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Essay Twelve Part One: Metaphysics -- Or, How Dialectical Marxism Was Corrupted By A Ruling-Class Thought-Form

Readers should make note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final views on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.

If you are viewing this using Mozilla Firefox, you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.

First of all it needs pointing out that phrases like "ruling-class thought-form" and "ruling-class view of reality" used in this Essay are not meant to imply that all or 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). These phrases are meant 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. This will become the central topic of Parts Two and Three of this Essay; until then, the reader is directed here, here, and here, for further explanation.

Secondly, this has been one of the most difficult Essays to write, since (1) It tackles issues that have sailed right over the heads of some of the greatest minds in history, and (2) It's not easy to expose the weaknesses of traditional philosophy in everyday language, even though, after well over fifty re-writes, I think I have largely managed to do this.

Nevertheless, the ideas presented here in no way affect the negative case I have constructed against dialectics -- but they do help form the basis of my positive account of the origin of the doctrines found both in DM and in traditional Metaphysics.

I claim no particular originality for what follows (except, perhaps its highly simplified mode of presentation and its political slant); much of it has in fact been derived from Wittgenstein's work -- and less importantly, from that of other Wittgensteinians.

However, I have tried as far as possible to keep this Essay free of academic complexities since it is aimed at revolutionaries, not scholars. In that case, anyone who wants to read more substantial versions of the approach to language and traditional Philosophy I have adopted here should consult the relevant works I have referenced in the End Notes (and in Essays on language to be published here over the coming years -- for example, here).

Apologies are therefore owed in advance to those who know enough of Wittgenstein's work to make the ideas rehearsed in this Essay seem rather trite and banal, but experience has taught me that the vast majority of Marxists are not well-versed in this area of Analytic Philosophy, and so they find it difficult to see their relevance, let alone grasp their significance. So I have worded this Essay with them in mind, which means that I have tried to make things as simple and straight-forward as possible.

To save me having repeatedly to say the following: "Many of the points simply mentioned in passing will be developed in more detail in Essays on the nature of science, 'cognition' and language to be published at this site over the next year or so", I highlight this fact with a red asterisk: *

Thirdly, and connected with the above are the following words of warning: this Essay is much more repetitive than most of the others published so far at this site. Experience has also taught me that if the difficult ideas it contains are not repeated many times over they either tend not to sink in or their significance is lost -- this is especially so with regard to the Marxist readers mentioned earlier.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that in this Essay, although I refer to the sense of a proposition as those conditions under which it would be deemed true or those under which it would be deemed false, this is merely a shorthand for the requirement of (true/false) bi-polarity, and this has only been adopted to save on needless pedantry in what is not meant to be an academic essay.

The subtle difference between these two ways of characterising the sense of a proposition and the so-called 'law of excluded middle' is explained in Palmer (1996) -- but, I have now said a little more about this in Note 40 and here.⁰¹

This Essay is over 94,000 words long; a summary of some of its main ideas can be found here.

Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections. [If your Firewall has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or these and the other links here won't work!]

(2) To show how and why all philosophical theses (and not just those found in DM) collapse into non-sense (Part One);

(3) To show that Metaphysics and Traditional Philosophy are ruling-class forms-of-thought (Parts Two and Three);

(4) To trace the birth of these thought-forms back to their origin in class society, link this with the many and varied 'world-views' promoted by ruling elites, demonstrate that despite their differences, there is a common thread running through these 'world-views', and connect all three with the servile ideology found in the work of traditional thinkers -- which indictment, alas, also includes DM-theorists (Parts Two, Three and Four);

(5) To expose the sub-logical, Hermetic doctrines found in Hegel's work for what they are: incoherent gobbledygook (Parts Five and Six);

(6) To show that the defence of the vernacular is a class issue (Part Seven); and,

This will make Essay Twelve by far the longest so far published, hence its division into Seven Parts.

However, many of my ideas in this area are still in the formative stage, so this Essay will be revised continuously (especially as more historical material comes to light).

[LIE = Linguistic Idealism; DM = Dialectical Materialism; MEC = Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, i.e., Lenin (1972); TAR = The Algebra of Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]

As indicated above, each of these issues will be tackled in various Parts of this Essay, but to address the first two we need to examine a rather odd statement made by Lenin.

M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]

Here, Lenin was making a typically metaphysical statement. Naturally, dialecticians will repudiate that assertion; even so, it is possible to show that that repudiation would be as hasty as it is mistaken. [Why that is so is explained below.]

It's worth noting at the outset that theses like M1 purport to inform us of fundamental aspects of nature -- albeit in this case disguised as part of Lenin's admission of his own incredulity.

But, we are not to conclude from M1 that Lenin was merely recording his own personal views. On the contrary, he certainly believed that matter and motion were fundamental aspects of "objective reality"; that they were inseparable and that this was a scientific (or even a philosophical) fact. Moreover, like Engels, he held the view that motion was "the mode" of the existence of matter -– that is, he believed that matter could not exist without motion, nor vice versa. Motion was thus one of the principal ways that matter expressed itself (exterior to the mind).

The metaphysical nature of Lenin's declaration can be seen by the way it bypassed the need for any supporting evidence. It seemed to Lenin to be such an obvious fact about matter and motion that to deny it was "unthinkable".¹

However, if humanity had access to information about motion and matter many orders of magnitude greater than is available even today, it would still not be enough to show that the separation of matter from motion is unthinkable. No amount of data could substantiate that.

Now, these assertions might strike some readers as rather difficult to swallow. Because of that, much of the rest of this Part of Essay Twelve will be aimed at undermining such reticence.

The seemingly profound nature of theses like M1 is linked to rather more mundane features of the language in which they are expressed: that is, they are connected with the fact that the main verb they use is often in the indicative mood.

Sometimes, the latter is beefed-up with subjunctive and/or modal qualifying terms -- which, incidentally, help create even more of a false impression.

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]

"The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa…[operates] in nature, in a manner fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or quantitative subtraction of matter or motion….

"Hence, it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion. [Engels (1954), p.63. Bold emphases added.]²

Now, this apparently superficial grammatical facade hides a deeper logical form -- several in fact. This is something which only becomes plain when such sentences are examined more closely.

As noted above, expressions like these look as if they reveal deep truths about reality since they certainly resemble empirical propositions (i.e., propositions about matters of fact). In the event, they turn out to be nothing at all like them.

This can be seen if we examine the following similar-looking indicative sentences:

M2-M9 appear to share the same form: "x is F" (or sometimes "z is a f-er", or more accurately "z f-ies").

[The use of such gap markers (i.e., "x" and "z") was explained in Essay Three Part One. "F(...)" is a predicate variable; "f(...)" is more general predicate variable, standing for clauses like "...owns a copy of TAR", "...fibs more often than not", or "...thinks something is unthinkable", etc.]

However, the difference between M6 and M2, for example, lies largely in the fact that to know that M2 is true goes hand-in-hand with understanding it; these two conditions are inextricably linked. That is, comprehending M2 is one and the same as knowing it is true. Anyone who failed to see things that way would be said not to "understand" number words.

On the other hand, it is not necessary to know whether M6 is true or false in order to understand it. In other words, comprehending M6 is not the same as knowing it is true. However, it is essential to understanding M6 to know what would make it true or make it false -- even if neither of these has been ascertained as yet. [The significance of that particular condition will be explored at greater length in a later section.]

In that case, it is not necessary to know whether Blair in fact owns a copy of TAR to be able to understand someone who says that he does -- indeed, readers of this Essay will understand M6 even if they haven't a clue whether it's true or whether it's false. In contrast, comprehending that two is a number is ipso facto to know that it is true (except in trivial cases -- about which, see below).

Now, M9 (which is a more 'objective' version of M1a) is somewhat similar to M2; comprehending it also involves automatically acknowledging its veracity, even if that is not quite as clear-cut in this case. The truth-status of such propositions seems to follow from the 'concepts' they express, which is why it can be ascertained without examining any evidence at all. Their veracity seems to follow from thought alone.⁴

Hence, with respect to M2 and M9, meaning and 'truth' appear to go hand in hand -- so much so that as soon as their constituent words have been inspected, the 'truth' of both should become obvious. The source of their veracity is 'internally generated', as it were. Indeed, that is why the negation (or rejection) of M9, for example, was so "unthinkable" to both Engels and Lenin. All this follows from the definition that motion is the mode of the existence of matter. That particular thought governs the central core of what these two had to say about matter and motion -- which explains why Engels and Lenin asserted it dogmatically, why Engels declared its opposite "nonsensical" and Lenin pronounced it "unthinkable".⁵

Conversely, once more, it is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or whether it is false.^5a0 In fact, it is quite easy to suppose that M6 is false (which it probably is). But, even if M6 were true, and known to be true, it would still be possible to imagine it is false (and vice versa). Despite this, in order to establish its actual truth or actual falsehood, evidence is essential. An examination of the concepts involved would not be enough. The veracity of M6 cannot be ascertained from thought alone; its truth-status is not 'internally generated', but 'externally confirmed' and/or disconfirmed.

But, it's not possible for anyone who agrees with Lenin to regard, or suppose that, say, M9 is false. This clearly indicates that there is a fundamental difference between these two sorts of sentences -- one that their apparently identical grammatical veneer conceals. As it turns out, the pseudo-scientific status, and much of the 'plausibility' of metaphysical or essential 'truths' like M9 derive from masquerades like this.

In that case, it looks like the obviousness of M9 is what motivated the incredulity Lenin reported in M1a, for it certainly seemed to him that as soon as the expressions it contains (or their DM-equivalents) are inspected, the truth of M9 should be clear for all to see. [The claim that M1a and/or M9 are merely summaries of the evidence so far is neutralised in Note 4 and Note 5a.]

So, for Lenin, the first half of M1a was "unthinkable" (i.e., the "Motion without matter..." part) -- its denial (and that of M9) would surely undermine the meaning of its terms (or the import of its concepts, given the definition that motion is the mode of the existence of matter), indicating that anyone foolish enough to do this did not "understand" dialectics (which is, of course, why dialecticians reach for this phrase so easily, and so often). That is why the rejection of M1a and M9 can be ruled out without the need to examine any evidence. What these two sentences say appears to gain our assent on linguistic (or conceptual) grounds alone. Hence, it seems impossible to deny the truth of M1a; such a denial would be inconceivable -- or, as Lenin himself said, it would be "unthinkable". That is also why theses like M1a (and M9) require no evidence in support, and why none is ever given -- and why it's hard even to imagine what sort of evidence could possibly begin to substantiate them.^5a

In that case, the actual state of the world drops out of the picture; when assessing such theses for their accuracy, or even their veracity, no experiments need be carried out, no data collected, no surveys undertaken.^5b

Now, that fact alone should have given someone like Lenin (who was not ignorant of the scientific method) pause for thought. Unfortunately, like so many others before him -- indeed, like the vast majority of theorists since ancient Greek times -- he failed to notice the significance of this seemingly trivial fact.⁶

The certainty M1a seems to encourage in all those who accept it as true plainly derives from what its constituent terms appear to mean; the subsequent projection of its 'content' onto the world is thus a reflection of that conviction. If such theses express indubitable truths, who could possibly deny that they apply to the entire universe? And that is of course why DM-theorists are happy to impose them on reality, true for all regions of space and time.

But, the alleged truth of M1a bears no relation to the possibilities that material reality itself presents; this can be seen from that fact that if that were not so (if the truth of M1a were related to conditions that might or might not obtain in nature), evidential support would have been both appropriate and imaginable. However, in this case, no such evidence is even conceivable. What fact or facts could possibly show that motion is inseparable from matter? Or that motion without matter is "unthinkable"?^6a

This clearly indicates that M1a and M9 are not about the material world; they are (indirectly) about (or rather arise from) the use of certain words -- or they concern the alleged relation between the concepts they express.

Theses like these are found right throughout Metaphysics, but the above account helps explain why traditional Philosophers were only too ready to project them onto the world. The content of such 'super-truths' seem to be based on something much deeper than anything that mere empirical evidence/confirmation could provide. Indeed, they appeared to express indubitable truths about 'god', 'the mind', 'essences', 'Being', and the like, which were prior to, but not dependent on the deliverances of the senses. In fact, such theses looked as if they determined (or were determined by) the logical boundaries of reality itself -- that is, on concepts and categories that constituted not just human judgement and thought, but the logical form of the world.

In later versions of the same guiding myths, it was held that such theses depicted things that must be instantiated in -- or were based upon those that determined the structure of -- any possible world.

In short, they appeared to picture not just the logical form of any and every conceivable world, they governed every 'philosophically' true thought about them.

In previous centuries, it was believed that such theses expressed 'God's' thoughts about, or they depicted his 'laws' governing, reality, which meant that Metaphysics was widely seen the replication of divine verities in human thought, operating perhaps as an extension to Theology.⁷ Naturally, this immediately linked Metaphysics to the rationalisation of the status quo and the class structures which fed off it. [More on this in Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (summary here).]

This meant that such theses could be safely and dogmatically projected onto nature because no world was imaginable without them. If no configuration of matter and energy could fail to conform to universal truths like these, supporting evidence would naturally become irrelevant; the material world thus dropping out of consideration -- at least, in so far as confirmation is concerned.

[To be sure, an after-the-event appeal to nature could be made in order to illustrate such alleged super-truths (as we find, for example, dialecticians doing with respect to Engels's Three 'Laws'), but that would be the only use to which the material world would be put.]

Metaphysical 'truths' appeared to be so obvious (to those propounding them) that few theorists were concerned with the fact that their theses had been imposed on reality. Quite the contrary, in fact; the important role each philosophical thesis was supposed to play (i.e., as a sort of "master key" capable of unlocking the inner secrets of 'Being') seemed to justify the whole sordid affair.

Of course, super-verities like these had to be distinguished from ordinary, contingent, everyday, hum-drum empirical truths. So, because they looked as if expressed the 'essences' underlying any and every possible world, among other things, they were later called "necessary truths".⁸

However, this meant that theses like these were and still are reliant on the (mis)-use of a deliberately restricted set of words, and thus on a disguised or aberrant application of language. The projection of such theses onto any possible world is evidence enough of that. How else would it be possible for theorists to delineate what must be true of all possible worlds other than by a misapplication of language socially-rooted in this one? Since the veracity of such 'truths' is 'known' prior to the examination of any evidence (how, for example, could one examine the 'evidence' available to investigators in a possible world?), their alleged ('necessary') truth-values can't have been derived from anything other than the supposed meaning of the words comprising each thesis, and hence on the linguistic rules supposedly governing the employment of such words in these specialised contexts.⁹

In Essay Two (and in many other Essays), numerous examples were given of a priori assertions about reality advanced by dialecticians. As we saw, these were held true for all of time and space when they are in fact supported by little or no evidence or argument --, that is, over and above a superficial analysis of a few specially chosen examples, sketchy "thought experiments", and the use of obscure terms-of-art lifted from Hegel and his mystical forebears.

We are now in a position to see why this is so: DM-theses possess an a priori and universal validity because they are (1) based on a radical misuse of language, or (2) depend on misconstrued rules of language as if those rules represented substantive features of reality; they confuse the form by means of which we represent the world to ourselves with the world itself.

To state the obvious: DM-theorists will reject this way of seeing things -- but their opinion of what they do with their own words is at odds with how they themselves actually use them. Why this is so will become more obvious as this Essay unfolds.

Once more, as we saw in Essay Two, while DM-theorists constantly reassure their readers that they have not foisted their ideas on reality -- they have simply 'read' them from it, which shows that they at least view them as empirical truths of some sort --, their practice belies this. Dialecticians en masse plainly regard their doctrines as universal theses, true for all of space and time. Hence, in practice dialecticians do the exact opposite of what they say they do; they are quite happy to impose their ideas on the world, declaring them true prior to, and independent of, sufficient (or, in some cases, any) supporting evidence. And that is why this places their theses way beyond confirmation by any conceivable body of evidence.^9a

M1a is just the latest example of this sort of dogmatic apriorism. In common with other metaphysicians, the projection by dialecticians of DM-theses like this onto any and all possible worlds reveals these theses have been derived from linguistic (or conceptual) resources alone. Since these super-theses are held 'known' true well in advance of the examination of an adequate body of supporting evidence, their veracity can't have been derived from anything other than the meanings of the words they contain, and thus on the linguistic/social rules allegedly governing them.

Moreover, the historical provenance of every single DM-thesis (that is, from mystical Hegelian and Hermetic thought) lends support to the above claims. These doctrines date back to a time when there was very little, or no scientific evidence at all. And, as Marx noted, such theses were indeed based on a distortion of language:

"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order 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 emphases added.]

Thus, the class-compromised origin of DM-theses means that aprioristic ruling-class ideas and patterns-of-thought were smuggled into revolutionary theory by DM-classicists -- "from the outside".¹⁰

Unfortunately for Lenin and other DM-apologists, a priori theses are in fact incapable of reflecting reality. As we will soon see, reality cannot be as metaphysical or DM-theses supposedly depict it.¹¹ There are features of language that prevent theorists like Lenin and Engels from saying the sorts of things they want to say about the world, which features will not allow them to 'depict' nature in ways they imagine they can.

This observation is connected with the origin and nature of metaphysical theories. As will be demonstrated in later parts of Essay Twelve, at a linguistic level such theses arose out of a determination by Greek theorists to employ certain expressions idiosyncratically -- that is, in ways they would not normally be used. In its train, this involved a failure on the part of these linguistic 'innovators' to notice that it is only the misuse and distortion of language that licences the derivation of universal and necessary 'truths' of the sort found in traditional Philosophy -- and later in DM. [This was illustrated in detail, for example, in Essay Three Part One.]

As the analysis below demonstrates, this distortion and misuse of language results in the production, not of 'necessary' truths, but of unvarnished non-sense.^11ao

To see this with respect to the DM-thesis on hand, we need to examine Lenin's words a little more closely.

With regard to Lenin's avowal reported in M1a, it's worth asking the following question: What is it about these five words that made them seem so "unthinkable"?

Curiously, in Lenin's case at least, it's obvious that he must have thought the above words in order to declare that they were unthinkable! The phrase "motion without matter" must have gone through his head at some point. Even if Lenin went on to think the additional words tacked on at the end (i.e., "…is unthinkable"), he must have skipped past the three offending words first (i.e., "motion without matter"). No one imagines that his brain switched his thoughts on just as they reached the relative safety of the last two terms in that sentence!

In that case, Lenin must have done what he declared could not be done; he must have thought the "unthinkable" in the act of declaring that no one could do what he himself had just done.

Naturally, this means that in practice Lenin contradicted himself, for he managed to do what he said could not be done. That is why in practice Lenin's thesis becomes not just impossible to comprehend, it is impossible even to state. That is, it is impossible to say what on earth Lenin meant by what he said. If he accomplished what he said no one could do in the act of telling us just that, why can't anyone else do it? What is so special about Lenin? How was he able to think the "unthinkable" in the act of telling us it cannot be done?^11a

Worse still, if the rest of us can think the three offending words ("motion without matter") whenever we read Lenin telling us that we can't do the very thing we must have done to grasp his point, we too must contradict Lenin in practice whenever we peruse his work. Indeed, the very act of telling us we cannot think these words prompts us to do just that!

Even those who agree with Lenin that "motion without matter is unthinkable" must think the three illicit words. Hence, even the most slavishly obedient Lenin-groupie cannot avoid disobeying the master every time he/she reads this controversial phrase.

It could be argued that I have confused these two propositions (in other words, I have confused use with mention):

Clearly, R3 is susceptible to the points I have already made. But, Lenin plainly didn't mean this. He obviously meant R2? The question is: is R2 susceptible to the above remarks?

Indeed, it is. As we will see, in order to rule motion without matter out of court, Lenin would have to know what he was trying to exclude. He would have to know what motion without matter amounted to so that he could exclude that possibility as unthinkable, otherwise he could be ruling out the wrong thing. Hence, R2's content would have to be thinkable so that Lenin could tell us it wasn't!

Now, if Lenin is right, what on earth could he possibly have meant by what he said if everyone (including himself) could so easily disprove in practice this allegedly self-evident truth?

Precisely what is so unthinkable here that is also so easily thought? What is it about M1a that is supposed to command our assent, but only in the very act of undermining it?

Perhaps this is too hasty? Maybe Lenin merely meant that the truth of an indicative sentence like M1a (containing the unqualified words "motion without matter") is unthinkable?

Maybe not, for when Lenin's words are examined even more closely, it becomes impossible to understand what it was he was trying to say, or precisely what 'truth' he was attempting to communicate to his readers. Or even whether what he appears to be saying could in any way be true.

This looks a little awkward -- and it is not obviously correct. Indeed, it is possible to think of many examples of motion that do not involve the movement of matter as such. Several dozen were given in Essay Five. Here is another -- a few more can be found in Note 12:

It might be objected here that this sense of "move" was not at all what Lenin had in mind. Perhaps, then, he meant the following?

M12: The occurrence of literal motion in the real world without matter can never be thought of as true.

This seems to be closer to what Lenin might have meant, even if it still looks a little stilted. Despite that, this sentence presents problems of its own. Consider this apparent counter-example:

Now, this seems to depict literal movement in the real world, and yet it is not easy to see whether any matter has to be re-located as a result. Perhaps we might appeal to the movement of atoms in NM's brain, or to the re-arrangement of ink molecules in a diary or wall planner -- when the new date is committed to paper, etc. -- as examples of matter in motion here? But, at best, this would simply mean that motion was indirectly associated with matter, since even in a real life situation the supposed strike itself would not actually exist to be moved anywhere -- even though it has still been moved.

