statements as 'I slept well last night' or 'Present arms!' may be turned into the form of a judgment. 'A carriage is passing by' should be a judgment, and a subjective one at best, only if it were doubtful, whether the passing object was a carriage, or whether it and not rather the point of observation was in motion: in short, only if it were desired to specify a conception which was still short of appropriate specification....
"The abstract terms of the judgement, 'The individual is the universal', present the subject (as negatively self-relating) as what is immediately concrete, while the predicate is what is abstract, indeterminate, in short the universal. But the two elements are connected together by an 'is': and thus the predicate (in its universality) must contain the speciality of the subject, must, in short, have particularity: and so is realised the identity between subject and predicate; which being thus unaffected by this difference in form, is the content." [Hegel (1975), pp.230-34, §§166-169. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[This passage in fact continues in the same vein for several more pages, and readers keen to develop a throbbing headache are welcome to follow the above link and read it for themselves. There is a considerably more involved and convoluted passage like this in Hegel's Science of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999)) which has been reproduced in Appendix A for the benefit of those suffering from insomnia.]
As the reader will no doubt have noticed, Hegel's comments are considerably more complex than those found in the poor relation that goes by the name "materialist dialectics" -- even if it is no less incomprehensible.
At least Hegel was a competent mystic who could knit-together impenetrable jargon to compete with the best. In fact, he could have confused for his country.
Nevertheless, in the above passage Hegel appears to limit positive judgements to what others have called "universal affirmative propositions", and then restrict propositions themselves to what others have called "singular affirmative propositions". That isn't a happy distinction. [Of course, this isn't to suggest Hegel considered only positive forms of either. On that, see Inwood (1992), pp.151-53.]
Although Hegel adapted mediaeval and Kantian ideas in this area, he superimposed his own idiosyncratic constraints on the distinction between a mere "satz" (sentence/proposition) and an "urteil" (a judgement) -- which will be examined in more detail in Essay Twelve Part Five (when it is published).
However, because Hegel based his theories on these highly dubious, ancient and seriously limited logical distinctions, much of what he had to say is of little value. As we will see in Essay Twelve, these categories are of little use to scientists or mathematicians -- least of all philosophers and genuine logicians --, since they are far too crude and restrictive.
For example, how would the following be classified?
H1: Every sailor loves a girl who reminds him of anyone other than his mother.
H2: Anyone who knows Marx's work will conclude that he is second to none in his analysis of the economic forces and processes operating in Capitalism as well as most of those constitutive of other Modes of Production.
H3: Any prime factor of an even number between two and one hundred is less than a composite number not equal to but greater than fifty.
H4: Most of those who admire some who do not despise themselves often avoid sitting opposite any who criticise individuals who claim membership of the minority break-away faction of the Socrates Appreciation Society.
H5: Today, Blair met several activists who think his policy on Iraq is a betrayal of his few remaining socialist principles.
Are these universal, particular, negative, or positive? Are they judgements or propositions? But, these sort of propositions (and worse!) feature in mathematics and the sciences all the time (to say nothing of everyday speech, excepting perhaps H4). Indeed, the serious limitations of the restrictive old logic, with its incapacity to handle complex sentences in mathematics, and those involving multiple generality, relations and complex forms of negation, inspired Frege to recast the entire discipline in its modern form over a hundred and thirty years ago -- breaking news of which has yet to filter through to most dialectically-addled brains. [On that, see Essay Four.]
Of course, the banal "judgements" that Hegel himself examined only serve further to confirm that conclusion. But, which scientist (for goodness sake!) is going to get excited over "The rose is red"? And although "Gold is a metal" might appear in Chemistry textbooks, only an eight year-old will learn much from it.
To be sure, some of the counter-examples considered in this Essay don't apply directly (or, at least, in any straight-forward sense) to issues of concern to Hegel, or even DM-fans, since they aren't "judgements", but propositions. And yet, what is "The rose is red"? It certainly looks like a proposition not a "judgement". However, Hegel also appears to have believed that the same set of words -- "The rose is red", for instance -- can oscillate between to apparently unstable states: being a judgement and being a proposition (see, for example, John McCumber's comment, quoted below). Nevertheless, as we will also see in Essay Twelve, the distinction Hegel drew between propositions and judgements is unsustainable, anyway. [Until that is published, the reader is directed to Rosenthal (1998), pp.111-36.]
Moreover, Hegel himself used such examples to make his point -- for example, here:
"By virtue of this negativity which, as an extreme of the judgment, is at the same time self-related, the predicate is an abstract individual. For example, in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, the predicate enunciates only one of the many properties of the rose; it singles out this particular one which, in the subject, is a concrescence with the others; just as in the dissolution of the thing, the manifold properties which inhere in it, in acquiring self-subsistence as matters, become individualised. From this side, then, the proposition of the judgment runs thus: the universal is individual.
"In bringing together this reciprocal determination of subject and predicate in the judgment, we get a twofold result. First that immediately the subject is, indeed, something that simply is, an individual, while the predicate is the universal. But because the judgment is the relation of the two, and the subject is determined by the predicate as a universal, the subject is the universal. Secondly, the predicate is determined in the subject; for it is not a determination in general, but of the subject; in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, this fragrance is not any indeterminate fragrance, but that of the rose; the predicate is therefore an individual. Now since subject and predicate stand in the relationship of the judgment, they have to remain mutually opposed as determinations of the Notion; just as in the reciprocity of causality, before it attains its truth, the two sides have to retain their self-subsistence and mutual opposition in face of the sameness of their determination. When, therefore, the subject is determined as a universal, we must not take the predicate also in its determination of universality -- else we should not have a judgment -- but only in its determination of individuality; similarly, when the subject is determined as an individual, the predicate is to be taken as a universal....
"We have already referred above to the prevalent idea that it depends merely on the content of the judgment whether it be true or not, since logical truth concerns only the form and demands only that the said content shall not contradict itself. The form of the judgment is taken to be nothing more than the relation of two notions. But we have seen that these two notions do not have merely the relationless character of a sum, but are related to one another as individual and universal. These determinations constitute the truly logical content, and, be it noted, constitute in this abstraction the content of the positive judgment; all other content that appears in a judgment (the sun is round, Cicero was a great orator in Rome, it is day now, etc.) does not concern the judgment as such; the judgment merely enunciates that the subject is predicate, or, more definitely, since these are only names, that the individual is universal and vice versa. By virtue of this purely logical content, the positive judgment is not true, but has its truth in the negative judgment. All that is demanded of the content is that it shall not contradict itself in the judgment; but as has been shown it does contradict itself in the above judgment....