Again, it could be objected that in this example what has actually changed is the date -- it is this that has been moved not the strike itself. But again, if it's only a date that has been moved, it would still be unclear whether any matter has to be relocated as a consequence. Once more, this date is in the future, and does not exist yet, even though it has still been moved.

Now, it would be little use referring to the altered marks in a diary or on a wall-planner (or anywhere else, for that matter) in order to illustrate the material changes witnessed here. Certainly, such things may alter, but if anyone were to imagine that the dates of strikes, or even strikes themselves, are just marks on paper, then bosses could easily put a stop to trade union militancy -- by simply tippexing-out the relevant marks (or by destroying the wall-planner/diary), and be done with it. The class struggle, surely, cannot be so easily erased --, can it?

At best, therefore, the movement reported in M14 is indirectly associated with matter. Nevertheless, M14 seems to show that we can at least understand sentences where the connection between motion and matter is not obvious or clear-cut. So, perhaps we can think the unthinkable, despite what Lenin said?

This still leaves the status of M12 and M13 unresolved. Now, if we ignore awkward cases like M14 and concentrate on examples of movement situated only in the present, we might perhaps be able to ascertain Lenin's intentions.

[Unfortunately, this restriction would make the temporal quantifier (i.e., "never") in M12 and M13 seem rather superfluous. I will ignore that awkward complication here.]

M12: The occurrence of literal motion in the real world without matter can never be thought of as true.

However, if we are careful to stipulate that "literal motion" involves change of place then maybe the following re-write of M12 and M13 might work?

One obvious example of literal movement in the real world that takes place without matter -- which is not only thinkable, it is actual -- is the motion of the Centre of Mass of the Galaxy [CMG]. The CMG is located in empty space, but it exerts a decisive causal influence on everything in the Galaxy while not being material itself. In its turn, it moves under the influence of something else that is not material either -- the centre of mass of the cluster of galaxies of which ours is a part, and so on.¹⁴

Perhaps we should adapt M15 to accommodate or neutralise this annoying counterexample, in the following way:

M16: Literal motion in the real world without some matter somewhere causing it is unthinkable.

Alas, M16 now concedes the point that motion can take place while spatially- (or, perhaps even temporally-) divorced from matter, since M16 is not specific about contiguous or concurrent causation (which, of course, may not be what Lenin meant by M1a anyway --; who can say?). And, as we will see in Essay Thirteen Part One, Lenin's idea of matter is so vague that little sense can be made of it, anyway.¹⁵

Nevertheless, despite these apparent problems, M15 and M16 face far more serious difficulties than the inconvenient astronomical and/or ordinary facts noted above.

As pointed out earlier, Lenin must have thought the words "motion without matter" in order to deny they were thinkable. If so, it's difficult to see what he was driving at if the very act of saying what he said undermined the point he wished to make.

M17: The sentence: "Literal motion in the real world without matter is unthinkable" is true.

However, this won't do either. Just as soon as the quoted sentence in M17 (i.e., M15) is entertained, that cognitive act itself would make M17 false!

This is because the embedded sentence in M17 (i.e., M15) is false whenever anyone thinks it. Moreover, M17 itself becomes false whenever M15 is thought, and yet by thinking M17, M15 must be entertained; the only way anyone could agree with M17 is by thinking M15. Unfortunately, this just means that we may only agree with M17 by doing what M15 says cannot be done -- we have to think the unthinkable, thus making M17 false. In that case, M17 is true just in case it is false; we may assent to it only if we never allow its content to cross our minds.

It could be argued that this shows that M17 is true since it is indeed the case that matter without motion is unthinkable. And yet, that is precisely the point: even to assert this requires that the allegedly forbidden words "matter without motion" pass through the mind, so it is not the case that these words cannot be thought.^15a

It could be objected that it is perfectly clear what Lenin meant: it is impossible to think about matter without conceiving of it as moving in some way, and vice versa.

In that case, perhaps Lenin was merely making a psychological point. Maybe he was saying that given what we know about the world (and about ourselves), we are psychologically/physically incapable of forming the thought that motion is possible without matter (and/or vice versa).

But, if he was saying this, he offered no evidence to substantiate what would now be a scientific claim about what human beings are capable of thinking. And, if this was indeed his line-of-thought, it's pretty clear why he would not have been able to produce such data (even had he tried) -- for to pose this very question is not only to think the forbidden words, it prompts others to think them, too!

Moreover, and alas for Lenin, there is abundant evidence to the contrary. As we know, previous generations managed to think this very thought, and they managed to do so for centuries. The passivity of matter is a basic principle of Aristotelian Physics.¹⁶

If this alternative interpretation of Lenin's claim is to remain viable (i.e., that which holds that his claims about motion and matter relate to our psychological limitations), then (at best) we would have to interpret it as a confession of Lenin's own limited powers of imagination -- even though, and paradoxically, he too was able to rise to the occasion and think the forbidden words while casting them into outer psychological darkness in the very act of bringing us this good news!

Furthermore, Lenin offered no supporting evidence concerning the supposed limits of credibility, or otherwise, of anyone else, and he mentioned only two other DM supporters who thought as he did: Engels and Dietzgen. That being so, his confession merely records the limits of his, Engels and Dietzgen's own incredulity (which, as we have seen, undermined itself in the very act of its own confession). Clearly, such asseverations (no matter how sincere) are out of place in what purports to be a scientific or philosophical analysis of matter and motion.

In any case, what could Lenin have said to someone who claimed that they could imagine motion without matter, or vice versa? [What if Lenin had encountered a latter-day Aristotle?] Several examples were given earlier where it was quite natural to speak about motion without matter. These may only be ruled out if it could be shown that they are either metaphorical or are deemed irrelevant. But, who is to say that Lenin's use of such words is literal, or that this is their only correct employment -- or even that it is the most natural? In fact, a rejection of those counter-examples could only ever be based on Lenin's own lack of imagination (or on that of his modern day epigones) -- or, perhaps, on other criteria which Lenin kept to himself.

However, as the above indicates, it is possible to form the thought that motion can take place without matter. Nothing is easier. Not only does the last sentence itself prompt such a cognitive infringement, so do the sentences Lenin himself wrote. If these sentences are objectionable, it cannot be for psychological reasons -- for, manifestly, they are easy to think. If either of M18 or M19, for instance, is to be ruled out as an example of a thought, that would have to be done on logical/linguistic grounds, not psychological ones -- especially if to read Lenin each time is to disprove what he says in the very act of reading it, as we have seen.

But that, of course, just takes us right back to the beginning. We are still no clearer what Lenin could possibly have meant by what he said.

At this point it's worth wondering why Lenin concluded that motion without matter was "unthinkable", as opposed to claiming it was merely contradictory. Apart from saving him the trouble of having to think the very thought he wanted to convince the rest of us was "unthinkable", it would have allowed him to make his point much more succinctly, and, dare I say it, 'dialectically'. Indeed, it would seem to be the obvious thing to say about matter and motion: that immobile matter (or mobile non-matter) was contradictory -- or, rather, that propositions asserting these things implied contradictions, given other DM-principles. They would certainly contradict the thesis that motion is the mode of the existence of matter.

On the other hand, it seems pretty clear what the answer to that particular puzzle is: if Lenin had done this, it would have given the 'dialectical' game away. That is because, if he had ruled certain things out on the basis that they were contradictory then much of DM would have disappeared down the tubes with it. In that event, the next question would have been: Why is it just this contradictory state of affairs that is considered so objectionable in contradistinction to all the other contradictions that DM-theorists tell us litter the entire universe, which aren't?

In fact, the existence of matter without motion ought to make perfectly good 'dialectical' sense, if only because it is contradictory. After all, the Hegelian roots of DM seem to imply that matter moves because of its inherently contradictory nature (even though the precise details are somewhat hazy).

"[B]ut contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity." [Hegel (1999), p.439. Bold emphasis added.]

Indeed, it would seem from this doctrine that bodies must move because mobility and passivity are a product of the internal struggle in all objects (or between objects) --, since they are UOs: a unity of motion and non-motion, perhaps? Anyone inclined to believe cracked logic like this should not find it too great a "leap" of imagination to derive motion from the contradictory nature of matter; the mobility of matter could thus be predicated on its lack of motion. Hence, far from immobile matter being unthinkable, the theory seems to require it! [As this suggests so, too.]

It could be objected here that this is ridiculous; dialecticians do not believe that motion is a UO of itself and its opposite, lack of motion. Indeed, it could be pointed out that the above caricature is not the contradiction that Hegel was referring to when he spoke about motion --, as Engels indicated:

"[A]s soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence…[t]hen we immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction; even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body being both in one place and in another place at one and the same moment of time, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continual assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is." [Engels (1976), p.152.]

However, these hypothetical DM-responses merely highlight the serious confusions lying at the heart of this theory of change, underlined here, here and here. The problem is that, according to what DM-theorists themselves tell us, it's unclear whether things change because of (1) their internal contradictions (and/or opposites), or (2) whether they change into these opposites, or, indeed, (3) whether they create such opposites when they change.

Hence, if all things are UOs, and can only change because of that fact, it seems that a moving body must be a dialectical union of motion and rest, otherwise it could never change.

In that case, if the above objection is ridiculous, it's only because it makes plain the incoherence inherent in the DM-account of change.

Moreover, as we saw in Essay Five, the alleged contradiction to which Engels refers (i.e., that a moving body is "both in one place and in another place at one and the same moment of time, being in one and the same place and also not in it") cannot be what makes that object move; it's what becomes apparent as it moves.

So, if Hegel is right, and objects move because of their inherently contradictory nature, then they must be a UO of some sort. And what else could that be but a union of motion and rest; nothing else seems remotely relevant.

Alternatively, other objectors might be tempted to argue that this is precisely the point: because matter is contradictory, it is incessantly mobile.

But once more, if matter is truly contradictory, if we accept no half measures, no "excessive tenderness" toward moving things, matter must be mobile and at rest all at once. So, resolute Hegelians must at least think the illegitimate words, that matter is motionless (at least, in part).

In fact, the good news is that there is no need to speculate any further on this Hermetic conundrum, for this is precisely what we observe in reality. The seemingly 'contradictory' nature of matter (i.e., that it both moves and does not move) is not only an everyday occurrence, it is a scientific fact --, for it is true that with respect to one inertial frame matter can be at rest, but with respect to another it can be in motion, and these can both be true at the same time, and concerning the same body.

Unfortunately for beleaguered dialecticians, however, this familiar fact does not actually imply that motion is fundamentally contradictory 'in itself' (whatever that means!), but that given different reference frames we can picture it in no other way: as mobile with respect one frame, at rest with respect to another, all at once. There is nothing deeply metaphysical about this; it is a spin-off of the conventions we now use to depict nature. This socially-motivated fact, though, does give sense to propositions about the mobility (or otherwise) of matter (for we would have no other way of conceiving of movement scientifically except in this way), even if this does not actually make anything move (or sustain locomotion), as DM/Hegelian 'contradictions' should.

Of course, the thrust of unhelpful conclusions like these can only be resisted on linguistic grounds. That is, they may only be defused by clarifying what words like "motion", "immobile", "inertial frame", "same time", and "contradiction" should be taken to mean. Naturally, anyone tempted to go down that route would merely underline the fact that Lenin's own ideas are at best creatures of convention, and are thus not the least bit "objective".

Moreover, given the fact that Lenin's ideas in this area fall apart so readily, his 'convention' is unlikely ever to be accepted by the scientific community. In fact, we should feign no surprise if they do not make the bottom of the reserve list of viable candidates they might even be inclined to consider.

As we have seen above, and as we will see as the rest of Essay Twelve unfolds, the problems Lenin and other metaphysicians face are connected with the peculiar nature of the language they used. But, there are other aspects of language that are less well appreciated (or, rather, they are not appreciated at all), which means that this slide into metaphysical incoherence does not just afflict DM. With respect to Metaphysics in general, this slide is universally unavoidable.

While it's true that Marxists in general hold that language is both a social product and serves as a means of communication, few seem to have thought through their full ramifications.¹⁷ On the contrary, one of its least recognised implications is that language is conventional. Indeed, if language is social, how could it be other than conventional? Human beings invented language; it wasn't bestowed on them from on high. This means that at some point in their history, they must have adopted certain linguistic conventions.^17a

Furthermore, an even less well appreciated corollary of this view of discourse is the fact that language is primarily a vehicle of communication, not of representation.¹⁸

It is undeniable that some Marxists have acknowledged the limited applicability of the former corollary (that language is conventional), but hardly any (perhaps none) have considered the full implications of the second (that language is not primarily representational). Certainly Marx and Engels didn't, nor have later Marxists. Indeed, much of what they have written (especially about abstraction, 'cognition' and knowledge) suggests the opposite is the case.^18a

In this regard, dialecticians are once more not alone. Until recently, little serious attention has been paid to the traditional philosophical theory that language is primarily representational, i.e., that it enables human beings to re-present the world in "thought", in the "head", the "mind", "consciousness", or in "cognition" first, before communication can begin.

Hence, rarely questioned (again until recently) was the underlying assumption that it's only after language users have learnt to picture reality to themselves that they are then able to communicate their thoughts to others -- and that observation applies equally to those who at least give lip service to the idea that language is primarily a means of communication. This means that despite what they might say, the social nature of language is seen by the vast majority of Marxists as a consequence of the isolated (but later pooled) cognitive powers of individuals, an expression of their attempt to share the 'contents' of their 'minds' with others, but not the other way round.¹⁹

It seems to many (even on the far left) that here at least we have an example of private (mental) production linked to public gain, for on this view, the isolated activities of lone abstractors power cognition -- which help drive the social advancement of knowledge, after these abstractions have been pooled.

This approach thus relegates meaning to the private domain of the 'mind', something that each individual brings to language --, perhaps as an expression of their biography and/or the ideological parameters that constrain us all. [In Essay Thirteen Part Three, Section 3) onward, we will see this is true of theorists like Voloshinov and Vygotsky.] Alternatively, meaning is a consequence of the 'objective rules' which nature has supposedly hard-wired into each brain, perhaps as a 'language of thought' or a 'transformational grammar'.

Whatever the aetiology, this is one idea that has ruled, in one form or another, since ancient times.

As we saw in Essay Three Part Two, post-Renaissance thinkers (Rationalists and Empiricists) took the public domain where meaning is created, inverted it, and projected it back into each individual head, re-configured there as the social relations among ideas/'concepts'. This resulted in the systematic fetishisation of language and thought, leading to the conflation of the 'objective' world with the subjective contents of the mind. The outer, social world was thus re-modelled in each head, the latter seen as primary. In this way, the social was privatised, internalised, and neutralised. No wonder modern philosophy soon descended into out-right Idealism with Kant complaining that it was scandal that philosophers had so far failed to prove the existence of the 'external' world. No wonder, too, that Marxists felt they had to invert things once more -- failing to note that their theory of language and cognition prevented them from doing just this.

More recently, this ruling thought-form re-surfaced wearing several new disguises: sometimes as the inter-relationship between neurons (as they 'communicate' with one another), controlled by the oppressive power of the gene -- which now seems to operate as a sort of surrogate inner Bourgeois Legislative/Executive Authority --; sometimes as computational device.

On this view, while human beings might be born free of language, everywhere they soon become enmeshed by linguistic chains manufactured their own surrogate 'inner state' machinery -- a faint echo of the bourgeois state controlling our unruly ideas.²⁰

This inversion (the political and social roots of which will be analysed briefly below, and more fully in Parts Two and Three of this Essay) completely undermines the Marxist claim that language is a social phenomenon. And no wonder; it perfectly mirrors the bourgeois view of language and mind.

In fact, this is one ideological inversion that has remained upside down (but in different forms), not just for hundreds, but for thousands of years, and which is largely the source of the other inverted ideas cobbled-together by traditional philosophers and dialecticians alike.

Inverted now, as in a camera obscura, these rotated notions cloud the thoughts of all those whose brains have been colonised by "ruling ideas" such as these.

Nevertheless, there seems little point arguing that language is a social phenomenon -- its main role found in communication -- if discourse is in fact primarily representational. If that were the case, the social function of language would be anterior to, if not parasitic upon, its supposedly primary, private nature. No surprise then that this view of discourse introduced its own notorious Robinsonades, analogous to those that Marx railed against in politics and economics --, except in this case, these Robinsonades apply to the origin of language in each privatised and atomised skull), and not just to the 'social contract' or to the economy.

If there is a point to be made here, it is perhaps as ideological as it is anything else: If language is primarily representational then human beings must acquire language, meaning and knowledge first (as social atoms) before they can enter the language community.

But, this presents those adopting this view with intractable problems. How could anyone be socialised into representing the world to themselves first as an individual, and then later use language to communicate? On this view, as far as language is concerned, each human being would be, first and foremost, a semantic individual, second a communicating, social being. [That was the point of referring to those Robinsonades earlier.]

In fact, as is easy to show, given this approach to language, communication would be impossible. Indeed, were this the case, we would find ourselves incapable of communicating, and humanity would be to all intents and purposes universally autistic. [This argument will be elaborated upon and substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Given the representational approach, the role that communal, historically-conditioned life plays in the shaping of language would drop out as irrelevant.

Atomistic implications like these should not be lost on those cognisant of the History of Philosophy and its relation to ruling-class forms-of-thought (particularly those that have been dominant since the Seventeenth Century) -- even though the record shows that, among Marxists, they invariably have been.

Revolutionaries have generally resisted the idea that language is conventional because it would seem to imply that science is conventional, too, which would in turn threaten to undermine its 'objectivity'.²¹

In fact, as is demonstrable, revolutionaries have rejected the connection between the conventional nature of language and science with arguments that have only succeeded in undermining both. Either that, or they have simply assumed that conventionalism must always collapse into relativism or into some form of Idealism.²² However, the truth is the exact opposite: it is the rejection of the conventional nature of language and science that compromises both. How and why this is so will be explained briefly below, and in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

Nevertheless, in this Essay I propose only to examine the connection between the above considerations and Metaphysics.

If language is a social phenomenon, then, clearly, what human beings write or say must be guided by the normative conventions that govern discourse. That is why it is not possible to utter absolutely anything and hope to make sense. Naturally, scientific language will have its own special protocols layered on top of these, over and above the ordinary conventions underlying the vernacular. Naturally, this entire ensemble will change and develop in accord with wider social and historical forces.

But one thing is reasonably clear: if language is to be a means of communication then whatever lends sense to its empirical propositions must be independent of (and prior to) any truths they express.²³

If this were not so, then in order to understand an empirical proposition language users would first have to know whether it was true or whether it was false.

Now that option is plainly incoherent, for no one could assent to the truth or falsehood of a proposition before they had comprehended it. Indeed, as seems obvious, they would not then be able to ascertain whether such a proposition was true or false if they had failed to grasp it.²⁴

This, naturally, connects the social nature of language with the earlier discussion of propositions like M1-M9. There, we saw that in the case of ordinary empirical propositions like:

it is possible to understand them before their truth-status is known. In contrast, it was argued that with regard to metaphysical/DM-propositions things were radically different. Hence, to accept a proposition like

as true is ipso facto to understand it. To reject it as false is to fail to "understand" it. These options go together.

If the sense of an empirical proposition were dependent on truth, or on still other truths (which would themselves have to be expressed in further propositions), those truths themselves would likewise have to be understood first. If not, then their truth could not be, or have been ascertained. Once again: it is not possible to ascertain the truth of a proposition before it is comprehended.

Now this cannot go on indefinitely; indeed, there appear to be only two ways that an infinite regress can be avoided:

(1) Language users must have (programmed?) in their minds/brains a set of truths (possibly rules) not themselves expressed in, or expressible by empirical propositions; that is, they must have direct access to 'non-linguistic' truths or rules -- perhaps written in a 'code' of some sort (which is paradoxically not a code, or the above regress would simply begin again!).²⁵

(2) The truths upon which the sense of empirical propositions depend must be 'necessary' truths whose own truth cannot be questioned, and which must follow from the meaning of the words/concepts they contain/express, and not from still further truths. [But even here, truth would still be parasitic on meaning.]

Unfortunately, as we will soon see, 'necessary truths' have no sense and are thus incapable of being true or false. That will, of course, rule out option (2).

But worse, as noted, option (2) concedes that meaning precedes truth, anyway, for the truth of such 'necessarily' true propositions follows from the meanings of their constituent terms. In that case, there would clearly be no good reason to postulate the existence of such 'necessary' truths in order to support the initial idea that meaning in the end depends on truth, since, as things turn out, this option relies on an assumption that meaning is sui generis and thus that truth is dependent on meaning, after all.

Moreover, with respect to the first alternative, the idea that there could be sets of 'non-linguistic' truths in nature that govern the sense of propositions is manifestly (and is, as we will see, surreptitiously) based on the ancient theory that nature is Mind or Thought (or that it is constituted by one or both). In this particular case, it trades on the additional idea that language is governed by nature's own 'pre-linguistic ideas', or 'laws', and that it is the allegedly intelligent and/or rational universe that lends to human discourse the meaning it has. As will I hope seem obvious, this view naturally meshes with representationalism, for given this approach we represent to ourselves meaning naturally (or 'lawfully'), and this is induced in each of us individually as bourgeois social atoms. In this way, meaning is a 'natural', not a social phenomenon.

In fact, the same comment could be made about the idea that language is governed by rules that are genetically programmed into the central nervous system (which would, of course, make them part of the 'rational structure' of the universe -- but, in this case, only if we anthropomorphise the brain and see it as intelligent (or comprised of 'intelligent' neurons which 'communicate' with one another), and thus capable of mirroring 'intelligent' nature. This view would imply that language and/or the rules underlying it are agents themselves, and that in turn would be to reify and fetishise the products of social interaction (language/words) as if they were the real relation among things (or, indeed, represented the real relation between neurons), or were those things themselves (to paraphrase Marx. again).

[The liberal use of metaphor and neologisms in theories that give expression to this most recent ideological inversion rather give the game away, one feels.]²⁶

Naturally, philosophers of a more 'robust' theoretical temperament have rejected this line of argument (for all manner of reasons), arguing perhaps that there must be physical/causal laws governing the way human beings form true propositions, or which give meaning to the words they use --, and that our understanding of language should be 'naturalised' accordingly.

First, we have as yet no idea what such 'laws' would even look like -- let alone what they are.

Second, this account of the origin and nature of language would in fact reduplicate the 'problem' it was meant to solve. There is and could be no conceivable 'law' (or set of 'laws') capable of doing all that is claimed for it which does not at the same time avoid anthropomorphising nature, or read into it the very linguistic categories it was supposed to explain.²⁷

Thirdly, if language is a product of a set of causal laws of some sort -- if discourse is fundamentally representational -- then reference to its social nature would be an empty gesture. As noted above, Marxists who have been all too easily seduced into accepting one or other version of the 'robust view' (as a result perhaps of their unwise adherence to concepts derived from DM -- or from Chomsky or Quine) have universally failed to appreciate this corollary.²⁸

Finally, but most importantly, another implication of the idea that understanding language is parasitic on truth (at some point) is that if this were so, paradoxically, it could not be so. This is because this way of viewing discourse gets things the wrong way round (i.e., it has once more been inverted): the establishment of the truth-value of a proposition is consequent on its already having been understood. Humans do not first appropriate truths and then proceed to comprehend them. Communication and thus representation would be impossible if that were the case.²⁹

On the contrary, as was also noted earlier, if the sense of a proposition were not independent of the truth (or falsehood) it expressed, then plainly the mere fact that a proposition had been understood would entail it was true (or would entail it was false)! Naturally, if that were the case, linguistic or psychological factors would determine the veracity of empirical propositions, and science would become little more than a branch of hermeneutics.

Hence, given the above 'inverted' approach, as soon as a proposition had been understood its truth (or its falsehood) could be inferred automatically. Clearly, this would destroy the distinction between empirical and non-empirical propositions, for, on that basis, as soon as anyone understood M6, for example, they would know it was true.

In this way, we can see how representationalism requires all indicative propositions to be of the same logical form (whether or not this is immediately apparent). At some point, on this view, all indicative propositions must be, or must depend on necessary truths, which reflect in our minds how things must be, and cannot be thought of as otherwise (i.e., that their opposite is "unthinkable").

And that is why this view of language, knowledge and 'mind' so naturally fits in with apriorism and with the idea that fundamental truths about nature are accessible to, and can be derived from, thought alone --, and can thus safely be imposed on reality.

Hence, if in the end M6 depends on a necessary truth of some sort (or if it is a disguised necessary truth itself -- that is, in this case, if Blair had no choice, his ownership of TAR was determined by the operation of a necessary law of some sort (a là DM), or by the unfolding of his 'concept' (a là Hegel), or by his implicit predicates (a là Leibniz)), or whatever, then ultimately its truth could be ascertained without the need to examine any evidence at all. All one would have to do is to comprehend this sentence for it to be true.

[Naturally, that would make falsehood impossible to explain; why that is so is pretty obvious, but it will be explained in Essay Three Part Three.]

As now should seem plain, this would imply that scientific knowledge was itself based on yet some form of LIE, that is, truths about the world would follow from thought/language alone. The 'mind', when it reflects the world, would merely be reflecting itself in self-development, because. on this view, the world is Mind.

[Which was of course the conclusion Hegel drew. It's revealing therefore to see that the same conclusion follows from the alleged 'inversion' of Hegel, too.]

Fortunately, this whole way of looking at language and knowledge is undermined by the approach adopted here.³⁰

In that case, whatever lends sense to empirical propositions (i.e., whatever sets the conditions under which they are true or under which they are false) cannot itself be a set of antecedent truths. Neither could it be a set of ex post facto truths (that is, truths established as such at a later stage).

In contrast, since the socially-sanctioned rules governing our use of language are incapable of being either true or false, they are not subject to the above strictures.

These considerations also apply to scientific language if it is to function as a means of communication (and, derivatively, of representation). [On this, see Note 31 and Note 33.]

Hence, whatever else lends sense to empirical scientific propositions, it cannot be a set of truths. If the sense of such propositions were dependent on a set like this, scientists would only be able to understand each other after they had learnt those truths. In which case, of course, they could not be learnt. Clearly, there are no propositions (by means of which this could be done) that are exempt from the very same constraints.^{31

32} ³³

Furthermore, if the sense of an empirical scientific proposition was dependent on certain truths about the world -- so that, for example, the comprehension of that proposition implied it was automatically true --, that would mean that scientists could abandon experimentation and simply take up linguistic analysis. Science would then become indistinguishable from Metaphysics, or from LIE, for in that case to understand a proposition would be to know it was true.³⁴

Naturally, all this just confirms the claim that scientific language is, like the vernacular, conventional.

Admittedly, these claims are controversial.³⁵ They appear to imply that science is not based on facts, but on conventions. However, that belief is itself based on a serious misconception. [This will be addressed in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

The above assertions are in fact a consequence of a commitment to the social nature of language; they cannot be negotiated away without seriously undermining that fundamental Marxist insight.³⁶

We are now in a position to understand what went wrong with Lenin's claim (in M1a) and explain why it is that certain indicative sentences (i.e., metaphysical theses) collapse so readily into incoherence.

As was argued above, this problem is associated with the use of what appear to be empirical sentences to state necessary truths (or falsehoods) about the world, for it is this confusion which distorts fundamental features of language, rendering such sentences non-sensical. Why this is so has not yet been fully explained.

Because the supposed truth of metaphysical sentences seems to follow from the meaning of the words they contain, theorists claim they are capable of reflecting fundamental features of reality in the 'mind' of anyone who so indulges. In this way, metaphysical theses go hand in hand with accepting representational theories of language and thought.

Moreover, as noted above (and as we saw here), this whole way of viewing language and meaning inverts, and then re-locates externally-sanctioned social and interactive practices (i.e., comprehension and communication) so that they now become internalised, private, individual acts of intellection (immediate to 'consciousness', etc.).

On this view, meaning is not a social product but the result of processing ideas or 'concepts' in the 'mind', or in the 'faculties of reason' --, reconfigured these days perhaps as part of the operation of "inner speech". This is a thoroughly bourgeois view of language and meaning, and lies behind an earlier allegation that this area of traditional (and Dialectical-Marxist) Philosophy has not advanced much beyond the ideas of Descartes and Locke.

Alas, DM-theorists who argue along these lines have failed to appreciate how such theories undermine their belief in the social nature of language and meaning, just as they have failed to see that this traditional approach to 'cognition' does not even deliver what had been advertised for it all along.³⁷

Let us recap: in trying to tell us about matter and motion, Lenin informed us that "motion without matter" was "unthinkable". Unfortunately, this involved him in doing the exact opposite of what he said was impossible; it meant he had to think the very thoughts he was trying to rule out as "unthinkable". Hence, he had to entertain this idea in order to rule it out and then deny it was something that anyone could entertain. This implicated him in a radically non-standard use of language, which meant that he was unable to say what he imagined he wanted to say; in practice his words implied the opposite of what he thought he had intended.

In fact, this suggests that there wasn't actually anything there for Lenin to have intended to mean. This is because it is not possible to say (in one sense of "say") anything meaningful that is in principle incomprehensible to anyone, including the one saying it. While someone might give voice to complete babble, it is not possible for them to mean anything by it (unless, of course, it's part of some code, or it's aimed at simply creating a desired effect). One might intend to utter babble, but not intend to mean anything comprehensible by it (if trivial examples are put to one side).³⁸

With respect to sentences like M1a, it now becomes impossible say what it was that Lenin intended to communicate to his readers. Every attempt to translate his words into less confusing terms seems to undermine them still further. In which case, it is pertinent to wonder what (if anything) Lenin could possibly have meant by what he said.³⁹

We have already encountered similarly incoherent DM-ideas (for example, in connection with 'dialectical logic', Trotsky's attempt to 'revise' the LOI, Engels's 'analysis' of the allegedly contradictory nature of motion, Lenin's attempt to argue that everything is "self-moving" and "interconnected", and TAR's attempt to spell-out DM-Wholism, among other things). This regular slide into unintelligibility is not just bad luck; it's a direct result of the careless use, and erroneous interpretation of certain indicative sentences -- among other things, regarding them as super-empirical propositions that inform us about fundamental aspects of the world when they turn out to be nothing of the sort.^40a0

An empirical proposition derives its sense from the truth possibilities it appears to hold open (which options can be decided upon one way or the other by a confrontation with the material world). That is why the actual truth-value of, say, M6 (or its contradictory, M6a) does not need to be known before it is understood, but it is also why evidence is relevant to establishing that truth-value as "true" or establishing it as "false".

All that is required here is some grasp of the same possibility that both of these hold open. M6 and M6a both have the same content, and are both made true or false by the same situation obtaining or not.⁴⁰

It's also why it's easy to imagine M6 to be true even if it turns out to be false, or false when it is in fact true. In general, comprehension of empirical propositions involves an understanding of the conditions under which they would/could be true or would/could be false. As is well known, these are otherwise called their truth-conditions. That, of course, allows anyone so minded to confirm the actual truth status of an empirical proposition by comparison with the world, since they would in that case know what to look for/expect.

As we saw earlier, these non-negotiable facts about language underpin the understanding of the Marxist emphasis on the social nature of discourse presented in this Essay. This allows interlocutors to exchange information which they can grasp independently of knowing whether it is true or whether it is false. As seems obvious, if this were not the case, if they had to know something was true before they understood it, the entire process could not begin, and communication would stall. However, these facets of language fly in the face of metaphysical and/or representational theories, which emphasise the opposite: that to understand a proposition is ipso facto to know it is true (or ipso facto to know it is false), by-passing the confirmation/disconfirmation stage (reducing the usual 'truth-conditions' to one option only).^40a

However, there are other serious problems that this approach to language faces over and above the fact it would make knowledge incommunicable.

[For example, how would the 'contents' of one mind be communicated to another if there was no prior means of communication by means of which this could be done, something representational theories typically undermine (or even deny)? Indeed, how would it be possible for anyone to communicate with anyone else if they could only figure out what their interlocutors had 'meant' after they had ascertained the truth of what they said? More on this in Essay Three Part Two, and Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Intractable logical problems soon begin to emerge (with regard to such supposedly empirical, but nonetheless metaphysical sentences) if an attempt is made to restrict or eliminate one or other of the paired semantic possibilities associated with ordinary empirical propositions: i.e., truth and falsehood.

This occurs, for example, when an apparently empirical proposition is declared to be "only true" or "only false" -- or, more pointedly, 'necessarily' the one or the other -- perhaps as a "law of cognition", or, more likely, when a 'necessary' truth or a 'necessary' falsehood is mis-identified as a particularly profound sort of empirical thesis, using the indicative mood (etc.), once more.

As we will see, this tactic results in the automatic loss of both semantic options, and with that goes any sense the original proposition might have had, rendering it non-sensical.

This is because an empirical proposition leaves it open as to whether it is true or whether it is false; that is why its truth-value (true/false) cannot simply be read-off from its content, why evidence is required in order to determine its semantic status (true/false, once more), and why it is possible to understand it before its truth or before its falsehood is known. If that were not so, it would be impossible to ascertain its truth-status; it's not possible to confirm or confute a supposedly indicative sentence if no one understands what it is saying.

When this is not the case -- i.e., when either option (truth or falsehood) is closed-off, or when a proposition is said to be "necessarily true" or "necessarily false" -- evidence clearly becomes irrelevant. Thus, whereas the truth or falsehood of an empirical proposition cannot be ascertained on linguistic, conceptual or semantic grounds alone, if the truth or falsehood of a proposition is capable of being established solely on the basis of such linguistic/structural factors, that proposition cannot be empirical -- despite its use of the indicative mood.

If, however, such a proposition is still regarded by those who propose it as a truth, or as a Super-truth about the world, about its "essence", then it is plainly metaphysical.^40b

Otherwise the actual truth or actual falsehood of such propositions would be world-sensitive, not solely meaning- or concept-dependent; that is, their actual truth or actual falsehood would depend on how the world is, not solely on what their words mean. And that explains why the comprehension of metaphysical propositions appears to go hand in hand with knowing their 'truth' (or knowing their 'falsehood'): their truth-status is based solely on thought, language or meaning, not on the material world.

Of course, it could always be claimed that such 'essentialist' thoughts 'reflect' deeper truths about the world, which seems to undermine totally the above comments.

But, if thought 'reflects' the world, it would be possible to understand a proposition that allegedly expressed such a thought in advance of knowing whether it is true or knowing whether it is false, otherwise confirmation in practice, or by comparing it with the world would become an empty gesture.

And yet, on the other hand, if its truth could be ascertained from that proposition/'thought' itself (i.e., if it were "self-evident"), then plainly the world would drop out of the picture, which just means that that 'thought'/proposition cannot be a reflection of the world, whatever else it is.⁴¹

Furthermore, and worse, if a proposition is still purported to be empirical (or about underlying "essences"), but which can only be true or which can only be false (as seems to be the case with, say, M20, below, according to Lenin) then, as we will see, paradox must ensue.

Consider the following sentence, one which Lenin would presumably have declared necessarily false (if not "unthinkable"):

Unfortunately for Lenin, in order to declare M20 necessarily and always false (or "unthinkable"), the possibility of its truth must first be entertained (as we saw). Thus, if the truth of M20 is to be permanently excluded by holding it as necessarily false, then whatever would make it true has to be ruled out conclusively. But, anyone doing that would have to know what M20 rules in so that he/she could comprehend what is ruled out by its rejection as always and necessarily false. And yet, this is precisely what cannot be done if what M20 itself says is permanently ruled out on semantic/conceptual grounds.⁴²

Consequently, if a proposition like M20 is necessarily false this charade (i.e., the permanent exclusion of its truth) cannot take place, since it would be impossible to say (or even to think) what could possibly count as making M20 true so that it could be declared necessarily false. Indeed, Lenin himself had to declare it "unthinkable", so he not only could not tell us what would make it false, he could not even think these words. Hence, because the truth of M20 can't even be conceived, no one, least of all Lenin, is in any position to say what is excluded by its rejection.⁴³

Unfortunately, this now prevents any account being given of what would make M20 false, let alone 'necessarily' false. Given this twist, paradoxically, M20 would now be necessarily false if and only if it was not capable of being thought of as necessarily false! But, according to Lenin, the conditions that would make M20 true cannot even be conceived, so this train of thought cannot be joined at any point. And, if the truth of M20 -- or the conditions under which it would be true -- cannot be conceived, then neither can its falsehood, for we would not then know what was being ruled out.^43a

In that case, the negation of M20 can neither be accepted nor rejected by anyone, for no one would know what its content committed them to so that it could be either countenanced or repudiated. Hence, M20 would lose any sense it had, since it could not under any circumstances be considered true, and hence under any circumstances be considered false.

If we are incapable of thinking these words, we certainly cannot think of them as false.

This is in fact just another consequence of the point made earlier that an empirical proposition and its negation have the same content (they express the same possible state of affairs). If one option is ruled out, the other automatically goes out of the window with it, which is what we have now seen happen to Lenin's words.

It is also connected with the non-sensicality of all metaphysical 'propositions', for their negations do not have the same content as the original non-negated 'proposition'. [Why this is so is explained in Note 45a.]

[Incidentally, "proposition" is in 'scare quotes' here, since if it's not clear what is being proposed, or put forward for consideration, then plainly nothing has yet been proposed or put forward. On vagueness, see here.]

Indeed, because their negations do not picture anything that could be the case in any possible world, they can have no content at all. That, naturally, automatically empties the content of the original non-negated proposition.

In which case, it's not possible to isolate one of these options as independent of the other (as metaphysicians try to do). If the content of a proposition and its negation have the same content they stand or fall together (if one or other is declared 'necessarily' the case). Indeed, we have just seen this happen with M1a.

[This means that we have to find another way of explaining the use of such non-sensical propositions. More on that presently.]

As we can now see, the radical misuse of language governing the formation of what look like empirical propositions (like M1a) in fact involves an implicit reference to the sorts of conditions that underlie their normal employment/reception.⁴⁴

Hence, when such sentences are entertained, even momentarily, a pretence (often genuine) has to be maintained that they actually mean something, that they are capable of being understood, and thus that they are capable of being true or capable of being false.⁴⁵ This is done even if certain restrictions are later placed on their further processing, as was the case with M1a. In that case, a pretence has to be maintained that we understand what might make such propositions true, and their 'negations' false, so that those like M20 can be declared 'necessarily' false, or "unthinkable".

But, this entire exercise is an empty charade, for no content can be given to propositions like M20, and thus to M1a, either -- nor in fact to any metaphysical 'proposition'.^45a

With respect to motionless matter, even Lenin had to admit this! Indeed, he it was who told us this 'idea' was "unthinkable".

[Recall, writing those very words meant he had to think the "unthinkable"!]

Another odd feature of metaphysical theses is also worth highlighting: since the truth-values of defective sentences like these are plainly not determined by the world, they have to be given a truth-value by fiat. That is, they have to be declared "necessarily true" or declared "necessarily false", and this is plainly because their truth-status cannot be derived from the world, with which they cannot now be compared.

Or, more grandiloquently, their opposites have to be pronounced "unthinkable" by a sage-like figure -- a Philosopher, or perhaps a Dialectical Magus of some sort -- a "Great Teacher".

Metaphysical pronouncements like this are as common as dirt in traditional thought -- and, as we can now see, in dialectics, too.

Of course, this 'ceremony' must be performed in abeyance of any evidence (indeed, none need ever be sought out -- quite the contrary, in fact; evidence would detract from their apodictic certainty), since sentences like this transcend, by decree, the usual grubby, materialist details that govern the social practices underlying the determination of the truth-values of ordinary empirical propositions.

James White underlines this frame-of-mind as exhibited by the German Idealists who invented modern dialectics:

"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.]

Nevertheless, semi-divine theses like these have to be set apart, and have their exclusive, semantic pre-eminence bestowed on them as a gift; they cannot be expected -- nor must they be allowed -- to mix with vulgar empirical utterances, covered as the latter are in such worldly, working-class grime.

Instead of being compared with material reality to ascertain their truth-status, the veracity of such theses is derived solely from, or compared only with, other related theses (or to be more honest, with yet more obscure jargon), as part of a terminological gesture at 'verification'. 'Confirmation' takes place only in the head of the theorist who dreamt them up. Their bona fides are thus thoroughly Ideal and 100% bogus.

In the present case, it's impossible (for anyone who agrees with Lenin) to outline the material conditions under which, say, M20 would be true so they could specify what it was that was being ruled out by the supposedly necessary status of M1a. [For to do so would involve them in thinking the "unthinkable".] But this just means there are no specifiably material conditions that would make M20 false. Naturally, if no such conditions can be delineated either way, the search for supporting evidence cannot even be imagined, let alone initiated. Which is, of course, what we have found.

Indeed, M20b and M1a (etc.) do not make it that far since they have been knobbled in advance, so to speak. They were conceived and born in an ideal world (i.e., in the socially-'atomised' brain of lone thinkers, as they sat and 'reflected' on the 'essential' nature of the world -- i.e., on the supposed meaning of distorted words and jargonised expressions). Despite appearances to the contrary and in spite of the intentions of their inventors, they relate to nothing whatsoever in material reality. The conventions of ordinary language prevent this, as we have seen.

Since no one can even so much as specify what would count as evidence that showed a proposition like M1a was true or that showed it was false, such propositions are therefore not materially-based (that is, they aren't empirically sensitive to any state of affairs in the material world). In that case, they cannot be used to help understand the world, nor can they assist in changing it. That, of course, helps explain why DM cannot be used to propagandise and agitate workers, nor can it be employed in revolutionary upheavals (like 1917), as we have seen.

Instead of reflecting the world, these sentences do the opposite; they determine the way the world must be, not the way it happens to be. The conceptually-constructed, jargon-based Ideal world of traditional Philosophy reflects the distorted language from which it was derived; it does not reflect the material world, the material world is constructed out of and by means of language. That is why seemingly profound truths can be read from such theses, since they are in fact used to impose a certain theory on the world, not the other way round. They are 'true' because they reflect the ideal world of their inventors, not the material world. And that is why their actual truth or their actual falsehood cannot be decided upon by comparison with nature, but has to be bestowed on them by the socially-atomised thinkers who dreamt them up.⁴⁶ The normal cannons that determine when something is true or false (i.e., a comparison with reality) have thus to be set aside, and a spurious 'evidential' ceremony substituted for it.⁴⁷

In DM, this bogus ceremony is often carried out after the event -- that is, after such theses had been lifted from Hegel's 'Logic'. DM-theses are then only applied (or rather misapplied) to a narrow range of illustrative examples (as we found, for instance, with Trotsky's 'analysis' of the LOI, Engels's account of motion and his so-call three 'Laws').