"Since the negation affects the relation of the judgment, and we are dealing with the negative judgment still as such, it is in the first place still a judgment; consequently we have here the relationship of subject and predicate, or of individuality and universality, and their relation, the form of the judgment. The subject as the immediate which forms the basis remains unaffected by the negation; it therefore retains its determination of having a predicate, or its relation to the universality. What is negated, therefore, is not the universality as such in the predicate, but the abstraction or determinateness of the latter which appeared as content in contrast to that universality. Thus the negative judgment is not total negation; the universal sphere which contains the predicate still subsists, and therefore the relation of the subject to the predicate is essentially still positive; the still remaining determination of the predicate is just as much a relation. If, for example, it is said that the rose is not red, it is only the determinateness of the predicate that is negated and separated from the universality which likewise belongs to it; the universal sphere, colour, is preserved; in saying that the rose is not red, it is assumed that it has a colour, but a different one. In respect of this universal sphere the judgment is still positive." [Hegel (1999), pp.633-40, §§1364-76. I have used the online version here. Bold emphases alone added.]
"The rose is fragrant" and "The rose is not red" don't look like 'essential' propositions, nor yet "judgements" -- although, as has have already been noted, Hegel ran these two logical categories together, depending on how the "subject" was to be understood or conceived (again, on that, see below) --, as we can see from the next paragraph:
"Reflection on the above mere identity yields the two identical propositions:
The individual is individual,
The universal is universal,
"in which the sides of the judgment would have fallen completely asunder and only their self-relation would be expressed, while their relation to one another would be dissolved and the judgment consequently sublated." [Ibid., p.634, §1366.]
Here two propositions are also two judgements. It isn't easy to make much sense of that passage.
Nevertheless, John McCumber did make some attempt to extricate Hegel-fans from this dialectical briar patch:
"The second of them [McCumber is here responding to two objections to Hegel's ideas about belief -- RL] can be habilitated via Hegel's famous distinction between a 'judgement' (Urteil) and a 'proposition' or 'sentence' (two possible meanings of Satz; I will translate it as 'assertion' to capture both). While an 'assertion' simply unites any subject and predicate, a 'judgement' claims to present the same object twice: once under the form of an individual, and again as a universal. We may rephrase this by saying that a judgement, unlike mere assertion, claims to give a complete account of what an individual thing is. The subject presents the thing as a mere denotatum; the predicate presents its complete nature.
"This completeness claim seems to make judgements bizarre creatures indeed; but Hegel explains that the completeness of the account of an individual thing offered by a 'judgement' is in fact relative to purposes at hand. Such judgements do not only occur in ordinary speech, but play a distinctive role in the fixation of belief: 'that is a wagon,' for example, is a judgement only if the nature of the thing has previously been put into doubt. That it is in fact a wagon is then a complete account of its nature for the purposes at hand: the judgement assures us that the wagonhood of the object is all we need to know about it; acceptance of it ends our present enquiry into its nature." [McCumber (1993), pp.37-38. Italic emphases in the original; bold added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]
McCumber in fact admits that it will take the rest of his book to untangle this mess (p.39) -- my paraphrase, not his! Despite this, exactly how a judgement differs from an emphatic assertion still seems unclear.
The fact that Hegel considers propositions like "The rose is fragrant" and judgements like "The sun is round" (isn't it in fact spherical?) to make his point might mean that the objections to the criticisms of Hegel noted above are themselves misguided. [Again, see Inwood (1992), pp.151-53, on this.]
In response, it is worth asking: Exactly how does "The rose is red" manage to "give a complete account of what an individual thing is?" In which case, McCumber's assertion that "The subject presents the thing as a mere denotatum; the predicate presents its complete nature" is far from the truth, to say the least.
In the above passage, McCumber introduces another consideration that at first sight appears to clear things up:
"Hegel explains that the completeness of the account of an individual thing offered by a 'judgement' is in fact relative to purposes at hand. Such judgements do not only occur in ordinary speech, but play a distinctive role in the fixation of belief: 'that is a wagon,' for example, is a judgement only if the nature of the thing has previously been put into doubt. That it is in fact a wagon is then a complete account of its nature for the purposes at hand: the judgement assures us that the wagonhood of the object is all we need to know about it; acceptance of it ends our present enquiry into its nature." [Ibid; bold emphases added.]
Hence, it is relative to the "purposes at hand" that a sentence like "That is a wagon" becomes a judgement, but "only if the nature of the thing has previously been put in doubt." Consequently:
"That it is in fact a wagon is then a complete account of its nature for the purposes at hand: the judgement assures us that the wagonhood of the object is all we need to know about it; acceptance of it ends our present enquiry into its nature." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
And yet, one might well wonder how such a doubt might be expressed. Perhaps like this: "Is that a wagon? I'm not convinced." Or maybe, "I'm not too sure what counts as a wagon, can you help me out?" Or possibly even, "I can't tell whether that object in the distance is a wagon or a coach. What do you think?" In which case, "That is a wagon" would merely be an assertion, which would, hopefully, remove all reasonable doubt.
While the truth of a given proposition, p, might be challenged by asserting its negation, or merely by simply denying it is true, who expresses a doubt (as opposed to posing a challenge or raising a query, like the foregoing) in the form of an assertion?
The point of that question will become a little clearer if we consider what else McCumber had to say:
"While an 'assertion' simply unites any subject and predicate, a 'judgement' claims to present the same object twice: once under the form of an individual, and again as a universal. We may rephrase this by saying that a judgement, unlike mere assertion, claims to give a complete account of what an individual thing is. The subject presents the thing as a mere denotatum; the predicate presents its complete nature." [Ibid. Bold emphasis alone added.]
In which case, it seems that propositions and judgements are both assertions, but propositions only become judgements if they settle a doubt, or which maybe neutralise/assuage one. But, once again: How can an assertion also be an expression of doubt? How can what has already been admitted to be such and such by means of an assertion (namely, in this case, the proposition "That is a wagon" -- recall, that that set of words only becomes a judgement when those very same words settle some doubt or other, according to McCumber) -- how can it also constitute an expression of doubt?
If someone asserted the following:
V1: "That is a wagon."
Who in charge of their senses would then assert (in response to V1):
V2: "That is a wagon. I am glad I have cleared that up for you."?
Anyone replying with V2 in answer to V1 would be regarded as distinctly odd, at best, somewhat deranged, at worst.
Again, perhaps someone could express a doubt by asserting something like, "That isn't a wagon". But how would any of the above settle things if the object in question isn't actually a wagon, and the assertion, "That is a wagon", is what created the doubt in the first place? And what if a doubt -- such as, "Is that a wagon over there in the distance?" -- had been cleared up by the following assertion, "No, it's not a wagon, just a very good painting of a wagon", when it turns out that it wasn't a wagon after all?