(1) It is performed in 'thought' as part of a hasty consideration of the 'concepts' supposedly involved. Thus, instead of being compared with material reality in order to ascertain their truth-values, DM-theses are merely compared with other related doctrines (or more often, they are compared with yet more terminologically-compromised sentences drawn from Hegel) as part of a jargon-riddled gesture at 'verification'. This is no surprise; such theses are quintessentially Ideal and thoroughly anti-materialist.⁴⁸

(2) This ritual often takes the form of a series of superficial thought experiments accompanied by an idiosyncratic 'logical' analysis of a few key terms, artificially boosted by a liberal use of modal/quasi-modal terms, such as "must", "inconceivable", "demand", "unthinkable", and "impossible".

(3) Almost invariably, the application of hardy DM-perennials is then illustrated by means of a hasty appeal to a few specially-selected (and endlessly repeated) 'supportive' examples -- which are themselves often mis-described.

In Essay Seven, we saw that DM-theorists offer their readers laughably superficial evidence in support of Engels's three 'Laws' -- where, as a result, DM was called "Mickey Mouse Science". And now we can see why; the "self-evidence" of DM-theses means that little or no empirical support is in fact required. Hence, a few trite, specially-selected examples suffice, and are retailed year-in, year-out.

(4) On other occasions, this 'evidence' turns out to be the product of a superficial attempt made at some form of linguistic/'conceptual' analysis, itself based on 'persuasive definitions' and vague abstractions.⁴⁹ More specifically, as we saw in Essay Three Part One, appeals are often made to nominalised predicate expressions, 'surgically enhanced' so that they now 'name' mysterious 'abstractions' -- which transformation only succeeds in turning them into the names of abstract particulars, vitiating the whole exercise by destroying generality.

Whatever the legerdemain involved here, direct or indirect reference has to be made at some point to the ordinary meaning of the words employed so that specific revisions can then be imposed on them. Unfortunately, since the opening gambit in this charade involves an initial misuse of a few selected terms, the words employed in fact no longer possess their usual connotations, which means that the whole exercise is now doubly pointless.

In fact, no process of revising a word can begin if that word has been distorted already; it is not possible to revise such words if they are no longer being used, but have been replaced by typographically identical copies, employed idiosyncratically. [More details here.]

Hence, in such circumstances, what might at first sight appear to be ordinary words (like, "motion", "unthinkable", "opposite", "equal", "place", "quality", "negation", "contradiction", and so on) put in a brief appearance. But these words cannot have the same meaning as their supposed vernacular equivalents because of the extraordinary use to which they are now being put.

This can be seen from the fact that when an actual appeal is made to the usual (and often diverse) meanings these ordinary words already possess (as has been done on numerous occasions throughout this site --, in detail, for example, here), the seemingly obvious nature of every single DM-thesis evaporates faster than a politician's 'pledge'.

Nevertheless, this is precisely what creates the spurious 'obviousness' and 'self-evidence' of such theses --, which incidentally also accounts for the consternation often created in the minds of DM-fans when they are dissected and then rejected (as they have been in these Essays) -- often prompting the "pedantry" defence. In the latter eventuality, the rationale behind my repudiation of DM-theses is completely puzzling to those transfixed by this idealist pantomime; how such apparently "self-evident" sentences could fail to be true (or false) thus becomes "unthinkable". Indeed, those, like me, who object just do not "understand" dialectics.

Naturally, this incredulity is a direct consequence of the fact that the 'truth' or 'falsehood' of such theses has been deliberately built into them by linguistic/conceptual fiat.

And that is also why DM-fans find it difficult to understand anyone who denies, for instance, that a moving object is in fact in two places at once, and in one place and not in it at the same time -- even though our ordinary use of words associated with motion and location shows that our ideas about such things are far more complex than Hegel, Zeno or DM theorists imagine, and certainly allow for the sorts of movement that make this DM-thesis seriously misguided.⁵⁰

The novel DM-use of superficially ordinary words thus appears to generate paradox. That is because the everyday meaning of such terms seems to 'carry over' into these new contexts, bringing in its train fathomless confusion. This, of course, explains why 'contradictions' sprout in DM-texts faster than Japanese Knotweed.

[A detailed example of this process was given in Essay Three Part One, in Essay Four, here and here, and throughout Essays Five and Six.]

This slide in meaning, and into incoherence, also creates this latest paradox, plaguing Lenin's talk about matter and motion, while illustrating why the allegedly unthinkable is both thinkable and unthinkable!

To compound the problem, the paradox-inducing implications of the sort of distorted language DM-theorists and traditional Philosophers use are often based on the what are claimed to be the real meaning of the words involved. To this end, the many and varied ordinary connotations of such words are brushed aside as 'unscientific', 'un-philosophical', "only valid with certain limits" --, or they are rejected as uninteresting, inessential, plagued by banal "commonsense", "formal thinking", and the like. For example, the real meaning of motion is supposed to imply that it is 'contradictory' and paradoxical; the real meaning of 'identity' is actually its opposite; the real meaning of "matter" implies motion, and so on.^50a

The original, ordinary words are then discarded as of limited use, or as defective --, but blame is cast upon them partly because the vernacular in fact disallows such surreal moves from being made. In that case, according to traditional theorists (and now dialecticians), if ordinary language disallows such moves, it's ordinary language which is to blame, not those moves!⁵¹

Ordinary language is thus caught in a philosophical vice, as it were: on the one hand the everyday meaning of words does not sanction the sort of theses metaphysicians try to wring from them, while on the other, these words are deemed inadequate in some way because they appear to generate paradox -- when in reality that condition was created by just such a cavalier, if not Philistine, misuse of them.⁵²

"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order 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 added.]

Nevertheless, the necessary exclusion of one of the logical 'properties' of empirical sentences completely wrecks their capacity to accommodate the working of their non-excluded, semantic twin -- truth in the case of falsehood, and falsehood in the case of truth. For, as we have just seen, if such sentences can only be false, and never true, they can't actually be false. This is because, normally, if a sentence is false, it is untrue.⁵³ But, if we cannot say under what circumstances such sentences are true then we certainly cannot say in what way they fall short of this so that they could be untrue, and hence false. Conversely, if they can only be true, the conditions that would make them false are likewise excluded; if we cannot say under what circumstances such sentences are false then we certainly can't say in what way they fall short of this so that they could be true, and hence not false. In which case, their truth (or non-falsehood) similarly falls by the wayside.

Again, all this forms part of understanding the sense of a proposition; to grasp this, one has to know under what conditions that proposition would be true or would be false. The two stand or fall together; knowing what would make a proposition true is ipso facto knowing what would make it false, and vice versa. Consider the following:

Anyone who knows the English language, and knows who and what Barak Obama and Das Kapital are will understand this sentence. Even if they haven't a clue whether it is true or whether it is false, they'd certainly know the state of affairs the obtaining of which would make it true, the absence of which would make it false. The same state of affairs serves in both cases (to make C1 true or to make it false). If this were not the case, that would indicate that C1 and C2 had a different content and related to different states of affairs. And if that were the case, one would have to know whether or not C1 was true before it was understood -- and whether or not C2 was false before it was understood --, which is absurd. [In that case, too, understanding C1 would automatically make it true!]

So, our comprehension of empirical propositions is intimately connected with the inter-relation between these logical 'Siamese Twins' (i.e., truth and falsehood) --, and hence with the social norms governing the use of the negative particle. The abrogation of such socially-sanctioned rules means that 'necessarily' true and 'necessarily' false sentences (like those considered above) are not just senseless, they are non-sensical. That is, they are incapable of expressing empirical truth or falsehood, incapable of expressing a sense. Whatever we try to do with them collapses into incoherence.⁵⁴

For the last two-and-a-half millennia, metaphysicians have consistently overlooked this feature of empirical sentences. DM-theorists are thus mere parvenus in this regard.

This historical error has certainly fooled traditional Philosophers into thinking that the supposed 'necessity' of metaphysical 'propositions' derives from the nature of reality, not from the distorted language on which their ideas depend.

Innocent-looking linguistic infelicities like these helped motivate the invention of theses that were regarded as a 'reflection' of the 'essential' features of reality, accessible to thought alone. But, if such 'truths' are based on nothing more than linguistic chicanery, on distortion and misuse, then no evidence could be offered in support -- except that which is based on yet more verbal trickery of the same sort.

Metaphysical 'necessity' is thus little more than a shadow cast on the world by distorted language (to paraphrase both Wittgenstein and Marx).

Over the centuries, metaphysical systems thus developed not by becoming empirically more refined, or materially useful (in relation to, say, technology), which is the case with scientific theories -- but by becoming increasingly labyrinthine, convoluted and baroque -- as further incomprehensible layers of jargon were deposited on this ancient, linguistically deformed bedrock.

Naturally, all this confirms the fact that these two semantic possibilities -- truth and falsehood -- must remain open options if a proposition is to count as empirical, subject to evidential confirmation, and thus for it to count as "thinkable", in this sense.

In which case, as the above shows, no sentence can express a 'necessary truth' about the world and remain empirical.⁵⁵

So, despite appearances to the contrary, Lenin's appeal to the 'unthinkability' of motion without matter does not in fact say anything at all --, that is, anything that is empirically determinate.

Considerations like these show that indicative sentences often conceal their logical form, which is why it is unwise to take the superficially similar grammatical forms of language at face value. This in turn demonstrates that while sentences like M2-M9 might well be indicative -- with several of them also appearing to be empirical, appearing to be about the world -- they in fact masquerade as empirical propositions and thus fail to express a sense. And this is a consequence of the logical conditions that ordinary users have set on empirical propositions (by their practice, but not in general by their deliberations). [More about that elsewhere.*]

is not false, it's incomprehensible. [Or, it's not about the number two; on that, see below.]

M21 is not just merely false, if it is taken to be a mathematical and not simply a terminological proposition. But, because it is impossible to specify (short of trivial examples -- on these, see below) what could possibly make M21 true, we are in no position to specify what it is trying to rule out, and hence are in no position to say in what way it falls short of this for it to be false.

Unlike empirical propositions, M2 and M21 do not have the same content, nor do they relate to the same state of affairs, since neither relate to any state of affairs to begin with. If they did, a comparison with the world would be relevant to establishing their veracity.

M2 expresses a rule for the use of the number word "two", since it expresses the role this word occupies in mathematics; M21, at best, perhaps records the rejection of that rule.

To think otherwise (of M21) -- that it expresses a supposed truth, or fact, not a simple terminological revision (the trivial case)-- would be to misidentify the use of the word "two". That would alter the logical syntax of any of the equations in which this word (or its symbol) occurred.

Some might think that M21 is "logically false" (and thus that M2 is "logically true"), but to conclude that would merely attract the sort of questions posed above about "necessarily false" and "necessarily true". If it is not possible to specify conditions under which M21 would be "logically true" (trivial examples excepted, once more), then it would be equally impossible to say under what conditions it would fail to be "logically true", and hence "logically false" (or "necessarily false").

Consider one such trivial case (i.e., if "two" had another use in English, or a new role was proposed -- call this new word "two*", but, of course, it would not have an asterisk attached to it; I am forced to use one to distinguish these words): if it isn't possible to specify conditions under which M21 would be "logically true" -- because any attempt to do so would be to misconstrue the use of the word "two" --, then any typographically identical word used in place of "two" (i.e., "two*") would not have been employed to express or instantiate that word's normal use, whatever else it might be doing. This would merely amount to a simple terminological revision.

Considering now another trivial case -- that is, if in English a different word had been used in place of "two", or the above comments were written in a different language -- then not much will change. Suppose, therefore, that in English we used "Schmoo" (or a different symbol to "2") in place of "two" (and/or "2"), then M2 and M21 would become:

But, as noted above, this would simply amount to a minor terminological revision. If this word (or the new symbol) were used as we now use "two" (or "2") then nothing substantive would change. [On this, see also Note 60.] The same applies to words used in other languages.

Others might want to argue that M21 is self-contradictory. In that case, when spelt-out this self-contradiction might be expressed as follows:

But, as seems plain, the use of the word "two" is not the same in each half of M21b, so it is no more self-contradictory than this would be:

M21d is not meant to be of the same logical form as M21b (plainly the former contains definite descriptions); it is merely meant to make explicit a change of denotation in both halves. Plainly, the first name is being used to refer to a different individual from the second. Similarly, in M21c, while the first occurrence of "two" is plainly that of a number word, the second isn't. These two uses of "two" have different denotations, and so the two halves of M21c do not constitute a contradiction.

we can see that M2 and M21e do not contradict one another, either, since the use of the word "two" has changed again.

So, M2 would itself only become 'false' if one or more of its constituent words changed their meanings (i.e., the trivial case mentioned above). But even then, M2 would not be about what we now call "two". Plainly, as soon as anyone attempts to deny that number two is a number, they automatically cease to talk about the number two. [What they might in fact be doing is rejecting a rule of language, but that would not affect how the rest of us would proceed.]

Hence, despite appearances, M21 and M2 do not in fact contradict one another. This is because M21 is either incomprehensible, or it is about something else -- the trivial case, once again. In that case, M21 cannot be the negation of M2 (despite the presence of the negative particle, and the typographically similar signs they both contain --, which is of course why the word "negation" was put in 'scare quotes' earlier). Once more, negation here would, at best, amount to the rejection of a rule, or it would be trivial.⁵⁶

To use a more ordinary analogy: if someone were to say "The strike has been called off", and someone else were to deny this "The strike has not been called off", the second would only be taken to be the negation of the first if the same strike were being referred to in both cases. Or, to take another, if someone said "I have put my wages in the bank today", and her interlocutor said "No you haven't; you spent all day fishing", the first clause would not be taken to contradict the second assertion when it had been ascertained that the original speaker had buried her wages in the river bank while fishing.

Ideas to the contrary may only be sustained by (1) The false belief that M2 actually stands alone as a mathematical unit -- when this is not the case -- or, perhaps by (2) The idea that it is a contingent proposition.

But, what makes M2 mathematical is the use of its terms in a system of propositions (connected by historically-conditioned practices), which are inter-linked by means of rule-governed operations, direct and indirect proofs, and inductions, etc. Moreover, M2 is not a contingent proposition (except trivially so -- i.e., in the case where we could have chosen other words or signs to advert to what we now call "two", as we saw above), but the expression of a rule; it tells us how we use, and are supposed to use, this word/symbol; it locates this word in that system of symbols.

The 'truth' of M2 does not arise from the way it relates as an isolated unit to an alleged mathematical fact tucked away in some sort of Platonic heaven (or, indeed, by the way it might relate to an abstraction in someone's head) --, but by the way it features in our use of number words in systems of propositions connected by proofs, and by the way it is connected with wider material/social practices. [On this, see Note 56.]

That is why, of course, none of us would be able to comprehend an empirical investigation aimed at testing the truth of M2 against reality on its own, or in any other way. In fact, the inappropriateness of an empirical verification of a proposition like M2 is connected with their lack of truth-conditions.⁵⁷

Our use of such propositions -- which, as we can see, differs markedly from the way we use empirical propositions -- indicates that they have a radically different logical form. The failure of a proposition like M2 to correspond with anything in reality is revealed by the fact that (barring trivial cases, once more) we would ordinarily fail to understand its 'negation' -- M21. Anyone who asserted M21 would not be making an ordinary sort of mistake, as they would be had they uttered: "It is not the case that Blair has resigned".

This can be seen, too, by the way mathematics is learnt: by drill, rote, repetitive calculation, practical application, and the use of various proofs --, but not by experiment, or by abstraction. Children are not taught to abstract, but to count -- and at some point, the 'penny drops' and it is impossible to stop them when they spot the pattern. Hence, understanding mathematical propositions goes hand-in-hand with mastering certain skills, or techniques, or by learning proofs, and in the successful completion of certain operations (perhaps on collections of material objects).^57a

In that case, it would not be possible to declare M2 true because it corresponded to a fact, or false because it did not -- either in reality or in Platonic heaven -- since we can form no idea of what M2 rules out, and hence what it rules in (trivial cases to one side, again). In being 'true' itself, M2 would have to rule out the 'truth' of M21. But the 'truth' of M21 is incomprehensible; (trivial cases to one side, again) it is not possible to say in virtue of what M21 would be true, and hence in virtue of what M21 is not true. In that case, M2 is not made true by any facts (other than terminological, hence trivial, facts), nor is it true because its alleged contradictory (i.e., M21, is false, as would be the case with an ordinary empirical proposition).

All this is, of course, independent of the fact that it would not be possible to confirm M2 by comparing it with an abstract fact (even if we could make sense of the latter or of the process of comparing a sentence with an abstraction). To understand M2 is to master a technique, or a rule (or to have mastered them), not locate a confirming fact/abstraction.

In that case, the mere insertion of a negative particle into a sentence does not automatically create the negation of the original sentence (where "the negation" here means "the proposition with the opposite truth-value"), as M21 shows.⁵⁸

In this way, we can see once more that the superficial grammatical structure of indicative sentences often obscures their deeper logical form. While empirical sentences may be mapped onto their contradictories by means of the correct use of negation, non-empirical indicative sentences may not be so paired. This is, of course, not unconnected with the fact that empirical sentences can be understood before their truth-values are known, whereas propositions like M2 are comprehensible independently of that pre-condition -- they are grasped only by those who know how to count and calculate, etc. In that case, the meaning of M2 must be accounted for in a different way to that of, say, M6:

As has already been noted, M6 can be understood well in advance of its truth-value being known, but that truth-value cannot be ascertained on linguistic or logical grounds alone. This is quite unlike, say, M2 (or even, M1a).

This means that sentences like M2 are neither empirical nor scientific. In fact, they express rules for the use of certain words (or they are the consequence of the application of those rules); that is, they express the normative application of the terms they contain, and because of this they are incapable of being empirically true (or false). Any attempt to regard them this way soon collapses into incoherence, as we have seen.

As it turns out, the confusion of rules like this with empirical sentences underlies a historically identifiable failure on the part of theorists to see language as a social phenomenon.⁵⁹ That is because such an approach tends to view the foundations of language as solely truth-based (that is, language is thought to be predicated on empirical, or quasi-empirical factors --, such as the "representation" of 'reality', or its "reflection" in the private arena of 'the mind' or in 'consciousness') rather than on socially-sanctioned practices and norms. On this (traditional) view, therefore, falsehood is merely the erroneous or 'partial' application of, or connection made between, the various items that constitute the 'contents of consciousness' (oddly enough, because representations are compared only with other representations, this leaves the world out of account, obviating the whole exercise!). As we will see in Essay Three Part Four, this 'explanation' of the nature of falsehood is not only circular, it, too, is incoherent.

This ancient approach thus misconstrues sentences that express social norms as if they were empirical, or Super-empirical, propositions. In that case, normative aspects of language (i.e., rules), which have arisen from social interaction, are mistaken as the expression of the real relation between things, or those things themselves. That is, they are misconstrued as 'necessary' truths underpinning reality, which thus reflect its "essence". As such, they are regarded as Super-empirical theses, in no need of evidential support. It is this traditional logical segue that exposes the pernicious (but little-recognised) fetishisation of language this form-of-thought is predicated upon, highlighted throughout this site -- but explained in more detail in Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (summary here).

That is why the falsehood of M6, say, is not like the 'falsehood' of M2. To repeat, in order to understand M6, no one need know whether it is true or whether it is false. Moreover, its falsehood does not affect the meaning of any of the terms it contains. That is not so with M2:

M2 cannot be false. Its 'falsehood' would amount to a change of meaning, not of fact. M2 may thus only be accepted or rejected as an expression of a rule of language.⁶⁰

In fact, the modification of sentences like M2 -- by means of such things as analogy and metaphorical extension -- underlies the many major and minor conceptual revisions that mathematical/scientific concepts regularly undergo (saving, of course, trivial examples, once more).*

In stark contrast, the rejection or modification of propositions like M6 would not herald profound change; it is unlikely that Blair's failure to own a copy of TAR will initiate a significant conceptual revolution.

The fundamental conceptual changes that are set in motion by alterations to the rules that 'govern' mathematical, scientific or empirical use of language are also connected with factors that make metaphysical/DM-theses seem so certain, and their rejection so completely "unthinkable". Because metaphysical sentences arise out of a spurious and/or distorted use of language -- often they rely on a misconstrual of rules that fix meaning, and it is this that generates what appear to be profound 'truths' about 'Being' from language alone -- and not from our practical interface with the material world, their alleged status is resolvable in 'thought' alone. And here lies the origin of the certitude that this approach to language and Metaphysics induces.⁶¹

At first sight, M9 seems to resemble M2, in that its apparent truth-value (true) is given by the meaning of its constituent words.

However, M2 is not made into a rule because of the meaning of the terms it contains; it is a rule because the social/historical practices upon which it is based constitute and express the meaning of its terms. It is how human beings have used these terms already (in this case, in counting, calculating and proof) that establishes their meaning. The rule (i.e., M2) merely expresses this already established practice.⁶²

On the other hand, if M2 were a rule because of a previous, atomistic establishment of the meaning of the terms it contains, then meaning would be independent of use; it would not be based on social factors but on metaphysical principles of dubious provenance (and even more dubious logical status, as we have seen).