But, let us suppose for the purposes of argument that "That isn't a wagon" is what created the said doubt. How does "That is a wagon" now remove the doubt? They are both assertions, and it is always open to the individual who said "That isn't a wagon" to respond, "I'm sorry, you are mistaken; it isn't a wagon, it is in fact a mock up of one made for the next scene in the film". To which the other responds "A mock up of a wagon is still a wagon!" Which one of these is the judgement and which the proposition? Neither has settled the question whether it is indeed a wagon. Do mock-up wagons count as wagons? Does a model of a wagon count as one? What about this Magritte painting? Is it correct that it isn't a pipe?
Figure Two: Pipe Or Not A Pipe?
It could be replied that what matters here is which one of these sentences cleared things up in the end. In other words, a judgement is simply an assertion that turns out to be true.
But, isn't that also the case with propositions?
Anyway, we have still failed to consider this seemingly fatal objection: How is an assertion like "That isn't a wagon" an expression of doubt as opposed to it possibly being the expression of a difference of opinion? What we lack here is a genuine assertion that is also an expression of doubt. In fact, as already noted, doubts are expressed in the manner outlined above, not by means of assertions:
And yet, one might well wonder how such a doubt might be expressed. Perhaps like this: "Is that a wagon? I'm not convinced." Or maybe "I'm not too sure what counts as a wagon, can you help me out?" Or possibly even, "I can't tell whether that object in the distance is a wagon or a coach. What do you think?" In which case, "That is a wagon" would merely be an assertion, which would, hopefully, remove all reasonable doubt.
Who in their left mind would assert something and express doubt at the same time by means of the very same words? McCumber conspicuously failed to cite even one example where an assertion can be used to express a doubt. In fact, an assertion is the exact opposite of expressing a doubt! "That is a wagon, but I doubt it" makes no sense -- nor does "That isn't a wagon, but I doubt it isn't, and so should you."40a1
Couldn't someone assert the following "I doubt that that is a wagon!" But that is the expression of doubt not the assertion of a doubt. Who has ever said, "I assert that I doubt x, y, or z!"? Of course, someone might be quite emphatic about their doubt "No, I really do doubt that that is x, y, or z!" And yet that is just an emphatic expression of a doubt, not an assertion of one. Admittedly, someone else could assert something like this: "Look, NN doubts x, y, or z!" But that is an assertion about NN's doubt not an assertion of a doubt itself.
Furthermore, any indicative sentence can be turned into an 'essential' judgement/proposition by such means if it clears up a given doubt ("in the present circumstances", which addendum is itself so vague it looks like yet another 'get-out-of-jail-free' card), and if McCumber is to be believed.
For example:
Q1: "I'm not sure it's raining."
Q2: "It is raining."
If Q2 clears up this doubt, then it must be an 'essential' proposition/judgement, in which case the "is" here must be one of identity, and Q2 should become:
Q3: "It is identical with raining."
Is anyone prepared to defend that as a legitimate way to represent what Q2 is attempting to say?
Hence, in the light of the above, McCumber's attempt to explain what Hegel was banging on about is no help at all.
So, as we have just seen, Hegel calls some sentences both propositions and judgements, while some sentences (such as "The rose is fragrant") seem to oscillate between the two! Perhaps some sense can be made of this, but I'm not holding my breath, especially given the unsatisfactory attempt made by McCumber to clear things up.
Lawler's Lame Criticism Of Bertrand Russell
Lawler (1982) is easily the best article I have so far encountered in my attempt to find out if there are any DM-theorists who know what a 'dialectical contradiction' actually is. His essay also makes some attempt to defend the reading of the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity -- for example, when that participle is used in sentences like "Socrates is mortal" and "Socrates is the man who drank the hemlock".
It will soon become apparent that Lawler has himself conflated Hegel's comments about "judgements" with those about "propositions" -- but since Hegel was himself thoroughly confused in this area, as we have just seen, this is hardly Lawler's fault. Although, having said that, just like McCumber, Lawler does precious little to clear up the mess.
However, because this Essay is about "Materialist Dialectics", and not the Über-Mystical version of 'dialectics' promulgated by Hegel, I will confine my comments here to what Lawler had to say, not the linguistic spaghetti Hegel cooked up. [Nevertheless, aspects of Hegel's work that are relevant to the aims of this Essay will also be considered (and then in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six -- summaries here and here).]
Referring to Bertrand Russell's criticism of Hegel (which criticism is vaguely similar to the line adopted in these Essays), Lawler claims that:
"Russell accuses Hegel of confusing these two different uses of 'is'. It is not necessary to deny the distinction made by Russell in order to see that his argument misses the point. In the example of an identity statement, in Russell's terms, there is still the 'difference' indicated by Hegel. We do not interpret identity as requiring us to say 'Socrates is...Socrates.' To say that Socrates is 'the man who drank the hemlock' is to assert something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject. In the process of knowledge, assuming that the sentence is informative, we are told that 'Socrates,' some individual vaguely or incompletely known, is indeed 'the man who drank the hemlock.' Socrates' 'identity' is established by our being told something 'different,' and knowledge develops through a process of moving from vague, 'undifferentiated' knowledge, to more specific knowledge. In this respect there is no difference between this proposition and the other, presumably also informative, assertion that 'Socrates is mortal' -- not a Greek god, but a human being." [Lawler (1982), p.25. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Now, this 'argument' only works if it is accepted that the word "Socrates" asserts something, which Lawler simply takes for granted. If, however, the word "Socrates" asserts nothing, or can't be used on its own to assert anything, then his entire argument falls flat.
It is worth reminding ourselves that predicates are used to assert things of individuals named, or picked out, by subject terms (these typically being Proper Names or Definite Descriptions). So the Proper Name "Socrates" would be used to assert something only if it too were a predicate expression, which, I take it, everyone (other than perhaps Quine -- but even he had to re-write names as obvious predicates, which only served to underline this syntactic distinction), everyone is agreed that such names aren't predicates when they are used as subject terms. The fact that the word "Socrates" can't be used to assert anything in such sentences can be seen from the additional fact that we have to attach predicate expressions to it in order to assert something of the individual so named.
Hence, if someone just said "Socrates", they wouldn't be asserting anything (in the sense that they would be making no assertion) -- unless it was in answer to a question such as "Who was Plato's teacher?" Then it would, of course, be a contextual paraphrase for "Socrates was Plato's teacher."
Someone might object, and point out that it is possible to assert Socrates, for example, by means of the following:
S1: A man is Socrates.
Of course, even with respect to that bizarre example (and I have to say that, except in books and articles on the philosophy of logic (etc.), I have yet to read, see or hear anyone use a sentence like this), "Socrates" is no longer functioning simply as a Proper Name, it now forms part of the expression, "ξ is Socrates", and in that case, "Socrates" wouldn't be asserting "something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject", since the new subject (viz., "A man") isn't now asserting anything. That role has been devolved to the new predicate expression, "ξ is Socrates". Hence, if the "A man" isn't actually asserting anything in S1, then "ξ is Socrates" can't assert something different from it. So, Lawler's claims fail, even in this case.