Indeed, if that were the case, the meaning of M2's constituent terms would have to be given before they were employed in social practices like counting, calculating and proof, by independent factors based on just such metaphysical principles (which are inexpressible in language), in a piecemeal, atomistic fashion.⁶³

Each word, in sentences like M2m would gain its meaning by 'naming' a 'particular' or a 'universal', or by representing this or that 'abstract' aspect of underlying reality in the heads' of their inventors. It would then be the atomised meaning of a term (or its 'inner representation') that would tell each user how it is to be used. This would transform each word (or its inner 'representation') into an agent, and each human being in a linguistic puppet.⁶⁴

Hence, the atomisation of word-meaning amounts to the fetishisation of language (why that is so is briefly explained in Note 64); it would make the 'social' interaction of words (or their inner 'representations') the determinant of how human beings are to use language. This would once more be to invert the fact that it is human agents who determine word meaning by their social interaction and by their relation to the material world.⁶⁵

In that case, it is the pattern underlying the linguistic and social contexts which sentences like M2 encapsulate that gives expression to our rule-governed use of such terms, and which constitutes their meaning. This is because this pattern is based on generality of use -- i.e., the possibility and actuality of norm-governed, open-ended social employment of such words.^65a

Hence, when questioned why "2" (or "two") had been used in, say, "2 + 7 = 9" (contingent niggles to one side) all that the one challenged could appeal to would be sentences like M2 and the operational rules of arithmetic. This equation could not and would not be confirmed or justified by comparing it with anything in the world (or with any 'abstractions', 'inner representations', or Ideal Forms in Platonic Heaven).

It might be thought that "2 + 7 = 9" could be justified by counting objects of a certain sort; this is undeniable, but this would only work if the parties involved already understood how to use the relevant vocabulary, rules of arithmetic and counting.

This can be seen from the fact that if someone were to count two objects, then count another seven, but declare that there were in total ten objects, he or she would be accused of making a mistake. Manifestly, we use these rules to decide if counting has been done correctly. We would not revise our rules, or our commitment to sentences like M2, if they had been 'falsified' in this way. Once more, this response is entirely different from the reaction we would give if M6 were shown to be false.^65b

These sentential contexts form part of a wider set of propositions that can be used in diverse practices, forming a system of concepts governed by the same (or analogous) patterns. The application of this rule (M2), as part of such a system of rules, reveals what its constituent terms mean, which application in turn is connected with and conditioned by the use of other related concepts, alongside concomitant patterns and practices, too.⁶⁶

This is how mathematical words gained their meanings, as integral parts of systems that have grown in relation to our social development over many centuries. They have not acquired the meaning they now have in a piecemeal fashion; that is, they do not now gain their meaning atomistically before they were contextually/socially employed.

Nor does a mathematical proposition gain its senses from the way it corresponds (or fails to correspond) to certain objects or structures hidden away in an ideal Platonic realm, or located in individual heads as 'abstractions'/'representations'.⁶⁷ This also means that mathematical propositions are not 'true' because they are the result of a process of abstraction (which is fundamentally an atomised and individualised phenomenon); they are 'true' because of the proof systems to which they belong, or to which they contribute (which are themselves also the development of expressions reliant on social/material practices).⁶⁸

Consequently, two is not a number because of what the word "two" 'meant' on its own before it featured in mathematical propositions, or counting operations, and the like.⁶⁹ In isolation, the sign "2" (or the word "two") means nothing. It is just a mark on a page. It gains its life from its use in certain rule-governed socially-conditioned surroundings. Initially, clearly, these were (and still are) everyday contexts.

More formally, a mathematical context is a system of propositions that has grown up alongside specific social practices. Hence, "two" does not receive its meaning in isolation, as appears to be the case if examples like M2 are read trivially. M2 cannot supply a meaning for "two" that was not there already in such a surrounding system of propositions and practices. Unless the logical space already existed for "two" to slot into as a number term, "two" could be the name of a cat, or the colour of the sky. "Two" gains its meaning from the rule-governed or normative use it has in everyday life -- a role that creates the logical space for number words, and their associated operations, as defined in Arithmetic (etc.) --, but linked now by systems of proof, not correspondence relations or abstractions. This is underlined by the way we verify mathematical propositions. We do not run empirical tests or perform experiments on them. Nor do we do brain scans. We prove their truth within the systems and practices in which they feature by well-known techniques.⁷⁰ Hence, M2 is empirically neither true nor false; it simply records a normative convention, a rule.⁷¹

Analogously, it might seem that M9 is true because of what its constituent words mean, but the status of propositions like M9 is more problematic.⁷² As noted above, M2 is not true because of what its words mean (since it isn't true in the first place); M2 expresses a socially-sanctioned rule that constitutes the meaning of its words -- hence it is incapable of being either true or false. M2 is either useful or it isn't, accepted or rejected.

But, to DM-fans it seems 'necessarily true' -- it's opposite "unthinkable". This helps explain why any attempt made by DM-critics to question the veracity of sentences like M9 would invariably be rebuffed (by dialecticians) with a claim that they were true because of what words or concepts like "motion" and "matter" really mean, or really are. This can be seen from the fact that if anyone were to deny M9, it would be no use dialecticians asking a sceptic to look harder at the evidence. All that a dialectician could do in such circumstances is appeal to the words/concepts involved, and then, with Lenin, declare that motion without matter is "unthinkable" -- which is, of course, why Lenin did not say "Motion taking place without matter is false, and here's the evidence". Which is, of course, why dialecticians almost to a man or woman respond to critics with a "You don't understand dialectics", but they never say "You should look at the evidence more carefully".

This hypothetical response (i.e., that dialecticians could only refer doubters to what certain words/concepts 'really' meant or implied) itself depends on an ancient way of viewing language, which seems to view discourse as if it were as system of labels attached to -- or representing singly, as linguistic atoms -- objects and processes in the world (or in an abstract Platonic heaven/Aristotelian concept-space, or even ideas in the 'mind'), but not as a dynamic expression of our communal and life.⁷³

Once more, this helps account for the (proposed) rejoinder added earlier (i.e., "M9 is true because of what its words/concepts mean") could only ever be the last court of appeal for the cornered DM-theorist; there is nothing more that could be said to any sceptic who doubted the 'truth' of such DM-theses. What little evidence there is that 'substantiates' DM-theses would soon prove to be of no help (as we have seen in earlier Essays, especially here); it would be no use a defender of Lenin pointing to more evidence if the meaning of his words is obscure in the extreme.

This linguistic redoubt just gives the game away. DM-theses are amenable to no other sort of defence; evidence is in the end irrelevant. DM-theses are creatures of an idiosyncratic use of language, and as such can only be defended linguistically, or 'conceptually'.⁷⁴

This means that since dialecticians are social agents, too, their theses are little more that misconstrued or mis-applied social norms (and seriously garbled ones at that). Their theses are not empirical propositions; they are camouflaged rules for the idiosyncratic use of Hegelian/metaphysical jargon, lifted from a tradition that has impressive mystical, and hence ruling-class credentials.^74a

This also helps account for the frequent use of modal expressions in certain formulations of DM-theses (for example, in: "Motion must involve a contradiction", or "Matter without motion is impossible", "Dialectical Logic demands….", "Totality is an insistence...", etc., etc.), accompanied, or not, by an appeal to the alleged definitions of such words/concepts (e.g., "motion is the mode of the existence of matter"). Empirical truths have no need of modal 'strengtheners' of this sort. Indeed, as Lenin noted:

"This aspect of dialectics…usually receives inadequate attention: the identity of opposites is taken as the sum total of examples…and not as a law of cognition (and as a law of the objective world)." [Lenin (1961), p.357.]

[That is, not unless M6a itself was the conclusion of an inference, such as: "Tony Blair told me he owned a copy, so he must own one", or it was based on a direct observation statement, perhaps (such as "I saw his wife give him a copy as a present, and I later spotted in his bookcase"). But even then, the truth or falsehood of M6a would depend on an interface with material reality at some point.]

With M6a-type propositions, it is reality that dictates to us whether what they say is true or false. Our use of such propositions means we are not dictating to nature what it must contain, or what must be true of reality. The exact opposite is the case with metaphysical and dialectical language.

M9-type sentences purport to tell us what really must be like, and what it must contain. The world has to conform to what certain aspects of language seem to determine for it.

Nevertheless, despite appearances to the contrary, M9 cannot be true solely in virtue of what its words mean. Normally, the ordinary-looking words that theses like M9 seem to employ gain whatever import they have from the part they play in wider human practices, those that involve their application in everyday material contexts. Divorced from this background, the isolated use of specialised/jargonised expressions in sentences like M9 means that they are like fish out of water, as it were.

There are no material systems -- i.e., systems pertaining to material practice or everyday life -- in which the idiosyncratic employment of M9's constituent words has a life (hence, a meaning) other than these novel, isolated contexts. And as we saw in Essay Nine Part One, such theses play no part even in the day-to-day activity of revolutionaries, nor do they feature in the agitation and propagandisation of the working class.

Indeed, metaphysical 'sound bites' like M9 provide the only semantic and background to the use of such terms. These DM 'nuggets of truth' supply the sole context for the peculiar deployment of 'philosophical' phrases like these, and they do so in non-practical (hence, non-material) surroundings -- quite unlike the mathematical propositions which they appear to ape. Isolated from material contexts in this way, the connections that the ordinary-looking words dialecticians use have with the typographically similar, everyday words (from which they have allegedly been 'derived', or 'abstracted') have been severed. Because DM-jargon is not based on material practices (as was demonstrated in Essay Nine Part One), and cannot be used in connection with the working class, or even the day-to-day activity of revolutionaries, it either has no meaning at all, or the usual meaning of the words DM-fans employ denies sentences like M1a any sense at all -- as we have seen.

It's no surprise, therefore, to find that that using such terms in sentences like this results in confusion and incomprehension. Nor is it any surprise Lenin's words fall apart and decay into incoherence so easily.^74b

However, sentences that express (or try to express) the rules governing the use of certain words are invariably interpreted by DM-theorists (and by other metaphysicians) as if they were genuine empirical propositions of a special, more profound variety -- that is, they are regarded as Superscientific truths which reveal the underlying 'secrets' of nature. Again, as we have seen, this renders such sentences non-sensical.⁷⁵

Admittedly, theses like M9 tend to depend on -- or they have given birth to -- any number of associated 'propositions' from which they have been 'derived', or which help unravel their supposed content. But, as metaphysical 'statements' they stand-alone as essentialist doctrines. That is, they confront us as isolated philosophical theses, as fundamental 'truths': "I think, therefore I am" (the cogito of Descartes), "To be it be perceived" (Berkeley); "Time is a relation" (Kant); "The whole is more than the sum of the parts" (Holists of every stripe), "Every determination is also a negation" (Spinoza), and so on.

Philosophical 'gems' like these have traditionally been mined, cleaned and polished into their glittering state by isolated thinkers, who 'discovered' these treasures just below the surface of 'appearances', or of experience, by the exercise of thought alone.^75a

But, theses like these were never based on -- nor were they even derived from -- a social and collective employment of words drawn from everyday material practice, otherwise the rest of us would not need to be informed of them.^75b

Indeed, if these 'philosophical discoveries' had been based on collective material practices they would not have struck their inventors (or anyone else, for that matter) as particularly 'deep' truths, unearthed by their valiant efforts alone (aided or not by the metaphysical equivalent of a JCB -- Hegel's Logic).

In fact, theses like these stage a dramatic entrance into the world of learning as glittering 'linguistic jewels' (solitaire diamonds, if you will). They gain their 'meaning' -- their metaphysical sparkle -- solely from the artificial setting created by their inventors, making a dramatic entrance as "news from nowhere", shafts of metaphysical light, truths written on tablets of stone.

And, surprise, surprise: the vast majority 'highly educated' people fall for this con-trick time and again.^75c

Nevertheless, these 'metaphysical prophets' (acting almost as if they were a messenger of the gods, like, say, Hermes was), who reveal to humanity these sacred truths, often imagine that the 'real' meanings of the ordinary-looking words they contain arise from the novel role bestowed on them by their pioneering efforts in reconstructive surgery --, creating in many cases the names of 'abstract' objects/concepts (etc.), grandiloquently re-christened: "essences".⁷⁶

This supposition is encouraged by the equally erroneous idea that such names gain their meaning individually, as linguistic 'atoms', through a direct and unmediated link with reality, or the 'concept's in their heads. This helps explain why this 'innovative' use of everyday words, which changes them into the names of abstract objects (and the like), is central to Metaphysics and to DM -- as we saw in Essay Three Part One, and elsewhere).

Hence, for traditional thinkers, the assumption that names gain their meaning directly and solely from whatever they name seems eminently plausible, just as it seems equally plausible to suppose that a language (i.e., a real language, a philosophical language -- not the woefully defective vernacular of the working class) that is based on atomistic naming ritual like this can somehow to pick out the 'essence' of "Being" by the mere expedient of wishing this were so -- alongside the idea that there is an 'essence' to begin with, which is simply assumed, but never shown to be the case.⁷⁷

This is, of course, one reason why traditional Philosophers insisted that the meaning words is determined by atomistic criteria (as part of a 'private language', or 'language of thought', etc.) -- be this the result of an 'inner act' of naming ideas in the 'mind', a process of abstraction, or a stipulative re-definition.

Furthermore, it's no accident either that this approach not only undermines the social nature of language, it is based on a class-motivated rejection of the material roots of discourse in everyday practice. Nor is it coincidental that thinkers who are/were demonstrably sympathetic toward wider ruling-class interests invariably favoured this overtly anti-communal view of language.⁷⁸

Conversely, it's no coincidence either that ordinary language assumed its central role in Analytic Philosophy, among left-leaning "Linguistic Philosophers", just when the working class was entering the sage of history as a political force.⁷⁹

Traditionally, the truth of solitary theses (like M9 or M1a) is somehow supposed to depend on the meaning of the words they contain. But, the isolated, atomised use of words cannot determine the sense of any sentences formed from them.⁸⁰ Words gain their meaning from their applicability in an indefinitely large set of socially-sanctioned contexts.⁸¹ They do not have a meaning bestowed upon them first, isolated from specific linguistic and social contexts, which 'meaning' then enables them to function in sentences, any more than a lump of gold first gains its value in nature or in society on its own, as an isolated 'commodity' unconnected with social organisation and labour, only to enter the economy afterwards with that unique value already attached to it. Meaning is no more a natural, individualistic property than is value.

However, ex hypothesi, there are no other contexts in which metaphysical atoms like M1a or M9 can feature (that is, other than to fuel academic debate). The fundamental propositions of Metaphysics (such as, M8 or M9) stand alone as isolated nuggets of truth, foundational principles. This means that in such surroundings the constituent words of M9, for example, despite their typographical similarity with ordinary words, are in fact meaningless. That is because they possess no connection with ordinary contexts that are themselves embedded in, or related to, material practices. This is, of course, one reason why M1a, for example, collapses into non-sense.

In a similar vein, Gold is not just valueless in nature, it is incapable of gaining a value by itself and of its own efforts -- or, indeed, by the efforts of a lone prospector/refiner. And gold, too, would remain valueless if it had no connection with historically-conditioned material practice -- with some form of developed economy.

Of course, to suppose otherwise --, i.e., to imagine that words, or their 'inner representations', determine their own meaning independently of the use to which humans put them in material contexts -- would be to fetishise them, as noted above.

Indeed, this would be tantamount to believing that words (or their 'inner representations') enjoyed a social life of their own anterior to, and explanatory of, the linguistic communion that exists between human beings. If words (etc.) did in fact acquire their own meanings piecemeal in this fashion, and these meanings accompanied words (etc.) about the place like shadows, then the idea that language is a social phenomenon would assume an entirely different aspect. In that case, discourse would still be social, but this would be because words (etc.) were themselves social beings, which would in turn mean that words (etc.) had passed that condition on to our use of language!⁸³

Hence, the supposition that a word (or, at least, its physical embodiment, its 'inner representation') can dispose a human agent (causally or in any other way)⁸⁴ to regard it as a repository of its own meaning -- so that inferences can be made from ink marks on the page (or from ideas or 'representations' in the head) to super-empirical truths about 'Being', or whatever --, would be to misconstrue the products of the social relations among human beings (i.e., words) as if they were their own autonomous semantic custodians, as creators and carriers of meaning themselves. In effect, this would be to anthropomorphise words (etc.) and to treat them as if they had their own history, social structure and mode of development. In this way, the social nature of language would reappear in an inverted form as an expression of the social life of words (etc.). Humanity would be atomised, linguistic signs (etc.) socialised.⁸⁵

In that case, M9 can't be true in virtue of the meanings of any of its words, for no meaning has yet been given to this idiosyncratic use of language by human beings engaged in any form of material practice.

If, however, an attempt were made to specify their meaning in a piecemeal fashion, a rule would be required.⁸⁶ To suppose that there is some sort of connection between a rule and reality (determined, perhaps, by a physical law) would be to no avail, either. If a rule were to depend on such a connection, it would become an empirical truth, and thus cease to be a rule.⁸⁷

Unfortunately, the vast majority of philosophers have overlooked this seemingly insignificant fact.⁸⁸

M22: "[M]otion [is] an inseparable property of matter." [Lenin (1972), p.323. Italic emphasis added.]

In so far as M22 purports to inform us about the properties of matter in the real world, it looks like a scientific statement. However, as we have seen, when examined it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Contrast it with the following:

Here, we can imagine conditions under which M23 would be false and M23a true (think of ice or steam). But, M22 is a much stronger claim than M23, and it is clearly connected with M1a (or with M9). We can see this if we examine it more closely.^88a

If M22 is re-written slightly and tidied up to eliminate the unnecessary detail it would become:

M24 is allegedly always true, its 'truth' clearly connected (at least) with the supposed meaning of words like "motion" and "inseparable", etc.

By asserting M24, Lenin certainly did not mean to suggest that even if we were to try extra hard we would still fail to separate the two words/'concepts' "motion" and "matter" (or what they meant) -- we can see this from the fact that his own sentence had to separate them to make sense. Lenin was plainly not informing us that while such a separation was a particularly difficult physical/mental task, we still might make some attempt to bring it about, but which we will always find we could never quite manage -- like, say, trying to eat an adult Blue Whale in less than ten seconds.

Lenin was clearly alluding to a connection between matter and motion that was much tighter than that; he was perhaps reminding us of the futility even of even trying -- that this wasn't an option --, just as it wouldn't be an option for anyone to try to disassociate oddness from the number three, or king-killer from regicide, for instance.⁸⁹

Hence, if we were to view M23 as Lenin viewed M24, that would mean that not only could water not be non-liquid, nothing other than water could be liquid, either. It would thus mean that water was not just the only liquid in the universe, but the only one that could exist in the universe -- and that liquidity was the only conceivable form of water.

This is because, for Lenin, motion is not just one of the defining characteristics of matter, nothing that moves could fail to be material. Motion is, as it were, super-glued to matter, and only to matter, and vice versa, according to Lenin. In that case, the same would have to be true with respect to water, if we were to read M23 as we read M24.

Now, the main verb in M24 is clearly in the indicative mood. But, if M24 were an empirical proposition its negation, M24a, should make sense, but for Lenin it doesn't -- indeed, it is "unthinkable" --, unlike the negation of M23 (i.e., M23a). This is because, once again, M24 holds open no truth possibilities (but only one envisaged necessity).

Lenin obviously believed that the falsehood of M24 was impossible even to think. Nevertheless, and once again, the indicative mood of its main verb hides its real nature. Only a consideration of the overall use of this thesis (that is, its role within Lenin's own 'system' of ideas) in the end reveals its actual form -- that is, as a metaphysical proposition, derived not from evidence, but from the supposed meaning of a handful of words, once more.

To this end, it's worth asking what could possibly make M24 'true' -- and, a fortiori, what could conceivably make it false.

Indicative sentences are normally true or false according to the way the world happens to be, but this sentence cannot be false no matter what nature is like. So, its falsehood cannot be based on any conceivable state of the world. As noted earlier, its truth seems to arise from linguistic (or conceptual) features alone, not from reality. This can be seen not just from its putative necessity, but from the way Lenin actually established its veracity -- he simply relied on its supposed self-evidence. He did not even think to support it with any data (or even very much argument!). Its semantic status was underpinned by what Lenin plainly took its words to mean. Its truth was thus internally-generated, not 'externally' confirmed.^89a

Nevertheless, what could possibly make this set of words necessarily 'true', in Lenin's opinion? M24 is just a string of words. It would have to have some sort of projective or representational relation to the real world for it to be true, for it to be a true picture of our world, and not of some alternative, parallel, or science fiction 'world'.⁹⁰

Well, whatever it is that succeeds in achieving this must also make the following sentences false:

But, ex hypothesi, M18 and M19 are "unthinkable", according to Lenin; as soon as we think either of them we face the sort of problems we encountered earlier.

Such 'necessary' truths make the possibilities they rule out (such as M18 or M19) not just 'false', but Super-false, and hence "unthinkable". This they do while at the same time requiring that we have think about whatever it is they exclude so that it can be rejected. But, in order to do that, we should have to be able to separate in thought motion from matter in order to be able to declare that it cannot be done -- even in thought! Unless we could separate in thought motion from matter, we'd have no idea what we were meant to rule out, and thus we'd have no grasp of what we were committing ourselves to (by accepting M24).

Hence, if we are capable of grasping the truth of M24, we must already have some comprehension of what would make it false, i.e., what M24 is ruling out. If so, in thought, we would have to be able to separate these two 'concepts' -- even if only to declare they were inseparable! M24 would therefore be true if and only if it were false; we could agree with it only on condition that we didn't.

This (by-now-familiar) problem has arisen from the fact that Lenin entertained a 'necessary' truth (M24) which is impossible to state in any comprehensible form. As soon as it is formulated it implies its own truth just in case it is false. M24 would be true if every sentence like M18 and M19 were false. But, the falsehood of M18 and M19 implies that they are thinkably false. But, M1a implies that they are unthinkable, tout court. So if they are "unthinkable", we may not even think that either M18 or M19 could be false. If so, we can't rule out the possibility that one or both might be true -- for we can't even entertain the thought that they could be true, since the words they use are forever beyond the pale. Indeed, we can never use them even to say we cannot use them in this way!