In addition, Lawler completely skewed his argument by considering an example of a predicate expression that also works as an identifying (definite) description (i.e., "Socrates is the man who drank the hemlock"). It won't work with sentences such as "Socrates is running after the man who gave him the hemlock", since the predicate "ξ is running after the man who gave him the hemlock" in no way identifies Socrates (indeed, if anything, it identifies his quarry); it merely says something about him.
And if, for some reason, it is still thought that "Socrates is running after the man who gave him the hemlock" does succeed in identifying Socrates, it is worth pointing out that identity and being identifiable are not at all the same. Here is what I have written about this in Essay Eight Part Three:
It is worth adding that this 'problem' has been compounded by the fact that Hegel and Lawler slide between two, dare I say it, different uses of the word "identity" and "identify" -- that is, between (a) "identity" when it is used to provide an empty (or perhaps even significant) identity statement for any given object, and (b) "identify" when it is used to speak about the capacity the vast majority of us possess of being able to discriminate, pick out, or recognise a person, property, location, smell, taste, sound, tune, process or object from moment to moment.
For example, if squaddie NN is asked whether or not he can identify Osama bin Laden in a line-up, and he replies, "Yes, Sarge! Osama is identical to Osama, Sarge!", he would risk being put on a charge. On the other hand, if he points to one of the suspects and says, "That's him, Sarge!", he wouldn't. [This was, of course, written before the US military executed Osama bin Laden extra-judicially.] So, identification isn't the same as identity (no pun intended).
Naturally, identification (i.e., use (b), above) could in some circumstances involve a capacity to differentiate among objects, but that isn't necessarily so in all cases (as was argued here).
Would, for example, the rather dim squaddie above be able to identify Osama bin Laden only if he had first learnt to distinguish the latter from everything that Osama wasn't? Upon meeting someone for the first time, and being introduced to them, which one of us even so much as thinks "Hang on! Let me first distinguish this character from a bucket of fish, a corkscrew, a Rabbit Jelly Mould, a tidal estuary, a flock of geese, your recently deceased grandmother, a rusty old car, the Andromeda Galaxy, a self-adjoint operator, a pi-Meson, a Pulsar..., before you tell me who she is, otherwise I won't know who you are talking about!"
By running these two words together, Hegel revealed once again that he was even more confused than this rather dim squaddie. Lawler might be advised, therefore, to abandon his role as Hegel's Dialectical Defence Counsel.
Notwithstanding this, Lawler has an additional argument:
"Moreover, it seems that a 'predicative' relation, such as 'Socrates is mortal' can be readily turned into an 'identity' statement: 'Socrates is that particular mortal man'." [Ibid., p.25.]
[Interestingly, this is a dodge that Jean Buridan also tried out on his readers; on that, see here.]
However, even if that paraphrase were acceptable (which it isn't since the two sentences don't mean the same, and they are true/false under different circumstances; for example "Socrates is that particular mortal man" might be false if "that particular man" is, say, Alcibiades; whereas "Socrates is mortal" would still be true in such circumstances), one would want to know precisely what this identity is meant to be. Surely Lawler isn't suggesting that Socrates is identical to "that particular mortal man". If he is then the following argument would be sound:
L1: Plato is mortal.
L2: Socrates is mortal.
L3: Therefore, Plato is Socrates.
If L1 and L2 both pick out "that particular mortal man" then Plato and Socrates must be one and the same.
Of course, it could be objected that the phrase "that particular mortal man" refers to someone different in each case, so L3 doesn't follow from L1 and L2.
Well, that is quite easy to fix:
L4: Plato is mortal = Plato is that particular mortal man1.
L5: Socrates is mortal = Socrates is that particular mortal man2.
The problem is that "mortal man1" now becomes a rigid designator for Plato, no different from his name, and "mortal man2" becomes a surrogate for "Socrates". In that case, L4 and L5 would become:
L4a: Plato is mortal = Plato is Plato. (!)
L5b: Socrates is mortal = Socrates is Socrates. (!)
It could be objected that "mortal man1" isn't a surrogate for the name "Plato", and "mortal man2" isn't a surrogate for "Socrates", so the above objection is misguided.
But, the problem is that if that response were correct, "that particular mortal man1" might in fact pick out Alcibiades. How can that be ruled out without using Plato's name to identify "that particular mortal man1"? Which would make the whole exercise circular. [That was in fact the point of the above counter-objection that led to L4a and L5a, and the point made here.]
But Lawler's argument fails for other reasons; that is because it is still controversial whether or not L2 is an identity statement, so that alleged fact can't be used in its own support --, whereas is isn't controversial that L5/L5a are identity statements:
L2: Socrates is mortal.
L5: Socrates is mortal = Socrates is that particular mortal man2.
L5a: Socrates is mortal = Socrates is Socrates.
Lawler merely asserts that "Socrates is mortal" and "Socrates is that particular mortal man" are saying same (since L2 is an identity statement), or that one can be read from the other:
"...it seems that a 'predicative' relation, such as 'Socrates is mortal' can be readily turned into an 'identity' statement: 'Socrates is that particular mortal man'." [Ibid., p.25.]
Lawler's "it seems" here gives the game away, one feels; there is no logical route that will take us from L2 to L5/L5a -- if there were, Lawler would surely have included it in his argument. In other words, Lawler assumes L2 is an identity statement in his 'proof' that it is one -- or, at least, that it can be turned into one in some as yet unspecified way.
Which, of course, implies that it L2 isn't an identity statement, after all; otherwise an appeal to L5 would be superfluous.
But, even if the above rebuttals are rejected for some reason, Lawler's sentence presents a number of problems of its own (rather like those we have already met several times):
A1: "Socrates is that particular mortal man."
If the "is" here (highlighted in green) is one of identity, and stands for "is identical with", then we would be faced with yet another incipient infinite regress. Replacing the highlighted "is" in A1 with what we are told it means yields the following:
A2: "Socrates is identical with that particular mortal man."
But, the same surely applies to the new "is" (highlighted in red) in A2. If we now replace it with what we are told it means (i.e., "is identical with"), we obtain this meaningless sentence:
A3: "Socrates is identical with identical with that particular mortal man."
And, if we do the same again, we obtain:
A4: "Socrates is identical with identical with identical with that particular mortal man."
And so on...
A 'sentential explosion' like this can only be halted by those who deny that "is" is always an "is" of identity in such contexts. [Objections to this particular line-of-argument -- on the grounds that Hegel was only interested in "essential" predication" -- have been neutralised here.]
Of course, it could be objected that A3 is an ill-formed sentence, so it has nothing to do with Hegel's argument. Any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous. But, any theorist who happily countenances sentences like the following (taken directly from Lenin) has lost all right to appeal:
H5: "[T]he opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical."