Metaphysics consigns countless 'propositions' like M18 and M19 to linguistic limbo in this and analogous ways. By adopting this approach to 'knowledge', DM-theorists similarly consign their theses to outer darkness.

As we have seen several times throughout this site, metaphysical/DM-sentences soon decay into non-sense. They cannot fail to do this. While appearing to mimic empirical sentences they turn out to be radically different, masquerading as ordinary, but more profound, declarative statements. Central to the role they serve as especially deep 'truths' is their distorted use and misapplication of language. In many case, they also turn out to be garbled or mis-stated linguistic rules.⁹¹

Such sentences often attempt to say what can only be shown by the ordinary use of language.⁹² And this they do surreptitiously and dishonestly.

Metaphysics misconstrues conventions and forms of representation expressed by our socially- and materially-conditioned use of language, but in a form that makes the 'truths' it seems to uncover appear Super-empirical and 'necessary', unlike ordinary mundane truths associated with everyday practice, or even genuine science. Empirical propositions hold open two possibilities: truth or falsehood. Metaphysical sentences, while purporting to be empirical, close one of these down. In doing that, they end up denying for themselves any sense whatsoever; they collapse into incoherence as non-sensical strings of words.⁹³

Despite appearances to the contrary, the complete rejection of Metaphysics outlined here does not draw an a priori limit to the search for knowledge -- it merely reminds us that truths about nature cannot be stated by misusing language. Moreover, they can't be formulated in ways that make supporting evidence irrelevant.

Since metaphysical theses do not present genuine empirical possibilities, their repudiation and subsequent eradication cannot adversely affect the scientific investigation of the world, nor interfere with any attempt to change it.

Metaphysical theses do not represent profound, ambitious or risky conjectures that merit our attention or respect. They contain nothing but empty phrases -- they are indeed "houses of cards" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) --, which, at best, express self-important confusion, at worst, a ruling-class view of reality. [More on this in Parts Two and Three of this Essay.]

Metaphysical pseudo-propositions violate the rules governing the formation of comprehensible empirical sentences by undermining the semantic possibilities they hold out. In addition, they misuse ordinary words while pretending to extend, alter or sharpen their meaning. Allegedly providing insight into the "essential" structure of reality, metaphysical and DM-theses attempt to sanction the derivation of substantive truths about the world from thought or words alone. They thus possess an entirely undeserved caché, which arises from their chameleonic outer facade: they resemble ordinary empirical propositions, pretending to inform us of 'necessary' features of reality. But that only conceals the fact that this reduces them to non-sensicality.

As should seem clear, these deflationary conclusions rule out the possibility of any future Metaphysics (including the fourth-rate version called "Materialist Dialectics"): this approach to knowledge thus ceases to be a viable option.

This does not mean that if we were cleverer than we now are, we would be able to ascertain such Super-truths --, or even that a mega-intelligent being in a 'parallel universe' could uncover metaphysical profundities which presently lie beyond our grasp. There is nothing there (which Metaphysics pretends to find) for us to be ignorant of so that we (or anyone else) might go in search of it. The language that metaphysicians/DM-theorists themselves use rules this out as a viable option from the get-go -- it presents us with no possibilities, any more than the supposition that there is or might be off-side in chess, or LBW in football/soccer. The search for metaphysical 'truth' is thus analogous to a search for a goal in tennis, or a free kick in snooker. We should therefore treat the search for such 'truths' as we would a proposed expedition to find the Jabberwocky in your back pocket.^93a

The repudiation of Metaphysics in fact opens up the conceptual space for science to flourish. In this way, scientists are free to formulate theories that possess true or false empirical implications. A fortiori, such truths would not depend solely on the meanings of words, but on the way the universe happens to be. This would not, and could not, be the case if science were based on Metaphysics -- for, in such an eventuality, scientific truth would be depend solely on the meaning of words, not on the nature of the world.

Hence, to paraphrase Kant: it is necessary to destroy Metaphysics (and DM) in order to make science possible.⁹⁴

01. Much of the background to this Essay can be found in Wittgenstein's work, most usefully outlined in Harrison (1979), and Hanna and Harrison (2004). See also, Baker and Hacker (1984, 1988, 2005a). Indeed, much of what I have to say here coincides with the anti-metaphysical views found in Rorty (1980). I distance myself, however, from Rorty's anti-Realism, his attempt to establish his own 'metaphysics of mind', and his equation of Philosophy with some sort of literary criticism.*

1. Some might take exception to my use of "metaphysical" to describe such sentences. If so, they can substitute the words "dogmatic", "essentialist" or "necessitarian" for "metaphysical" in phrases like "metaphysical thesis", used throughout this Essay. That done, not much will be altered by this terminological segue. It's the logical status of such sentences which is important, not what we call them. [More on this below.]

Here are a few relevant quotations from Engels and Lenin about motion and matter. First, Lenin quoting Engels:

"In full conformity with this materialist philosophy of Marx's, and expounding it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring (read by Marx in the manuscript): 'The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved...by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science....' 'Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be....'" [Lenin (1914), p.8. Bold emphasis added.]

"[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.]

"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.]

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transferred. When motion is transferred from one body to another, it may be regarded, in so far as it transfers itself, is active, as the cause of motion, in so far as the latter is transferred, is passive. We call this active motion force, and the passive, the manifestation of force. Hence it is as clear as daylight that a force is as great as its manifestation, because in fact the same motion takes place in both.

"A motionless state of matter is therefore one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas...." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"Motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right to thinking." [Engels (1954), p.69. Bold emphasis added.]

Nevertheless, as we shall see in Essay Thirteen Part One, even though for both of the above dialecticians motion and matter are inseparable, Lenin's other defining criteria for materiality do not actually rule out the existence of motionless matter.

Anyway, as these passages show, Lenin characterised matter in a rather odd way: i.e., as that which exists "objectively" outside, and independently of the mind, quoting Engels approvingly that motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter (as we have seen).

But, if all motion is relative to a given reference frame, then it is entirely possible to depict certain bodies of matter as motionless with respect to some frame or other. The contrary view may only to be maintained if space is held to be Absolute. That condition aside, this would mean that motion is reference frame-sensitive. If it can disappear when we change reference frame, motion cannot be the mode of the existence of matter, as Lenin and Engels supposed. In which case, it's more appropriate to depict (this way of characterising) motion as a form of representation and, as such, to regard it as convention-sensitive.

"Form of representation" will be explained more fully Essay Thirteen Part Two, however, this notion is connected with the following these thought's of Wittgenstein's:

"Newtonian mechanics, for example, imposes a unified form on the description of the world. Let us imagine a white surface with irregular black spots on it. We then say that whatever kind of picture these make, I can always approximate as closely as I wish to the description of it by covering the surface with a sufficiently fine square mesh, and then saying of every square whether it is black or white. In this way I shall have imposed a unified form on the description of the surface. The form is optional, since I could have achieved the same result by using a net with a triangular or hexagonal mesh. Possibly the use of a triangular mesh would have made the description simpler: that is to say, it might be that we could describe the surface more accurately with a coarse triangular mesh than with a fine square mesh (or conversely), and so on. The different nets correspond to different systems for describing the world. Mechanics determines one form of description of the world by saying that all propositions used in the description of the world must be obtained in a given way from a given set of propositions -- the axioms of mechanics. It thus supplies the bricks for building the edifice of science, and it says, 'Any building that you want to erect, whatever it may be, must somehow be constructed with these bricks, and with these alone.'

"And now we can see the relative position of logic and mechanics. (The net might also consist of more than one kind of mesh: e.g. we could use both triangles and hexagons.) The possibility of describing a picture like the one mentioned above with a net of a given form tells us nothing about the picture. (For that is true of all such pictures.) But what does characterize the picture is that it can be described completely by a particular net with a particular size of mesh.

"Similarly the possibility of describing the world by means of Newtonian mechanics tells us nothing about the world: but what does tell us something about it is the precise way in which it is possible to describe it by these means. We are also told something about the world by the fact that it can be described more simply with one system of mechanics than with another." [Wittgenstein (1972), 6.341-6.342; pp.137-39.]

Of course, a form of representation is much more involved than this passage might suggest (for instance, it leaves out of account how one theory meshes with other theories and it seems to suggest that physics is an a-historical, non-social discipline). As note above, I will say more about this in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

Added October 2011: A recent example of the use of just such a form of representation will assist the reader understand this phrase a little more. In late September 2011 the news media were full of stories about an experiment that seemed to show that a beam of neutrinos had exceeded the speed of light. Here's how the New Scientist handled the story (the relevant parts of the form of representation being used here has been highlighted in bold):

"Subatomic particles have broken the universe's fundamental speed limit, or so it was reported last week. The speed of light is the ultimate limit on travel in the universe, and the basis for Einstein's special theory of relativity, so if the finding stands up to scrutiny, does it spell the end for physics as we know it? The reality is less simplistic and far more interesting.

"'People were saying this means Einstein is wrong,' says physicist Heinrich Päs of the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany. 'But that's not really correct.'

"Instead, the result could be the first evidence for a reality built out of extra dimensions. Future historians of science may regard it not as the moment we abandoned Einstein and broke physics, but rather as the point at which our view of space vastly expanded, from three dimensions to four, or more.

"'This may be a physics revolution,' says Thomas Weiler at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who has devised theories built on extra dimensions. 'The famous words 'paradigm shift' are used too often and tritely, but they might be relevant.'

"The subatomic particles -- neutrinos -- seem to have zipped faster than light from CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, to the OPERA detector at the Gran Sasso lab near L'Aquila, Italy. It's a conceptually simple result: neutrinos making the 730-kilometre journey arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than they would have if they were travelling at light speed. And it relies on three seemingly simple measurements, says Dario Autiero of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyon, France, a member of the OPERA collaboration: the distance between the labs, the time the neutrinos left CERN, and the time they arrived at Gran Sasso.

"But actually measuring those times and distances to the accuracy needed to detect nanosecond differences is no easy task. The OPERA collaboration spent three years chasing down every source of error they could imagine...before Autiero made the result public in a seminar at CERN on 23 September.

"Physicists grilled Autiero for an hour after his talk to ensure the team had considered details like the curvature of the Earth, the tidal effects of the moon and the general relativistic effects of having two clocks at different heights (gravity slows time so a clock closer to Earth's surface runs a tiny bit slower).

"They were impressed. 'I want to congratulate you on this extremely beautiful experiment,' said Nobel laureate Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after Autiero's talk. 'The experiment is very carefully done, and the systematic error carefully checked.'

"Most physicists still expect some sort of experimental error to crop up and explain the anomaly, mainly because it contravenes the incredibly successful law of special relativity which holds that the speed of light is a constant that no object can exceed. The theory also leads to the famous equation E = mc².

"Hotly anticipated are results from other neutrino detectors, including T2K in Japan and MINOS at Fermilab in Illinois, which will run similar experiments and confirm the results or rule them out (see 'Fermilab stops hunting Higgs, starts neutrino quest').

"In 2007, the MINOS experiment searched for faster-than-light neutrinos but didn't see anything statistically significant. The team plans to reanalyse its data and upgrade the detector's stopwatch. 'These are the kind of things that we have to follow through, and make sure that our prejudices don't get in the way of discovering something truly fantastic,' says Stephen Parke of Fermilab.

"In the meantime, suggests Sandip Pakvasa of the University of Hawaii, let's suppose the OPERA result is real. If the experiment is tested and replicated and the only explanation is faster-than-light neutrinos, is E = mc² done for?

"Not necessarily. In 2006, Pakvasa, Päs and Weiler came up with a model that allows certain particles to break the cosmic speed limit while leaving special relativity intact. 'One can, if not rescue Einstein, at least leave him valid,' Weiler says.

"The trick is to send neutrinos on a shortcut through a fourth, thus-far-unobserved dimension of space, reducing the distance they have to travel. Then the neutrinos wouldn't have to outstrip light to reach their destination in the observed time.

"In such a universe, the particles and forces we are familiar with are anchored to a four-dimensional membrane, or 'brane', with three dimensions of space and one of time. Crucially, the brane floats in a higher dimensional space-time called the bulk, which we are normally completely oblivious to.

"The fantastic success of special relativity up to now, plus other cosmological observations, have led physicists to think that the brane might be flat, like a sheet of paper. Quantum fluctuations could make it ripple and roll like the surface of the ocean, Weiler says. Then, if neutrinos can break free of the brane, they might get from one point on it to another by dashing through the bulk, like a flying fish taking a shortcut between the waves...

"This model is attractive because it offers a way out of one of the biggest theoretical problems posed by the OPERA result: busting the apparent speed limit set by neutrinos detected pouring from a supernova in 1987.

"As stars explode in a supernova, most of their energy streams out as neutrinos. These particles hardly ever interact with matter (see 'Neutrinos: Everything you need to know'). That means they should escape the star almost immediately, while photons of light will take about 3 hours. In 1987, trillions of neutrinos arrived at Earth 3 hours before the dying star's light caught up. If the neutrinos were travelling as fast as those going from CERN to OPERA, they should have arrived in 1982.

"OPERA's neutrinos were about 1000 times as energetic as the supernova's neutrinos, though. And Pakvasa and colleagues' model calls for neutrinos with a specific energy that makes them prefer tunnelling through the bulk to travelling along the brane. If that energy is around 20 gigaelectronvolts -- and the team don't yet know that it is -- 'then you expect large effects in the OPERA region, and small effects at the supernova energies,' Pakvasa says. He and Päs are meeting next week to work out the details.

"The flying fish shortcut isn't available to all particles. In the language of string theory, a mathematical model some physicists hope will lead to a comprehensive 'theory of everything', most particles are represented by tiny vibrating strings whose ends are permanently stuck to the brane. One of the only exceptions is the theoretical 'sterile neutrino', represented by a closed loop of string. These are also the only type of neutrino thought capable of escaping the brane.

"Neutrinos are known to switch back and forth between their three observed types (electron, muon and tau neutrinos), and OPERA was originally designed to detect these shifts. In Pakvasa's model, the muon neutrinos produced at CERN could have transformed to sterile neutrinos mid-flight, made a short hop through the bulk, and then switched back to muon before reappearing on the brane.

"So if OPERA's results hold up, they could provide support for the existence of sterile neutrinos, extra dimensions and perhaps string theory. Such theories could also explain why gravity is so weak compared with the other fundamental forces. The theoretical particles that mediate gravity, known as gravitons, may also be closed loops of string that leak off into the bulk. 'If, in the end, nobody sees anything wrong and other people reproduce OPERA's results, then I think it's evidence for string theory, in that string theory is what makes extra dimensions credible in the first place,' Weiler says.

"Meanwhile, alternative theories are likely to abound. Weiler expects papers to appear in a matter of days or weeks.

"Even if relativity is pushed aside, Einstein has worked so well for so long that he will never really go away. At worst, relativity will turn out to work for most of the universe but not all, just as Newton's mechanics work until things get extremely large or small. 'The fact that Einstein has worked for 106 years means he'll always be there, either as the right answer or a low-energy effective theory,' Weiler says." [Grossman (2011), pp.7-9. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Also see the report in Socialist Review.]

The long-term success of Einstein's theory, and the fundamental nature of the speed of light, means that physicists search for other explanations of this anomaly while remaining committed to the TOR (and even if this implicates other theories, such as M-theory, for example). So, the TOR (combined or not with other theories) is used as a form of representation; that is, it is employed, like the square or the triangular mesh to which Wittgenstein alluded above, to make sense of and interpret experimental evidence (even if the latter might seem to refute the theory, so that it no longer appears to do so). This therefore also sanctions certain inferences as 'legitimate', others as 'illegitimate'. in this way, too, scientists police their own discipline (aka "peer review").

As the article above suggests, Thomas Kuhn's "paradigms" are a close match (and more thoroughly worked out, too; on this, see Sharrock and Reid (2002)). At most, therefore, the physicists mentioned above are simply 'tweaking the mesh', as it were.

This topic is also connected with Wittgenstein's comments on "criteria" and "symptoms". [On that, see here.]

Cf., also, Glock (1996), pp.129-35. [Note: a "form of representation" is not the same as a form/mode of the existence of matter.]

Some might think that QM has shown this to be incorrect (in that it holds that all forms of matter are in ceaseless motion), but this is true only as a matter of theory -- there is no conceivable way that this supposed universal truth can be confirmed throughout nature, and for all of time. In that case, it has to be read into nature, or imposed on it metaphysically (or perhaps used once more as a "form of representation").

But, even if it could be confirmed, the depiction of motion as the "mode" of the existence of matter (rather than as a well-confirmed feature of matter) would still depend on space being Absolute. There is no conceivable observation, or body of observations, that could confirm the supposed fact that motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter. Indeed, as noted above, if a relevant reference frame is chosen, which was moving at the same relative velocity as any 'particle' it was tracking, that would render it motionless in that frame (even if the location of one or both of these was thereby indeterminate according to certain interpretations of QM).

And, even if such particles are viewed as probability waves (or the like), the specification of the above 'particle's' probable velocity (relative to some frame) could similarly mean it was zero.

It could be argued that this just shows that all bodies are in constant motion relative to one another, which is all that DM-theorists require. But, as was pointed out above, such motion is still reference-fame sensitive and hence it can't be the "mode" of the existence of matter, otherwise this would not be the case.

It would seem, therefore, that Lenin and Engels need space to be Absolute if their claim that motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter is to stand.

It could be objected once more that Lenin's views are not metaphysical. That objection might itself be based on Engels's own loose characterisation of Metaphysics:

"To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. 'His communication is "yea, yea; nay, nay"; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' [Matthew 5:37. -- Ed.] For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.

"At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees." [Engels (1976), p.26. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Given the above description, it could be argued that DM is not the least bit metaphysical.

However, Engels's depiction of Metaphysics would unfortunately rule out as non-metaphysical much of previous 'non-dialectical' philosophy. Even Plato would have admitted that things change (albeit if only with respect to appearances).

It could be objected that this is incorrect; only DM pictures things as fundamentally changeable, fundamentally Heraclitean, and only DM relates this to change through internal contradiction (etc.). Well, we have seen (here, here and here) that this is not really so; even in DM, some things stay the same until or unless a sufficient quantitative change induces a commensurate qualitative change in it -- namely, and at least including, all those "essences" that Hegel borrowed from Aristotle, which Engels also unwisely appropriated -- just as some things are 'relatively stable'.

In fact, Engels's view of Metaphysics is a crude version of Hegel's. As Houlgate points out:

"Metaphysics is characterised in the Encyclopedia first and foremost by the belief that the categories of thought constitute 'the fundamental determinations of things'....

"The method of metaphysical philosophy, Hegel maintains, involves attributing predicates to given subjects, in judgements. Moreover just as the subject-matter of metaphysics consists of distinct entities, so the qualities to be predicated of those entities are held to be valid by themselves.... Of any two opposing predicates, therefore, metaphysics assumes that one must be false if the other is true. Metaphysical philosophy is thus described by Hegel as 'either/or' thinking because it treats predicates or determinations of thought as mutually exclusive, 'as if each of the two terms in an anti-thesis...has an independent, isolated existence as something substantial and true by itself.' The world either has a beginning and end in time or it does not; matter is either infinitely divisible or it is not; man is either a rigidly determined being or he is not. In this mutual exclusivity, Hegel believes, lies the dogmatism of metaphysics. In spite of the fact that metaphysics deals with infinite objects, therefore, these objects are rendered finite by the employment of mutually exclusive, one-sided determinations -- 'categories the limits of which are believed to be permanently fixed, and not subject to any further negation.'" [Houlgate (2004), pp.100-01.]

But, as has been argued elsewhere at this site, this puts Hegel himself in something of a bind, for he certainly believed that metaphysics was this, but not that -- meaning that even he had to apply/assume the LEM to make his point.

Of course, it could be argued that the above observations are not "judgements" about the fundamental nature of things -- but then again, that objection itself must use the LEM to make its point, for it takes as granted that the above paragraph is saying this, but not that about the fundamental nature of things. Indeed, even Hegel's conclusions about the content of any metaphysical 'judgement' (that it says this, but not that) would require the deployment of the LEM. And we can go further, any 'leap' into 'speculative' thought to the effect that this or that, or whatever, has been 'negated', must implicate the LEM once more, for it will either be the case, or it will not, that for any randomly-selected dialectical 'negation', it will have taken place, or it will not. Naturally, this would imply that Hegel's thought (and that of anyone who agrees with him) -- that Hegel said this, but not that -- is no less metaphysical than anything Parmenides or Plato wrote or said.

The conventions of ordinary language (partially codified in the LEM, in this case) are not so easily side-stepped, even by a thinker of "genius".

Nevertheless, Hegel's ideas are plainly the source of Engels's own confusion (although, what Hegel had to say about metaphysics in the Preface to The Science of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999), pp.25-29.) agrees with much of what is said about it in this Essay!), just as they are the source of the slippery reasoning one encounters time and again in dialectical thought; that is, thought that allows dialecticians to ignore the contradictions and equivocations in their own theses, while pointing fingers at others for the very same alleged sins. [More on that here, and here.]

However, Cornforth (1950) contains two main arguments which were aimed at countering the standard view of Metaphysics outlined in this Essay:

1) Cornforth claims that the modern characterisation of Metaphysics derives from John Locke (p.94), when Cornforth himself had already pointed out that the term was in fact introduced by Aristotle (p.93). He makes this connection because wants to maintain that modern Philosophers reject Aristotle's search for the "essential nature of the real" (p.94), deliberately running-together the ideas of the Positivists he is attacking with those of all modern (non-Communist) Philosophers. This allows him to reject their interpretation of this word as if it were held by all such thinkers.

First of all, even when Cornforth was writing (1950), only a minority of Philosophers were Positivists, so this can't be a valid reason for rejecting the standard interpretation handed down from Aristotle. And it can't be a good reason (for present-day dialecticians) to reject the interpretation presented here, which in no way depends on Locke. [Although Cornforth is right when he says that Empiricism and Positivism are both metaphysical; but then so is DM.]

Second, even if every (non-communist) Philosopher on the planet in 1950 had been a Positivist, it's clear that they would have rejected Metaphysics because they would also, as Positivists, accept the traditional view of it, traced back to Aristotle, not Locke. Cornforth just asserts the idea that these Philosophers could trace their understanding of this word back to Locke, but he provides us with no evidence whatsoever that they did -- not even one citation! Anyone who reads the work of the Positivists, or even the Logical Positivists, will see that they are not just hung up on the nature of "substance" (which Cornforth focuses on simply because of what Locke had said about it), but all areas of traditional Metaphysics.

A good place to start here is Ayer (2001), which is representative of the simplistic wing of Logical Positivism; a more substantial version can be found in, say, Carnap (1950). [See also Carnap (1931).]

More reliable accounts of this area of Analytic Philosophy can be found in, for example: Copleston (2003b), Friedman (1999), Hacker (2000c), Hanfling (1981), Misak (1995), and Passmore (1966). See also Conant (2001).

"Such an attempt, however, to define 'metaphysics' in terms of its subject-matter, is hardly satisfactory. For in a sense all science, as well as philosophy, is concerned with the substance of things and with the nature of the world. If, then, to speak of the substance of things and the nature of the world is 'metaphysical', then science itself has a 'metaphysical' tendency." [Cornforth (1950), p.94. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

To be sure, metaphysical ideas have dominated much of science, but that is because "the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling-class". And yet, science has progressively distanced itself from the influence of metaphysics, especially in areas where an interface with material reality is paramount (in Chemistry, Geology, much of Biology, most of Physics, for instance, and, of course, technology). Why this is so will discussed in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

Even so, Cornforth's argument still depends on his unsupported claim that Metaphysics is as he says Positivists define it.

Anyway, Cornforth is disingenuous here, for DM itself goes way beyond modern science in seeking to pontificate, for example, about motion being "the mode of the existence of matter", or about the "essence of Being", or the "interpenetration of opposites", or the "negation of the negation". These dubious 'concepts' certainly fit the traditional interpretation of Metaphysics.

To be sure, the boundary between Metaphysics and Science might be hard to define, but that does not mean there is no difference between the two. There is a difference between night and day even though the boundary between the two is impossible to draw. [Again, I will say more about this in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

These appear to be the only two substantive arguments Cornforth offered in support of his rejection of the traditional interpretation of Metaphysics, and thus his adoption of the definition found in Hegel and Engels (pp.95-98) -- although, oddly enough, Cornforth does not mention from whom Engels pinched this notion. But, it's quite clear that all three had to change the meaning of "metaphysics" to make this fanciful story stick, in order to distinguish Metaphysics from DM (pp.98-101).

Be this as it may, I do not want to get hung up on a terminological point, so I recommend that anyone who objects to the usual definition of "metaphysics" (and its cognates) -- or even "traditional philosophy" -- used here, perhaps, preferring Engels's own characterisation, substitute the following:

"[T]he branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world."

This is a description of Metaphysics taken from Wikipedia, which I think is reasonably accurate, if a little brief. Even so, whatever this ancient intellectual pursuit is finally called, it is abundantly clear that DM-theorists attempt to do some of the above themselves --, i.e., they endeavour to "explain the ultimate nature of reality, being and the world" in their own idiosyncratic, dogmatic, sub-Hegelian manner.

It will also become apparent as this Essay unfolds that dialecticians in fact adopt the same approach to Philosophy as traditional metaphysicians: that is, they attempt to derive fundamental theses about reality from a handful of jargonised expressions, which are then imposed on nature and held true for all of space and time. [This was demonstrated in detail in Essay Two. Precisely how this con-trick works is, of course, the subject of this Essay.]

Nevertheless, the approach to Metaphysics adopted in this Essay is explained in more detail in Baker (2004b), and Rorty (1980). A useful (and traditional) account of the nature of Metaphysics can be found in Van Inwagen (1998).

2. Again, Essay Two revealed the many occasions where modal terminology was used by DM-theorists in place of more tentative or reasonable summaries of the available evidence.

"Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…." [Lenin (1921), pp.90. Bold emphases added.]

"As we already know that all things change, all things are 'in flux', it is certain that such an absolute state of rest cannot possibly exist. We must therefore reject a condition in which there is no 'contradiction between opposing and colliding forces' no disturbance of equilibrium, but only an absolute immutability…." [Bukharin (1925), p.73. Bold emphases added.]

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development...." [Mao (1961), pp.313. Bold emphasis added.]

"The negative electrical pole…cannot exist without the simultaneous presence of the positive electrical pole…. This 'unity of opposites' is therefore found in the core of all material things and events.

"Both attraction and repulsion are necessary properties of matter. Each attraction in one place is necessarily compensated for by a corresponding repulsion in another place…." [Conze (1944), pp.35-36. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]

"Nature cannot be unreasonable or reason contrary to nature. Everything that exists must have a necessary and sufficient reason for existence….

"The material base of this law lies in the actual interdependence of all things in their reciprocal interactions…. If everything that exists has a necessary and sufficient reason for existence, that means it had to come into being. It was pushed into existence and forced its way into existence by natural necessity…. Reality, rationality and necessity are intimately associated at all times….

"If everything actual is necessarily rational, this means that every item of the real world has a sufficient reason for existing and must find a rational explanation…." [Novack (1971), pp.78-80. Bold emphases added.]

"Positive is meaningless without negative. They are necessarily inseparable."

"This universal phenomenon of the unity of opposites is, in reality the motor-force of all motion and development in nature…. Movement which itself involves a contradiction, is only possible as a result of the conflicting tendencies and inner tensions which lie at the heart of all forms of matter." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.65-68. Bold emphases added.]

3. Naturally, this list is not meant to be an exhaustive compendium of typical sentences; the examples given were chosen to make a particular point about the connection between metaphysical sentences and what look like empirical propositions.

"Wittgenstein's ambitious claim is that it is constitutive of metaphysical theories and questions that their employment of terms is at odds with their explanations and that they use deviant rules along with the ordinary ones. As a result, traditional philosophers cannot coherently explain the meaning of their questions and theories. They are confronted with a trilemma: either their novel uses of terms remain unexplained (unintelligibility), or...[they use] incompatible rules (inconsistency), or their consistent employment of new concepts simply passes by the ordinary use -- including the standard use of technical terms -- and hence the concepts in terms of which the philosophical problems were phrased." [Glock (1996), pp.261-62.]

4. It could be objected that to acknowledge M9, say, as true does in fact involve some input from the material world.

Certainly, human beings have to exist in the physical world to be able to assert things like M9, even if only to learn what the relevant words mean. But, as we will see later, even though ordinary-looking words are used in such sentences, they (or rather these new expressions, or terms used in radically new ways) cannot form part of the vocabulary that features in material discourse, as Glock pointed out in the previous Note.

Notwithstanding this, the fact remains that, unlike M6, it is not possible to establish the truth-status of M9 by comparing it with reality.

In response, it could be pointed out that M9 is general whereas M6 is particular. That is undeniable, but not relevant. Consider another general, but no less empirical proposition:

E1: All badgers living within a five mile radius of the centre of Luton on July 25th 2007 have eaten hazel nuts at least once that day.

Now, you can reflect on E1 until the cows evolve, but that will still fail to tell you whether or not it is true. Even though E1 might never be fully confirmed (although it would not be impossible to do so if acted upon promptly, with enough resources devoted to the task -- it might in fact prove easier to falsify), observation alone would be accepted as relevant to that end. Understanding E1 in fact tells us what to look for, what will confirm it, even if we never succeed in doing so.

Finally, it could be objected that M9 (and M1a) are in fact summaries of the evidence we possess to date. This objection has already been fielded in Note Two and more fully in Essay Two. [See also here.]

5. As should seem obvious, M9 is on this list not just because of its connection with M1a and with other DM-theses, but because dialecticians appear to regard it as an a priori truth which they can assert dogmatically --, or rather, the language they use makes it difficult to defend them from just such an accusation.

However, even though M9 might look self-evident to DM-theorists, not everyone would agree. Up until relatively recently (i.e., before, say, 1600), the idea that matter was naturally motionless (or, rather, the belief that effort had to be expended in order to put material bodies into motion and keep them moving) was uncontroversial. Indeed, this was a cornerstone of Aristotelian Physics, supported by countless observations. It took a conceptual revolution to persuade post-Renaissance theorists to accept the idea that motion is a 'natural' state of material bodies. Of course, that change, too, was motivated by NeoPlatonic and Hermetic ideas popular in Europe at the time, and was not based on observation either.

[References supporting these observations can be found here. The original idea that matter is self-moving can be found in Plato; on that see here.]

We have also seen -- here and here -- that the thesis that matter is self-moving would undo much of Newtonian mechanics, and was itself based on the idea that nature is in effect a Cosmic Egg.

The point is, of course, that even though DM-theorists themselves believe that matter is always in motion, it is possible to think otherwise.

Indeed, as noted above, if a suitable reference frame is chosen, a moving body can be regarded as stationary. Thus, not only is matter without motion 'thinkable', most people who have thought about this topic have found little difficulty in so thinking; in fact, the idea it is now theoretically respectable. Anyone who doubts this should check this and this out, and doubt no more.

5a0. If this were not the case, then nothing determinate will have been proposed (i.e., put forward for consideration) and sentences like M6 would fail even to be propositions.

Conversely, it is possible to understand M6 without knowing which of these is in fact the case:

But, if neither is the case, or could be the case, M6 would fail to be a proposition.

Of course, to those of a 'dialectical' frame of mind, the above application of the LEM is anathema, and a sure sign of 'formal thinking'. In response, it's worth pointing out that this clichéd DM-objection is self-destructing, since it too relies on the LEM, because it must be the case that any application of the LEM is either an application of the LEM or it isn't -- it can't be both. Indeed, an example of 'formal thought' is either an example of 'formal thought', or it isn't -- it can't be both. Hence, any DM-fan brave enough to attack the LEM will have to use it in order to do so, rendering that attack null and void.

[Incidentally, have used rather pedantic phrases like "It is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or whether it is false" throughout this Essay. That is because there is a world of difference between "It is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or false" and "It is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or whether it is false". As will be explained later, it's part of the rules we have for the application of words like "empirical" and "factual" that an empirical proposition is either true or false (but not that we know whether it is true or know whether it is false).]

5a. Some might object that DM-theorists do in fact supply evidence to support this thesis.

However, this doctrine follows from the idea that motion is the "mode of the existence of matter", hence, for dialecticians these two 'concepts' can no more be separated than, say, "number" and "six" or "nine" can.

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted….

"A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Italic emphasis in the original.]

While evidence can and has been be used to show that matter moves, no amount of evidence can show that motion is the "mode of the existence of matter", or that motion without matter is "unthinkable" --, that is, that matter cannot exist unless it is moving in some way, or that we can't even think about it in this way.

And that is what makes this evidential charade the fraud it is. What little evidence DM-theorists bother to provide is used solely illustratively; i.e., it is used not to establish the truth of a thesis, merely to make it seem clearer, more plausible, or perhaps even more 'scientific' to novices. [We saw that this was the case in Essay Seven, where this approach to knowledge was labelled "Mickey Mouse Science".] And that observation is itself confirmed by the fact that this particular thesis is based on ideas culled from Hegel, who arrived at his conclusions before too much evidence was available --, and they ultimately derived from Heraclitus, who advanced such claims before there was hardly any scientific data at all.

All DM-theses possess impressive a priori and dogmatic pedigrees like this, so it's little use dialecticians pretending that this doctrine was originally motivated by evidence, or even a summary of the evidence. [More on that here, in the next few Parts of Essay Twelve (when they are published), and in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here).]

5b. In fact, it's hard to imagine any experiments that could be carried out to confirm such hyper-bold theses.

Unfortunately for dialecticians, this immediately divorces such 'truths' from a materialist account of nature. But, if the truth or the falsehood of theses like this is dependent on thought alone, how could they be anything other than Ideal?

"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.]

Worse, if these are indeed non-materialist theses, how can they be used to help change the world?

Well, as we saw in Essay Nine Part Two, this is not strictly true; they can be used, but only negatively or in ways that benefit the ruling-class, heaping ordure and confusion on Marxism.

Small wonder then that DM-theses have presided over 150 years of almost total failure. [More on that in Essay Ten Part One.]

To be sure, some of these pronouncements are the result of a series of long (or short) arguments aimed at 'deriving' them from other a priori theses, 'thought experiments, and/or definitions, but their 'truth' is not based on evidence but on what their constituent words/concepts (and those of their supporting theses) seem to mean. They are taken to be universally/conceptually true, and are thus in need of no evidential support.

6a. Again, it could be objected that Lenin wrote a whole section of MEC supporting this claim of his. Hence, the allegations advanced in this Essay are baseless.

Unfortunately, Lenin devoted most of the aforementioned section to picking a fight with various Idealists, which makes much of what he had to say irrelevant to the concerns addressed in this present Essay (and, indeed, to the above objection!).

However, in order to consider every conceivable avenue open to DM-fans to defend Lenin (and then block them), it's important to see whether or not his arguments hold together even in their own terms.

Lenin's opening point in MEC (I am ignoring the preamble on pp.318-19, since it seems to add nothing substantial) is this:

"Let us imagine a consistent idealist who holds that the entire world is his sensation, his idea, etc. (if we take 'nobody's' sensation or idea, this changes only the variety of philosophical idealism but not its essence). The idealist would not even think of denying that the world is motion, i.e., the motion of his thoughts, ideas, sensations. The question as to what moves, the idealist will reject and regard as absurd: what is taking place is a change of his sensations, his ideas come and go, and nothing more. Outside him there is nothing. 'It moves' -- and that is all. It is impossible to conceive a more 'economical' way of thinking. And no proofs, syllogisms, or definitions are capable of refuting the solipsist if he consistently adheres to his view." [Lenin (1972), pp.319-20. In the above, and in what follows, the quotation marks have been altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

As we will see in Essay Thirteen Part One, Lenin's main tactic when confronting ideas he does not like is to caricature them --, the above being just another example. "The entire world is his sensation"?! I can think of no Idealist of note who has ever argued this. Even so, the force of Lenin's argument depends on his running-together two senses of "move". This allows him to insinuate that any idealist who claims that "the world is motion" must somehow be contradicting herself, since her thoughts (and hence her world, presumably) "move". Now, even if we allow Lenin to get away with this conflation, how this shows that "motion without matter is unthinkable" is still unclear.

It could be argued in defence of Lenin that for an idealist, even thinking about matter involves motion, namely the motion of their own thoughts. In that case, motion without matter is indeed unthinkable. But, and once again, even if we accept Lenin's equivocation between these two senses of "move", he in fact declared that:

In that case, if an idealist thinks of something non-material (such as 'god'), and his/her thought 'moves' in order to do this, then motion without matter is thinkable after all! [Whether 'god' is material or not will be discussed in Essay Thirteen Part One, but it's difficult to think of a single DM-fan who would argue that 'he' is.] Moreover, a consistent Idealist (of the sort Lenin is caricaturing) would conclude that while her ideas might move this does not implicate the motion of matter, since she denies there is such a thing as matter.

Nevertheless, what devastating dialectical argument does Lenin deploy in order to cast even this straw doctrine into oblivion? Wonder no more:

"The fundamental distinction between the materialist and the adherent of idealist philosophy consists in the fact that the materialist regards sensation, perception, idea, and the mind of man generally, as an image of objective reality. The world is the movement of this objective reality reflected by our consciousness. To the movement of ideas, perceptions, etc., there corresponds the movement of matter outside me. The concept matter expresses nothing more than the objective reality which is given us in sensation. Therefore, to divorce motion from matter is equivalent to divorcing thought from objective reality, or to divorcing my sensations from the external world -- in a word, it is to go over to idealism. The trick which is usually performed in denying matter, and in assuming motion without matter, consists in ignoring the relation of matter to thought. The question is presented as though this relation did not exist, but in reality it is introduced surreptitiously; at the beginning of the argument it remains unexpressed, but subsequently crops up more or less imperceptibly.

"Matter has disappeared, they tell us, wishing from this to draw epistemological conclusions. But has thought remained? -- we ask. If not, if with the disappearance of matter thought has also disappeared, if with the disappearance of the brain and nervous system ideas and sensations, too, have disappeared -- then it follows that everything has disappeared. And your argument has disappeared as a sample of 'thought' (or lack of thought)! But if it has remained -- if it is assumed that with the disappearance of matter, thought (idea, sensation, etc.) does not disappear, then you have surreptitiously gone over to the standpoint of philosophical idealism. And this always happens with people who wish, for 'economy's sake,' to conceive of motion without matter, for tacitly, by the very fact that they continue to argue, they are acknowledging the existence of thought after the disappearance of matter. This means that a very simple, or a very complex philosophical idealism is taken as a basis; a very simple one, if it is a case of frank solipsism (I exist, and the world is only my sensation); a very complex one, if instead of the thought, ideas and sensations of a living person, a dead abstraction is posited, that is, nobody's thought, nobody's idea, nobody's sensation, but thought in general (the Absolute Idea, the Universal Will, etc.), sensation as an indeterminate 'element,' the 'psychical,' which is substituted for the whole of physical nature, etc., etc. Thousands of shades of varieties of philosophical idealism are possible and it is always possible to create a thousand and first shade; and to the author of this thousand and first little system (empirio-monism, for example) what distinguishes it from the rest may appear to be momentous. From the standpoint of materialism, however, the distinction is absolutely unessential. What is essential is the point of departure. What is essential is that the attempt to think of motion without matter smuggles in thought divorced from matter -- and that is philosophical idealism." [Ibid., pp.320-21. Emphases in the original.]

This passage more than most reveals Lenin's philosophical naivety, if not incompetence -- this will be discussed in detail in Essay Thirteen Part One. However, for present purposes, we need only note that all that the above 'argument' demonstrates is that Lenin based his own claims on the fact that he had certain 'images' of something or other, and that the latter must therefore exist. This he supported with a dubious claim that whatever is reflected in the mind must exist in the external world. [However, how he knew that this was also true for other minds (which can't be minds -- since they exist outside his own mind, which, by his own criterion, means they must be material!) he kept to himself.]

But, even if we are recklessly charitable, the very most that this 'argument' could conceivably establish is that Lenin's images correspond to his own image of reality, since all he has are images of reality with which to compare his images. He has no way of comparing his images with anything which is not also an image. How could he jump 'out of his own head' to access the world 'directly'?

An appeal to practice here would be to no avail either, since, if Lenin were right, all he would have are images of practice!

Nevertheless, at most, all the above passage shows is that materialists (according to Lenin's definition of them) have a different view of reality from Idealists, not that Idealists cannot think about motion without. Indeed, he all but admits that they can do this:

"And this always happens with people who wish, for 'economy's sake,' to conceive of motion without matter...." [Ibid.]

"We thus see that scientists who were prepared to grant that motion is conceivable without matter were to be encountered forty years ago too, and that 'on this point' Dietzgen declared them to be seers of ghosts. What, then, is the connection between philosophical idealism and the divorce of matter from motion, the separation of substance from force? Is it not 'more economical,' indeed, to conceive motion without matter?" [Ibid., p.319. Bold emphasis added.]

"What is essential is that the attempt to think of motion without matter smuggles in thought divorced from matter -- and that is philosophical idealism." [Ibid., p.321.]

"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imagined, and that the latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of knowledge." [Ibid., p.69. Bold emphasis added.]

"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it 'images.'" [Ibid., p.279. Bold emphasis added.]

Now, the inference that images imply the existence of the thing imaged is manifestly unsound. If this were the case, we would have to start believing in the real existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, for example. [On this, see below, here, and the extended discussion here.]

But, even if Lenin were right, how does any of this show that motion without matter is inconceivable/unthinkable? Indeed, not only is motion without matter conceivable, it is actual. Several examples of this everyday phenomenon will be given later in this Essay.

Again, at the very best, the most that this argument could establish is that the idea of motion and the idea of matter are inseparable, or that the idea of motion without the idea of matter is unthinkable (but, only for 'materialists' defined in Lenin's rather odd way). Lenin has no way of breaking out of this Idealist circle.

However, Lenin has another argument up the image of his sleeve. After a detour that took him into a consideration of Bogdanov's ideas, he declared:

"Ostwald's answer, which so pleased Bogdanov in 1899, is plain sophistry. Must our judgments necessarily consist of electrons and ether? -- one might retort to Ostwald. As a matter of fact, the mental elimination from 'nature' of matter as the 'subject' only implies the tacit admission into philosophy of thought as the 'subject' (i.e., as the primary, the starting point, independent of matter). Not the subject, but the objective source of sensation is eliminated, and sensation becomes the 'subject,' i.e., philosophy becomes Berkeleian, no matter in what trappings the word 'sensation' is afterwards decked. Ostwald endeavoured to avoid this inevitable philosophical alternative (materialism or idealism) by an indefinite use of the word 'energy,' but this very endeavour only once again goes to prove the futility of such artifices. If energy is motion, you have only shifted the difficulty from the subject to the predicate, you have only changed the question, does matter move? into the question, is energy material? Does the transformation of energy take place outside my mind, independently of man and mankind, or are these only ideas, symbols, conventional signs, and so forth? And this question proved fatal to the 'energeticist' philosophy, that attempt [sic] to disguise old epistemological errors by a 'new' terminology." [Ibid., p.324.]