To say nothing of this Lulu from Hegel:
X1: The individual is universal.
But, what about the following?
"We do not interpret identity as requiring us to say 'Socrates is...Socrates.' To say that Socrates is 'the man who drank the hemlock' is to assert something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject. In the process of knowledge, assuming that the sentence is informative, we are told that 'Socrates,' some individual vaguely or incompletely known, is indeed 'the man who drank the hemlock.' Socrates' 'identity' is established by our being told something 'different,' and knowledge develops through a process of moving from vague, 'undifferentiated' knowledge, to more specific knowledge." [Ibid., p.25.]
No one doubts that predicate expressions are often physically different from Proper Names, but that difference is logically irrelevant. Nor does that alleged predicate have to say anything different.
Both can be seen if we consider this sentence:
L10: Socrates is Socrates.
Here the alleged predicate**, "...Socrates", isn't different from the subject in any relevant way. Naturally, it could be objected that L10 isn't informative. But, it could be. Sentences like L10 are used all the time; they tell us that the named individual is rather unique, that he or she behaves in a quirky, idiosyncratic or characteristic sort of way. This form can also be used to argue that whatever happens can't be changed, for better or worse -- for example, "Boys will be boys", "Whatever will be, will be" (which was also a Doris Day hit song in the 1950s; "Que sera, sera"). Other uses of this sentential form include, "A rose is a rose" (which was, incidentally, also the title of an episode in the US cop drama, Major Crimes (Season 4, Episode 1), as well as forming part of the title of a poem by Gertrude Stein: "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose") -- indeed, we also have a use of this locution from fifty odd years ago: "A rose is a rose", which was the title of the Donna Reed Show (Season 4, Episode 2), 21/09/1961 --, and "Business is business", which is reputed to be a Mafia cliché (often used in gangster films), as well as being the title of a play by Octave Mirbeau: Les affaires sont les affaires.
One can also imagine someone saying "Well, Socrates is Socrates. What else do you expect?" upon being asked why Socrates didn't attempt to escape his execution when he had the chance.
Moreover, someone could say "Best is best" (meaning that the late George Best is the best footballer), just as they could assert "Sharp is sharp" (meaning that someone called "Sharp" was quick-witted), "Blunt is blunt" (meaning that someone called "Blunt" is somewhat forthright), "Down is down" (meaning that the price of duck feathers had fallen), and "Dopey is dopey" (meaning that the famous dwarf from the film, Snow White, is slow-witted). Or, as an equine trainer said (in the run up to the 2012 London Olympics and in relation to how horses behave): "Horses are horses".
[Admittedly, the second word in each case, here, isn't a Proper Name (while it is in "Socrates is Socrates"), but these examples have only been quoted to illustrate the fact that the alleged predicate can be informative even if it doesn't look or sound different from the subject, and often 'says the same thing'. Moreover, "are" is, of course, just the plural form of "is". In Note 40a I have listed scores of additional examples of the locutions, "NN is NN" and "F is F" (where "NN" stands for a Proper Name, and "F" for a noun or verb phrase).]40a
Moreover, dialecticians had better hope that no one is ever given, say, the name, "Arthur Man" (i.e., "A Man") -- oops, too late! --, otherwise the following thoroughly reactionary and impertinently anti-dialectical sentence could truthfully be uttered:
A1: A Man is a man.
Lest anyone think that the capital letters make much of a difference, A1 could be a spoken sentence, or its letters could be typed or written wholly in capitals, thus:
A2: A MAN IS A MAN.
Or even, à la e e cummings, as follows:
A3: a man is a man.
**In the comment above about "alleged predicate", that phrase was chosen deliberately. As noted earlier, Lawler pointedly omits the copula "is" when quoting predicate expressions -- notice his reference to "the man who drank the hemlock", instead of "...is the man who drank the hemlock", for instance. The serious misuse to which truncations like this can be (and are often) put was also highlighted earlier. That is why when predicative expressions are mentioned or quoted in this Essay (and this site) they are expressed in the following way: "ξ is mortal" or "ξ is the man who drank the hemlock" -- unless, of course, Lawler's own, or someone's else's, misuse is being quoted, etc. There is no way functional expressions like these -- i.e, "ξ is the man who drank the hemlock" -- can be misconstrued as Proper Names.
There were good reasons why Traditional Theorists truncated predicate expressions; these were connected with the idea that these expressions mirrored or reflected 'concepts' in the mind of the one using them -- or, perhaps, they mirrored them in some other, 'heavenly' realm, or maybe a hidden world, anterior to experience. The clause "is mortal" doesn't even look like a name, general or Proper; but "mortal" does, so the truncated form was more appealing to those who wanted to promote traditional ideas about the alleged reference of general terms. This idea could in turn be recruited in support of the theory that concepts are 'mental constructs', or 'processes' of some sort in the 'mind' or the brain. This view of 'concepts' will be put under considerable pressure in Essay Thirteen Part Three, where it will be shown that, if true, it would render communication impossible. It is also worth pointing out that the alternative approach adopted here implies that concepts are more accurately to be characterised as linguistic rules -- or, rather, their use is an expression of such a rule --, which would indicate that the individual concerned had mastered a certain skill -- the ability to form or to generate coherent sentences of a certain sort -- by their use of such expressions. This view of concepts places them in the public domain, as opposed to burying them in a private, uncheckable part of the brain/'mind' -- the latter approach being different from bourgeois individualism and Cartesianism in name alone. [How that works out was outlined here, and in Note 16.]
It could be objected that the above sentences (i.e., "Socrates is Socrates", etc.) weren't (originally) predicative, and so don't count. But, dialecticians like Lawler turn predicative expressions into identity statements all the time, so they are hardly in a position to complain. Anyway, it isn't true that the above aren't predicative; "Best is best" is, and so are: "A Man is a man", "Business is business", "Rape is rape", and "A negro is a negro" (Marx), as, indeed, are most of the examples quoted in Note 40a.
Someone else might object that in spite of the above, "ξ is Socrates", in sentences like "Socrates is Socrates", is still predicating "Socrates" of Socrates, which contradicts something said earlier. In fact, it was merely asserted that in sentences like "Socrates is mortal" the word "Socrates" can't assert anything; that role is devolved to the predicate expression, "ξ is mortal". We can certainly regard "ξ is Socrates" as a predicate expression if we so wish, but it is perhaps better to regard it as a relational expression when it appears in sentences like "Socrates is Socrates" -- or even better: view that sentence as a substitution instance of the two-place, first level linguistic function, "F(ξ,ξ)". [For an explanation of those rather odd symbols, see here and Note 15a. On this, see Long (1984).]
Alternatively, it could be argued that in the above examples something different from the subject is being asserted from that which is being asserted in the predicate, which is all Lawler needs. But, that isn't true with respect to "Socrates is Socrates". Anyway, and more importantly, since nothing is being asserted by the word "Socrates" (in "Socrates is mortal", as we have seen) -- because it is a Proper Name, not a predicate expression that is being used to say something about some individual --, no comparison with respect to sameness or difference between what has or hasn't been asserted by "Socrates" and any predicate expression applicable to him can be sustained. Only predicates (relational expressions and assorted descriptions, etc.) can be used to assert things of named individuals or of objects, hence the above response also fails. I have also covered the objection that these are self-predications in Part Two, here.
In that case, the only distinction Lawler could conceivably be alluding to here is a physical or spatio-temporal difference between subjects and predicates, the first one of which we have just seen isn't logically significant, anyway.
Well, what about an alleged spatio-temporal difference? That is, one where the predicate and subject terms are located in slightly different places on the page/screen, or where the predicate expression has to be uttered after, or at least at a slightly different time to, the subject expression? Again, these are logically irrelevant. It would surely be confusing, but not logically impossible to reconfigure L2 to read as follows:
L2: Socrates is mortal.
L2a: Sioscmorartteals.
Where the inserted letters (coloured differently -- "Socrates" is in red, "is" is in green, and "mortal" is in blue) in L2a say the same as L2. These inserted letters represent the copula and the predicate expression all in one go, and they can all be read at the same time as the subject term. It is also possible for someone to record themselves saying "is mortal" and then replay it at the same time as saying "Socrates".
It could be objected that that isn't a serious reply since the above jumble doesn't in fact say anything; but that would be a mistake. It is only an accident of history that our written words aren't concatenated as follows:
L2b: Socrates/is/mortal.
L2a: Sioscmorartteals.
L2c: Socratesismortal.
Spoken languages regularly run words together, as do certain secret codes. In fact, Semitic languages, such as Arabic, use the device employed in L2a all the time. After noting that Arabic uses a root formed of three consonants to say something, linguist Guy Deutscher makes the following point:
"But how can a vowel-less group of three consonants ever mean anything if it cannot even stand up on its own three legs and be pronounced unaided? The answer is that such roots do not have to be spoken by themselves, because the root is an abstract notion, which comes to life only when it is superimposed on some templates: patters of (mostly) vowels, which have three empty dots for the three consonants of the root. To take one example, the Arabic template ΟaΟiΟa forms the past tense (in the third person 'he'), so if you want to say 'he was at peace', you must insert the root s-l-m ('be at peace') into that template to get:
Root: s-l-m
↓ ↓ ↓
Template: ΟaΟiΟa
s a l i m a ('he was at peace')
[I have posted a photograph of Deutscher's actual diagrams in Appendix C since the above graphic isn't too clear! -- RL.]
"And if you want to form the past tense of another verb, say, 'wear', you take the root l-b-s, and insert it into the same template, to get labisa ('he wore')." [Deutscher (2006), p.37. Italic emphases in the original.]
So, the suggestion advanced in L2a isn't all that fanciful; indeed, Semitic speakers have been talking this way for centuries.
Furthermore, the same message could be communicated in several other ways; it would just take a little practice to decipher them with ease. So, we could have a code that used the following rule:
L2d: Socrates.
L2e: Rule: Any name that has been struck through means that the named individual is mortal.
[That adapts a suggestion Wittgenstein advanced in the Tractatus.]
Sure, the contingent features of the subject-predicate form make it easier for us to read or hear what is said (although that is probably a by-product of familiarity), but that fact is logically irrelevant, even if it is psychologically important (at least, for Indo-European speakers).
In that case, the same information could be conveyed in a number of different ways, many of which wouldn't fall foul of Hegel's logically irrelevant criterion (that is, if this was his criterion -- but, who can say?).
Now, if we examine a wider set of examples (i.e., one that is more inclusive than the radically impoverished set dialecticians usually consider -- which are limited to such banalities as "The rose is red" and "John is a man", etc.), the above points will become even less controversial.
So, imagine someone pointing at L11 while saying:
L11: "L11 is an example that Lawler shouldn't have ignored."
In this case, the above subject/predicate sentence, employing the verb "is", is being used to say of itself what it says of itself, which isn't different from what it says of itself. Even worse: it occupies the same spatio-temporal region as it itself occupies.
Less contentious examples than the above might seem to be, which address an earlier point, include, perhaps, the following:
L12: Not saying anything is not saying anything.
L13: Half empty is half full.
L14: Six is six plus zero.
L15: Cicero admires all whom Tully admires.
L16: Ken and John are fighting each other.
L17: Socrates said the same about himself last week.
L18: And so did Plato.
Here, what is being said is plainly not different from what each is about. [In fact, as has been pointed out several times already, the sub-Aristotelian 'logic' DM-fans inherited from Hegel can't cater for such sentences. Small wonder then that Hegel and his ilk failed to consider them -- and that includes the other examples given below.]
As Wittgenstein noted:
"A main cause of philosophical disease -- a one-sided diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example." [Wittgenstein (1958), §593, p.155e.]
The seemingly perverse examples listed above (which are themselves but a tiny fraction of the many that could have been chosen) -- as well as those given below --, show that Wittgenstein's comment wasn't all that wide of the mark.
So, it is what we do with our words that distinguishes predication from naming. Physical shape and spatio-temporal considerations are only of psychological, or perhaps rhetorical, importance.
However, Lawler's abbreviation (i.e., where he refers to "mortal" as the predicate instead of "...is mortal", or "the man who drank the hemlock", instead of "...is the man who drank the hemlock") 'allows' him to nominalise (or particularise) expressions as the whim takes him. In so doing he is following the same well-worn tradition examined earlier in this Essay -- indeed, the very one that Hegel turned into a test for all self-respecting idealists. This can be seen by the way he talks about the "predicative relation", above. Objects, ink marks on the page and the alleged 'referents' of nominalised expressions can certainly be put into a 'relation of sorts', but not predicates and subjects -- unless, of course, we wish to turn predicates into objects (or the names thereof), destroying not only the unity of the proposition but generality, into the bargain. A predicate can be used to say things truly or falsely of whoever or whatever it is that is designated by a subject term (or, perhaps better, predicate expressions can be used to form true or false sentences when completed with Proper Names or other singular terms). If predicate expressions are nominalised (or particularised) they can't do this (since, once again, that would turn the relevant sentence into a list, as we saw earlier). Certainly we can speak about the relation between certain inscriptions (i.e., marks on the page and pixels on a screen), or sound patterns in the air (i.e., spoken words), but to conflate these with an alleged relation between a Proper Name and a predicate expression would be to confuse the medium with the message.