This amounts to arguing against the energeticist (i.e., someone who claims that matter does not exist, or that matter is simply energy) that he/she has merely:

"shifted the difficulty from the subject to the predicate, you have only changed the question, does matter move? into the question, is energy material?" [Ibid.]

Well, if Lenin's words alone were sufficient, they would be enough to settle the issue. Unfortunately, they aren't. So, what argument does he offer in support of his idiosyncratic 'translation' of "Does matter move?" into "Is energy material?" Apparently none at all -- or, none other than his idiosyncratic re-definition of matter (which he repeats endlessly throughout MEC, without once trying to justify it):

"[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.]

So, Lenin's only justification seems to be that to deny or eject what he says is to brand oneself an Idealist. However, since Lenin failed to show that his own ideas (about reality reflected in the mind, etc.) do not collapse into Idealism themselves, this is no help at all.

Exactly how Lenin's ideas collapse into Idealism will be examined at length in Essay Thirteen Part One, but the argument will revolve around his only apparent argument for the existence of the external world: that an image implies the existence of the thing imaged!

"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it 'images.'" [Ibid., p.279.]

But, as pointed out above, all that Lenin had to go on here was his own image of a mirror -- assuming that this is what lay behind his use of this ancient Hermetic metaphor. This is his only guide in the use of that trope. Hence, the very most this argument could establish is that images reflect other images!

Now, it could be argued that mirrors actually reflect the images of objects. This is undeniable; but that can only be established if Lenin's hopeless epistemology is abandoned. That is because Lenin has yet to show that there are real mirrors, as opposed to the images of mirrors. Or that these images of mirrors do not merely reflect images of images of 'objects'. His version of the traditional representative theory of knowledge, wherein we represent the world to ourselves (as 'ideas', 'concepts' or even 'images') in our heads, undercuts all talk of an 'objective' world independent of our knowledge of it, as was abundantly clear to 18^th century Idealists (like Berkeley). Now Lenin might try to belittle, deny or repudiate that conclusion, as well as kick up an image of a cloud of dust (by the use of repetitive bluster) to hide the fact that his argument does not work, but, to all but true believers, it's plain that his 'theory' would transform the world into mere images.

And, as we will see below, it's no use Lenin, or one of his epigones, appealing to the 'commonsense' ideas of ordinary folk to bail him out.

Indeed, to address Lenin's actual inference: images do not imply the existence of anything, since they are 'uninterpreted inner objects of cognition' (to use traditional jargon, just for now). And an act of interpretation (i.e., one that re-configures such objects as the images of this, or of that) would have nothing but other images (interpreted or not) to assist it to that end. [And, as we will see in Essay Ten, practice cannot turn an image into something it is not.]

In addition, we have already seen that Lenin's approach to knowledge implies extreme scepticism. Hence, far from beginning with the "naive beliefs" of ordinary folk, his theory obliterates them!

The rest of Lenin's 'argument' in this section of MEC adds little to the above (as will become apparent in Essay Thirteen Part One); in that case, Lenin failed to demonstrate by argument or evidence that motion without matter is "unthinkable".

7. Of course, it's worth adding here that metaphysical beliefs are not set in concrete; they change and develop in line with the rise and fall of each Mode of Production, and in accord with the ideology of each ruling elite -- or that of their "prize fighters" (to quote Marx). [On this, see Shaw (1989).]

To be sure, the very first Greek Philosophers did not use the word "metaphysics"; this term was introduced much later, by Aristotle. Nevertheless, the various world-views on which Super-knowledge like this feeds certainly dates back (in the 'West') at least to Anaximander and Anaximenes. In the 'East', of course, it stretches even further back. [More on this in Note I above, and in Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve.]

8. Indeed, these days 'necessary truths' are defined (extensionally) as true in every possible world. [Kirkham (1992).] This idea will be examined elsewhere.*

However, this is not to suggest that all metaphysicians attached such modal qualifications to the word "truth" -- certainly not in pre-Leibnizian times. However, the use of the phrase "necessary truth" in these Essays (in order to highlight the confusion that is alleged to exist between necessary and contingent truths) is merely a handy way of underlining a common thread running through the entire history of Metaphysics.

Naturally, some sensitivity needs to be shown when analysing the metaphysical ideas of thinkers who wrote before this phrase entered philosophical currency. Having said that, it is the use to which a theorist puts his/her ideas that is important. If that is no different from the use of genuinely necessary truths (as they have been conceived more recently), no serious distortion of the original ideas need result.

On this, see the extended comments in "Grammar and Necessity", in Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.263-347. Much of what these two authors say is consistent with the view adopted here (but their book should be read in the light of other references given below, particularly the work of David Bloor and Martin Kusch). Nevertheless, it greatly extends and amplifies the comments made in this Essay on this.

9. The ease with which all metaphysicians perform this trick is not the only clue we have as to the real nature of the hyper-bold theses these theorists conjure out of less than thin air. A detailed consideration of different interpretations of the words used -- coupled with a demonstration that there are other ways of viewing such phrases, which are equally, if not more, plausible -- would show that metaphysical theses depend on little other than a grim determination to use language in odd ways.

Hence, it's possible to show that these 'Super-truths' decay into incoherence because (1) they undermine key semantic features of discourse, and (2) they are based on a highly specialised, severely limited, seriously distorted and implausible use of language. In which case, they aren't reflections of the 'necessary' or 'essential' features of the world. Far from depicting the 'logical or essential form of the world', they either express or depend on identifiable ruling-class assumptions about the sort of universe which is conducive to the maintenance of their power and the contemporaneous relations of exploitation.

That contention will be substantiated in the next two Parts of Essay Twelve; the other allegations will be substantiated in the rest of this Essay.

9a. Some might object at this point, and counter-claim that this emphasis on evidence, confirmation and proof shows that the present author is indeed a positivist, or at least an empiricist. Neither of these is the case. The present author is merely taking DM-theorists at their word:

"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.]

"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." [Engels (1954), p.62. Bold emphasis alone 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." [Ibid., p.47. Bold emphases alone 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), Volume 25, p.597. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

"The dialectic does not liberate the investigator from painstaking study of the facts, quite the contrary: it requires it." [Trotsky (1986), p.92. Bold emphasis added]

"Dialectics and materialism are the basic elements in the Marxist cognition of the world. But this does not mean at all that they can be applied to any sphere of knowledge, like an ever ready master key. Dialectics cannot be imposed on facts; it has to be deduced from facts, from their nature and development…." [Trotsky (1973), p.233. Bold emphasis added.]

"Whenever any Marxist attempted to transmute the theory of Marx into a universal master key and ignore all other spheres of learning, Vladimir Ilyich would rebuke him with the expressive phrase 'Komchvanstvo' ('communist swagger')." [Ibid., p.221.]

"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 emphases 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 emphases added.]

"[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. Bold emphasis added.]

"'[The dialectic is not a] magic master key for all questions.' 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. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

"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." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.42, 46-47. Bold emphases added.]

10. These allegations will also be substantiated in later parts of Essay Twelve, and in Essay Fourteen, Part One (summary here).

However, it is important to note the following caveat added to Essay Nine Part One:

Having said that, it needs stressing up-front that it is not being maintained here that leading revolutionaries adopted ruling-class ideas knowingly, duplicitously or willingly. What is being alleged is that these comrades did this unwittingly. Again, exactly how and why this happened will be revealed in Part Two.

11. The word "cannot" here is not meant to represent a physical limit; it expresses the fact that metaphysical theses soon descend into non-sense, and cannot fail to do this since they attempt to transcend the expressive power of language. More on this later.

11a0. It's worth pointing out that "non-sense" is not the same as "nonsense". The latter word has various meanings varying from the patently false (such as "Karl Marx was a shape-shifting lizard") to plain gibberish (such as "783&£$750 ow2jmn 34y4&$ 6y3n3& 8FT34n").

"Non-sense" relates to indicative sentences that turn out to be incapable of expressing a sense no matter what we try to do with them ("sense" is explained below) -- that is, they are incapable of being true and they are incapable of being false. In such cases, therefore, the indicative/fact-stating mood has plainly been mis-used and/or mis-applied. So, when sentences like these are employed to state fundamental truths about reality, they seriously misfire since they can't possibly do this. [Later sections of this Essay will explain why that is so.]

Hence, non-sensical sentences aren't patently false, nor are they plain gibberish.

Finally, the word "sense" is being used in the following way: it expresses what we understand to be the case for the proposition in question to be true or what we understand to be the case for the proposition in question to be false, even if we do not know whether it is actually true or actually false.

T1: Tony Blair owns a copy of Das Kapital.

For example, everyone (who knows English, who knows who Tony Blair and what Das Kapital are) will understand T1 upon hearing or reading it. They grasp its sense --, that is, they understand what the world would have to be like for it to be true and what the world would have to be like for it to be false.

More importantly, the same situation, if it obtains, will make T1 true as it will make T1 false, if it does not obtain. [The significance of that comment will become clearer later on.]

These conditions are integral to our capacity to understand empirical propositions before we know whether they are true or before we know whether they are false. Indeed, they help explain why we know what to look for (or to expect) in order to show such propositions are true, or in order to show they are false -- even if we never succeed, or even wish to succeed, in doing either.

11a. Some might try to defend Lenin by claiming this is just an hyperbole. Hence, it could be maintained that Lenin did not think that the words "motion without matter" were literally unthinkable, merely that it made no sense to suppose there could be motion without matter. It could even be maintained that the wording of Lenin's 'controversial' sentence merely meant he was rejecting the immobility of matter out of hand, as a ridiculous notion -- or so the case for the defence might go.

If so, the section in MEC entitled "Is Motion Without Matter Conceivable?" was clearly misnamed. Indeed, that is the very section in which M1 occurs; Lenin himself italicised the word "unthinkable":

M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]

"The fact that philosophical idealism is attempting to make use of the new physics, or that idealist conclusions are being drawn from the latter, is due not to the discovery of new kinds of substance and force, of matter and motion, but to the fact that an attempt is being made to conceive motion without matter. And it is the essence of this attempt which our Machians fail to examine. They were unwilling to take account of Engels' statement that 'motion without matter is unthinkable.' J. Dietzgen in 1869, in his The Nature of the Workings of the Human Mind, expressed the same idea as Engels, although, it is true, not without his usual muddled attempts to 'reconcile' materialism and idealism. Let us leave aside these attempts, which are to a large extent to be explained by the fact that Dietzgen is arguing against Büchner's non-dialectical materialism, and let us examine Dietzgen's own statements on the question under consideration. He says: 'They [the idealists] want to have the general without the particular, mind without matter, force without substance, science without experience or material, the absolute without the relative' (Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit, 1903, S.108). Thus the endeavour to divorce motion from matter, force from substance, Dietzgen associates with idealism, compares with the endeavour to divorce thought from the brain. 'Liebig,' Dietzgen continues, 'who is especially fond of straying from his inductive science into the field of speculation, says in the spirit of idealism: "force cannot be seen"' (p.109). 'The spiritualist or the idealist believes in the spiritual, i.e., ghostlike and inexplicable, nature of force' (p. 110). 'The antithesis between force and matter is as old as the antithesis between idealism and materialism' (p.111). 'Of course, there is no force without matter, no matter without force; forceless matter and matterless force are absurdities. If there are idealist natural scientists who believe in the immaterial existence of forces, on this point they are not natural scientists...but seers of ghosts' (p.114).

"The fundamental distinction between the materialist and the adherent of idealist philosophy consists in the fact that the materialist regards sensation, perception, idea, and the mind of man generally, as an image of objective reality. The world is the movement of this objective reality reflected by our consciousness. To the movement of ideas, perceptions, etc., there corresponds the movement of matter outside me. The concept matter expresses nothing more than the objective reality which is given us in sensation. Therefore, to divorce motion from matter is equivalent to divorcing thought from objective reality, or to divorcing my sensations from the external world -- in a word, it is to go over to idealism. The trick which is usually performed in denying matter, and in assuming motion without matter, consists in ignoring the relation of matter to thought. The question is presented as though this relation did not exist, but in reality it is introduced surreptitiously; at the beginning of the argument it remains unexpressed, but subsequently crops up more or less imperceptibly.

"Matter has disappeared, they tell us, wishing from this to draw epistemological conclusions. But has thought remained? -- we ask. If not, if with the disappearance of matter thought has also disappeared, if with the disappearance of the brain and nervous system ideas and sensations, too, have disappeared -- then it follows that everything has disappeared. And your argument has disappeared as a sample of 'thought' (or lack of thought)! But if it has remained -- if it is assumed that with the disappearance of matter, thought (idea, sensation, etc.) does not disappear, then you have surreptitiously gone over to the standpoint of philosophical idealism. And this always happens with people who wish, for 'economy's sake,' to conceive of motion without matter, for tacitly, by the very fact that they continue to argue, they are acknowledging the existence of thought after the disappearance of matter. This means that a very simple, or a very complex philosophical idealism is taken as a basis; a very simple one, if it is a case of frank solipsism (I exist, and the world is only my sensation); a very complex one, if instead of the thought, ideas and sensations of a living person, a dead abstraction is posited, that is, nobody's thought, nobody's idea, nobody's sensation, but thought in general (the Absolute Idea, the Universal Will, etc.), sensation as an indeterminate 'element,' the 'psychical,' which is substituted for the whole of physical nature, etc., etc. Thousands of shades of varieties of philosophical idealism are possible and it is always possible to create a thousand and first shade; and to the author of this thousand and first little system (empirio-monism, for example) what distinguishes it from the rest may appear to be momentous. From the standpoint of materialism, however, the distinction is absolutely unessential. What is essential is the point of departure. What is essential is that the attempt to think of motion without matter smuggles in thought divorced from matter -- and that is philosophical idealism." [Lenin (1972), pp.318-21. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

It's quite clear from this that Lenin is denying what "these scientists" were claiming, that motion without matter is conceivable -- or, once again, as he puts it:

M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]

"In full conformity with this materialist philosophy of Marx's, and expounding it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring (read by Marx in the manuscript): 'The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved...by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science....' 'Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be....'" [Lenin (1914), p.8.]

M22: "[M]otion [is] an inseparable property of matter." [Lenin (1972), p.323. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Hence, the unthinkability of the separation of matter and motion is integral to his case against idealism. Indeed, if motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter -- its "mode of expression" -- then these two 'concepts' cannot be separated, even in thought.

[Incidentally, Lenin is wrong. Marx did not read Anti-Dühring "in the manuscript"; in fact, after Marx's death, Engels claimed he read that book to Marx. Can you imagine how long that took? Can you imagine how many times the ageing Marx nodded off, not realising the rubbish that would later be attributed to him? I have considered this issue in more detail here and here.]

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transferred....

"A motionless state of matter is therefore one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas...." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]

At this point, someone could argue that such contradictions are only to be expected; after all this is dialectics! In that case, in the very process of thinking these controversial words, thought is driven to the opposite pole and is forced to conclude that these words (or what they express) cannot be thought.

However, and far more likely: those who read Lenin, and whose thought has not been compromised by studying the work of Absolute Idealists will conclude that, in view of the fact that they have just thought those very words in the act of being told they cannot do so, motion without matter is plainly not unthinkable!

Indeed, in view of the additional fact that belief in motionless matter was part of Ancient Physics (which dominated scientific thought for nigh on one thousand five hundred years), they'd be right to so conclude. Manifestly, the latter thought is plainly more thinkable than its opposite!

Hence, far from thought being driven to an "opposite pole", the above suggests it will be riveted to just the one.

It could be argued that this is a specious argument. Indeed, one comrade has so argued:

"An also quite clear illogicality -- or perhaps even a sophism -- is the discussion of Lenin's assertion that 'motion without matter is unthinkable'. It is held that, since Lenin obviously thought the words 'motion without matter', he has contradicted himself, showing that it is perfectly possible to thin 'motion without matter'. But this is clearly an invalid reasoning. The use of the words 'motion without matter' doesn't actually imply thinking motion without matter. The example of sentence 3. above may explain what I am saying. A similar idea can be expressed by

"6. A functioning perpetuum mobile is unthinkable.

"If we follow the text, we will exclaim, 'but you have just thought of a functioning perpetuum mobile! You have just used those precise words!' What happens, though, is that when I think the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile' I am not actually thinking of a functioning perpetuum mobile. Indeed, any machine of that kind that I -- or anybody else -- can think of is either not functioning or not a perpetuum mobile (or, more probably, neither). So while I can utter the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile', I am at most thinking of the words, not of the actual thing. Same goes for 'triangular circle', 'the opposite side of a Moebius strip', or 'a man who is his own father'. And so the text incurs in a conflation between two things that a correct analysis easily shows are different." [From here. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Emphases in the original.]

"Rosa actually considered that objection in the long Essay she wrote (she had to since I posed that very point to her back in 1998 or 1999!), and posted a short version of it in the passage Chris quoted. The point is that Lenin would have to know what any sentence containing the phrase 'motion without matter' implied,

'In order to rule motion without matter out of court, he would have to know what he was trying to exclude. He would have to know what motion without matter was so that he could exclude it as unthinkable, otherwise he might be ruling out the wrong thing. Hence, it would have to be thinkable for Lenin to tell us it wasn't!'

So, he would have to think these words just to rule out the possibility that there was any motionless matter in the world. Otherwise, he would have no idea what he was ruling out. But, if he had no idea what he was ruling out he'd have no idea what he was ruling in, either. So, the real problem is not that Lenin was contradicting himself, it's that not even Lenin knew what he was talking about.

"Moreover, as Rosa goes on to point out (I think you must have missed this), it's not possible to contradict non-sense. Since a non-sensical sentence cannot take a truth-value, no sentence can count as its contradictory. So Lenin wasn't contradicting himself (Rosa toys with that possibility until she shows that he isn't even doing that!); he is far too confused to be doing it. [It's the same point she makes about dialectics; it's far too confused for anyone to be able to say if it's true or if it's false, let alone contradict it!]

"'6. A functioning perpetuum mobile is unthinkable.'

"If we follow the text, we will exclaim, 'but you have just thought of a functioning perpetuum mobile! You have just used those precise words!' What happens, though, is that when I think the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile' I am not actually thinking of a functioning perpetuum mobile. Indeed, any machine of that kind that I -- or anybody else -- can think of is either not functioning or not a perpetuum mobile (or, more probably, neither). So while I can utter the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile', I am at most thinking of the words, not of the actual thing. Same goes for 'triangular circle', 'the opposite side of a Moebius strip', or 'a man who is his own father'. And so the text incurs in a conflation between two things that a correct analysis easily shows are different."

"And yet, how would you know what you were ruling out? Unless you know what a functioning perpetual motion machine is, or could be, your claim that it is unthinkable is just an empty phrase. [Suppose I say I can think it? Suppose inventors of these machines, who still turn up regularly, also say they can think it? And, isn't the universe in perpetual motion? According to some scientists, it is. So they can think of perpetual motion, even if they are wrong, they can certainly think it.]

"Same with the other examples you mention. If time travel is possible, a man can be his own father. Now, time travel might not be possible, but we can still think a man could be his own father. A triangular circle is also a possible object of thought; given homeomorphisms, it is possible to map a triangle onto a circle. So, topologically, a circle is the same as a triangle, so we can think it in mathematics! And we can easily define the opposite side of a Moebius Strip as follows: hold the strip between thumb and forefinger; the opposite side to that which touches your thumb is the side that touches your index finger. That might be a cheat, sure, but it allows us to think of the opposite side of a Moebius Strip.

"So, instead of asserting that, say, 'A triangular circle is unthinkable', you'd be better off following Wittgenstein's advice here (albeit given in another context) and say that certain combinations of words aren't part of the language; we have no use for them.

"However, this can't even be the case with Lenin's declaration, since immobile matter is not unthinkable; indeed, motionless matter had been a cornerstone of Aristotelian physics, which went largely unquestioned for over a thousand years....

"Now, the real problem with Lenin's declaration isn't that he ends up in an awful muddle, but that it follows from an a priori thesis invented by Engels: 'Motion is the mode of the existence of matter'. So, his declaration that 'motion without matter is unthinkable' wasn't based on evidence (since that is ambiguous), or on argument, but on this a priori thesis, which Rosa has shown is non-sensical." [This has not yet been posted at RevLeft.]

12. However, if thought itself is to be identified with the motion of matter, at however deep or complex a level this is deemed to take place, then the second of these sentences (i.e., "This could be true even if no matter was in fact relocated in the process") would naturally be incorrect. Anyway, such a thesis (about "thought" and matter) seems to depend on the truth of reductive materialism, a doctrine Lenin would certainly not have accepted.

But, even if M11 were contestable on other grounds, it would not be difficult to think of alternative examples that are not so easily dismissed. Consider, therefore, the following:

E3: You say you will mend the fence, but that job seems to move further into the future by the week.

E6: Multiplying –2 by –3 moves it from the set of Negative Integers to the set of Positive Integers (as 6), even while all three remain in the set of Real Numbers.

E7: The disqualification of Leaping Lena in the 3.30 at Belmont moved Mugwump into first place.

E8: The back of the Necker Cube moves to the front (and vice versa) depending on how you view it.

E9: The result of the strike ballot moved the question of tactics to the top of the agenda.