[Even so, we will see below where Lawler tries to do just this, and then again later when he attempts to clarify Hegel's obscure phrase, "dialectical contradiction" -- see also, Essay Eight Part Three, where I deal at length with that specific topic alongside the rest of Lawler's article.]
We are perhaps now in a position to see the point of all the 'seemingly pedantic' detail given toward the beginning of this Essay (i.e., concerning sentences and lists (etc., etc.)), which was intended to reveal the origin of this ancient syntactic segue.
Naturally, only those still mesmerised by Hegel, or, indeed, by the sloppy 'logic' upon which his ideas are predicated (no pun intended), might perhaps fail to appreciate the above comments.
Lawler continues:
"However, this is not the meaning of 'identity' which Hegel attempted to formulate. It is not the dialectical identity which Hegel wished to contrast with 'abstract' identity. In his interpretation of Hegel, Russell mistakenly understands 'identity' only within the framework of abstract identity. If it seems reasonable to distinguish the kind of 'identity' statement which Russell described from other 'predicative' uses of the connective 'is', one would still like to understand what in fact is asserted when one predicates some general attribute or quality, such as mortality or humanity, of some individual. There seems to be some sense in calling this one of 'identity,' for Socrates' mortality is intrinsic to Socrates' being Socrates. This problem is not one resolved by asserting that Socrates is one member of the class of mortal things. But, if we interpret mortality realistically we are still faced with the ontological problem of the relation of an individual to its properties." [Lawler (1982), pp.25-26. Paragraphs merged; bold emphasis added.]
Unfortunately, in the above passage we encounter one of the most common mistakes committed by Traditional Philosophers; in this instance, it concerns the spurious 'problem' of the 'relation' between a subject and its properties. If properties don't populate the world as objects (i.e., if they aren't objects, and can only be turned into 'objects' by particularising them in ways highlighted earlier), they can't stand in a relation to anything. That is, they aren't the sort of things that could stand in relation to anything, any more than a Proper Name can be a verb.
Some might object to the assertion that a Proper Name can't be a verb and point to the following as a counter-example to it (taken from one of the Essays published at this site): "Nixoning". Here the Proper Name of the 37th President of the USA, "Richard Nixon", has been turned into a verb! Ironically, grammatical switches like this even have their own Proper Name: Anthimeria, a sub-category of which is itself called "Verbification". However, in this instance, the word "Nixoning" is no longer operating as a Proper Name (there is no one on earth called "Nixoning" -- if anyone knows differently, please let me know); it is now a verb. The assertion was that a Proper Names can't be a verb, not that they can't be turned into one.
So, this is just another classic example of a bogus 'ontological problem' conjured into existence by a clumsy distortion of language -- in this case, inflicted on predicate expressions.
Furthermore, if Socrates does indeed belong to the class of mortal beings -- and that is it, if that is all there is to him --, then comrades like Lawler will just have to get used to it. Lawler certainly can't appeal to Hegel's mutant 'logic' to bully nature or society into acceding to the demands that that Hermetic Harebrain, Hegel, tried to foist on it.
Moreover, as Hegel saw things, Socrates's mortality was considered part of his essence for theological reasons, in that it was an aspect of the latter's finitude, set over and against the 'Infinite'/the 'Absolute':
"The being of something is determinate; something has a quality and in it is not only determined but limited; its quality is its limit and, burdened with this, it remains in the first place an affirmative, stable being. But the development of this negation, so that the opposition between its determinate being and the negation as its immanent limit, is itself the being-within-self of the something, which is thus in its own self only a becoming, constitutes the finitude of something.
"When we say of things that they are finite, we understand thereby that they not only have a determinateness, that their quality is not only a reality and an intrinsic determination, that finite things are not merely limited -- as such they still have determinate being outside their limit -- but that, on the contrary, non-being constitutes their nature and being. Finite things are, but their relation to themselves is that they are negatively self-related and in this they are negatively self-related and in this very self-relation send themselves away beyond themselves, beyond their being. They are, but the truth of this being is their end.
"The finite not only alters, like something in general, but it ceases to be; and its ceasing to be is not merely a possibility, so that it could be without ceasing to be, but the being as such of finite things is to have the germ of decease as their being-within-self: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death." [Hegel (1999), p.129, §§248-49. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases added. I have used the on-line version here.]
These are surely no good reasons in the above material to persuade materialists to tail-end such a confused and bumbling mystic -- something which one would have thought should be crystal clear to any self-respecting radical, especially since 'the nature' of any human being is surely an empirical, not a logical issue.
Well, it is for us anti-Idealists.
[Naturally, we might incorporate certain facts into our use of language, along the lines discussed here, but that is a separate issue. Of course, how we employ words and how we draw inferences from the use of certain sentences is a logical issue, but that, too, is a separate matter.]
And, there is no way that this view of "finitude" can be eradicated, eliminated, or swept under the carpet by the simple expedient of putting Hegel "back on his feet". Furthermore, since "essences" like these are integral to DM, this is one aspect of the 'mystical shell' that dialectician have imported into Marxism from Traditional Thought. [On that, see Rosenthal (1998).]
At this point, some readers might object to the way that propositions have been analysed in this Essay. If so, we can put that analysis to one side. Even then, the question would still remain: How is it possible for any analysis of propositions to justify the imposition of its supposed results onto the fundamental (and hidden) 'essence' of nature and society? To be sure, that could only be justified if 'language implied essence' (LIMPE), and the 'nature of reality' was in some sense linguistic (LIE) -- and its deep structure 'fortuitously' matched contingent features of a minor sub-category of just one strand of Indo-European Grammar!
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism. This term was explained above, and will be again in more detail In Essay Twelve (summary here).]
For Lawler's theory to work it not only has to rely on a radical reconfiguration of a simple verb (i.e., "to be"), it requires the nominalisation (particularisation) of predicates, into the bargain, thereby destroying generality. Hence, even if the neo-Fregean reading of predicate expressions employed at this site were to be rejected, Lawler's account would still be unacceptable to materialists.
Frege or no Frege, predicates aren't Proper Names -- and even if they were, that alleged fact would have empirical consequences only for Idealists:
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
Fortunately, the neo-Fregean approach adopted at this site blocks this slide into Idealism. That consideration alone should recommend it to consistent materialists.
Finally, immediately after the passage quoted above, Lawler proceeded to argue as follows:
"There is no 'pure' individual which is not some kind of thing. There is only an individual with certain specific properties and powers, common to those of other individuals.... Russell's various attempts to solve the problem of universals and his admitted failures suggest that the real solution involves more than making a simple distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication." [Ibid., p.26. Emphasis in the original. Lawler also references Fisk (1979) in support. Fisk's arguments will be discussed in Essay Twelve (summary here).]
Whatever one thinks of the claim that there are no "pure individuals", one thing is clear, the 'dialectical analysis' of predicative propositions destroys our capacity to speak in general about anything whatsoever (in what were predicative sentences), let alone about these "pure individuals" -- for, as we have seen, it reconfigures general terms as the Proper Names of abstract particulars. In that case, howsoever badly Russell did or didn't fail in his attempt to solve the spurious 'problem' of "Universals", DL fares a whole lot worse -- since it destroys fact-stating language.
Of course, if we cast our linguistic net a little wider and consider examples drawn from everyday speech (which dialecticians seldom consider because that is what Traditional Philosophers have always done: downplay, ignore or depreciate the vernacular, which naturally means that dialecticians are merely aping a well-entrenched, conservative thought-form, as Marx himself noted), Lawler's 'analysis' becomes all the more bizarre. Consider, therefore, the following example:
L19: What is Socrates doing?
Using superfine DL we might re-write this as:
L20: What is identical with Socrates doing?
Whereas:
L21: Why is Socrates drinking the hemlock?
would have to become:
L22: Why is identical with Socrates drinking the hemlock?
Finally:
L23: Is Socrates going to drink the hemlock?
would become:
L24: Is identical with Socrates going to drink the hemlock?
Diabolical Logic like this needs preserving for posterity as a warning to future generations.
Should anyone object, and claim, for instance, that L20 should be:
L20a: What is identical with whatever Socrates is doing?
they would then have to explain the role of this new is in L20a, without generating the infinite regress we have met several times already (most recently, for example, here).
Naturally, it could be argued that the last few examples are completely irrelevant since they are questions, not propositions, and still less are they Hegelian "essential judgements". Even so, they were specifically chosen to expose the narrow range of examples considered by dialecticians. But, these questions are logically linked to the type of proposition that could sensibly be offered in answer to them -- for example:
L23: Is Socrates going to drink the hemlock?
L23a: Socrates is going to drink the hemlock.
L23a is one answer that could be given to L23, in which case when it is given the Hegel-treatment, it would become:
L23b: Socrates is identical with going to drink the hemlock,
as the is in L23a is replaced with what we are told it really means, is identical with, in L23b.
Someone might object that L23a isn't an 'essential' proposition, but Lawler himself uses a 'non-essential' proposition to make his point:
"To say that Socrates is 'the man who drank the hemlock' is to assert something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject. In the process of knowledge, assuming that the sentence is informative, we are told that 'Socrates,' some individual vaguely or incompletely known, is indeed 'the man who drank the hemlock.' Socrates' 'identity' is established by our being told something 'different,' and knowledge develops through a process of moving from vague, 'undifferentiated' knowledge, to more specific knowledge. In this respect there is no difference between this proposition and the other, presumably also informative, assertion that 'Socrates is mortal' -- not a Greek god, but a human being." [Lawler (1982), p.25. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
There is no way that "Socrates is the man who drank the hemlock" is an 'essential' proposition (or judgement). [However, on such propositions/judgements, see Note 24a and here.]
So, it is quite plain what Hegel was attempting to do here -- that is, he was trying to distinguish what one might call "contingent propositions" from those that are deemed to be 'essential' -- or perhaps even 'necessary' --, when faced with the fact that discourse (or, at least, examples taken from the Indo-European family of languages) appears to use the verb "is" somewhat indiscriminately. Hegel clearly wanted to distinguish the employment of this verb when it is used in the latter sense from its role in the former. Unfortunately, he imposed a bogus metaphysic on this linguistic distinction, which only succeeded in destroying a key feature of language, and one that he himself relied upon: its capacity to express generality.
Incidentally, this reconfiguration also destroys 'essential' predication, and for the same reason.
We will examine this serious error again in Essay Twelve, where we will explore the deleterious effect it had on Hegel's thought, and hence on DM in general. [Of course, much of this will merely be a continuation and elaboration of the points made earlier in this Essay, as well as those outlined here and here.]
Unfortunately, Hegel also buried this legitimate concern under a cascade of incomprehensible terminology, and that, too, was forced on him because of the woefully inadequate resources available to him courtesy of the bowdlerised logic he inherited from previous generations of third-rate logicians and philosophical hacks, a serious drawback compounded by the ruling-class tradition within which his work had been created. As a matter of course this tradition ignored, undervalued or otherwise disparaged the rich conceptual resources ordinary language offers those who adopt a different approach (again, as Marx urged). [On this, see Kenny (2006), pp.11-13, and the references listed here. There is more on this in Essay Twelve, summary here. See also, here.]
And yet, as we have seen, Hegel himself uses examples like "The rose is fragrant" to make his point (which is in no way 'essential'), so the veracity of the comments expressed in the last few paragraphs is by no means certain. The confusion is, I think, all of Hegel's own making.
However, it wouldn't be difficult to find other examples that Lawler's theory can't handle:
L25: Socrates gives at least as good as he gets in Plato's dialogues.
L26: Socrates never loses an argument.
L27: Socrates is made of flesh and bone.
L28: Socrates is no more.
L29: Socrates is a creation of Plato's fertile imagination.
L30: Socrates is in fact someone else.
L31: Socrates isn't a man to be trifled with.
L32: Socrates sits next to Alcibiades whenever he can.
L33: Socrates is in a hurry.
L34: Socrates is incensed with himself.
L35: Socrates is asserting nothing he hasn't asserted before.
L36: Socrates is the like of no one else.
L37: No one who wants to emulate Socrates is likely to accept the opinions of anyone who agrees with Protagoras.
And so on...
If we now use an even wider range of examples drawn from the vernacular (but restricted to the use of "is"), the woeful inadequacy of Hegel's theory will become even more obvious:
L38: This strike is too passive.
L39: No answer is also an answer.
L40: Everything in the sale is half-price.
L41: Hegel's Logic is difficult to understand.
L42: The emancipation of the working class is an act of the workers themselves.
L43: The average cat is twice as fast as the average mouse.
L44: Scabbing is nothing to be proud of.
L45: An unknown assailant is being sought by the police.
L46: Sugar is fattening.
L47: If the weather forecast says it will rain then it is wrong.
L48: This isn't what management promised.
L49: If this meeting is about anything, it is about the right of the majority of workers to decide who legitimately represents their interests.
L50: Anything is better than this.
L51: Something in the bank is better than nothing.
This list of course could easily be extended until it contained thousands of sentences -- with which we are all familiar -- from which it would also be clear that none of the above can be re-written with an "is" of identity, à la Lawler, while remaining comprehensible. For example:
L43a: The average cat is identical with twice as fast as the average mouse.
L48a: If the weather forecast says it will rain then it is identical with wrong.
L51a: Something in the bank is identical with better than nothing.
Once more, it could be argued that these examples could be re-written in the following way:
L46a: Sugar is identical with something that is fattening.
L46: Sugar is fattening.