- I'm finding Google increasingly useless at searching for minutia of late. Any subtlety gets lost in irrelevancies. — Banno

Same.

Yes, it is. It is called equivocation, and it is also a non-definition. Someone who does not know what scientists do will simply not be able to identify scientists. — Leontiskos

If you had a definition for "scientist" do you believe that the person who does not know what a scientist does will be able to identify scientists?

Let's say "Scientists are the people who produce knowledge about the physical world", to use Merriam-Webster. So "Science is what scientists do, and what scientists do is produce knowledge about the physical world, and that production process changes over time" fits with what I've said.

That touched me :) :heart:

I think it is, and more than that, I think those who says it's not will not be able to give a coherent account of what a science is. That's what we've begun running into, here. — Leontiskos

Is it incoherent to say "Science is what scientists do, and what scientists do changes over time"?

Why not? — Leontiskos

By the above criteria. You don't see Gassendi or Lucretius referenced in the activity of sciences today (just to give some naturalist philosophers that would seem to get along with the ideas, but aren't needed for science). Why should you?

That is, rather than an organized body of knowledge based on empiricism, I'd say science is what scientists do.

Here is a good article to begin debunking the guess/check paradigm: Cartwright on theory and experiment in science. — Leontiskos

So the claim that looks like might conflict with what I'm saying is: "that science is essentially just theory plus experiment;"

But what science is is what scientists do, and what scientists do changes over time. That is I'm taking up a historical-empirical lens to the question -- the philosophical theory is "Science is what scientists do", which, of course, is defined only ostensively and so doesn't have some criteria for inclusion.

A perhaps annoying but purposeful use of vagueness: What shall we include in saying "science"? What are the examples that need to be considered? It seems we ought to include real examples of science, and so an emphasis on the activity of scientists rather than looking at theories of knowledge or qualifications of philosophers.

That is, I'd defend the notion of a standpoint: I think that people who do the thing are in a better position to know about it. That doesn't mean they're in a better position to philosophize about it, of course, which is why a lot of philosophers of science are both scientists and philosophers: that phenomenology of science is considered an important grounding in judging the history of science from a philosophical perspective. (so, yes, I'd also defend the notion that we come to know science from a historical perspective, which is contextual and not amenable to universal conditions)

I don't think my notion of science would deny the part where Edward says: "In addition to theory and experimentation, there are models, narratives, diagrams, illustrations, concrete applications, and so on. None of these is reducible to theory or experiment, and neither are they any less essential to the practice and content of science. And when we take account of them, both science and the world it describes are seen to be far more complicated than the common conception of science and its results implies." in the opening, either. So while, sure, I have been brief and so it's understandable to question, I'm wondering if we're in conflict at all?

This is a bit like describing tennis as, "Swing-hit-run-swing-hit-run..." That's not what tennis is. It's a physical-reductionistic cataloguing of certain events that occur within the game of tennis. — Leontiskos

What is tennis? :D

In the attempt to provide a non-magical sketch of science I am, also, attempting a pedagogical sketch at science -- it doesn't need to be an essence or universal notion, I don't think. Coherency and specificity is enough, I believe. (also, I don't think there is an essence to science, of course)

Why share? Is it necessary? — Leontiskos

I think so. It keeps you sane. When you go about questioning reality on a regular basis it's a good idea to listen to others :D -- many a scientist has had some pretty kooky beliefs outside of their work.

I think that the particular era of science will specify what makes a good guess, what would count as a check, and how one goes about sharing. In Newton's day philosophy and science were closer than most generally hold now.

One of the problems with method is that it doesn't exactly exist in some big sense. The methods of interest are already established in various ways at this time so it entirely depends upon what science you're working within, and even which lab you'd find yourself in. But these methods are in no way general in the way philosophy likes, or even as the public tends to think: this going some way to push against the magical thinking that science might tempt.

Also it asks the reader to get out of their head and look at what the scientists are doing as a method for defining science :D -- A systematic body of knowledge isn't exactly a science either. Plumbing is a systematic body of knowledge that relies upon empirical guess-work, but it's not a science. And all the many systems of knowledge which philosophers produce aren't exactly a science either.

But what is the activity? — Leontiskos

Guess-check-share-guess-check-share-guess-check-share...

Yup.

So something I'm seeing in working through these guys today is that it's math pretty much beyond my ability. Not that it's surprising that a formalization of Hegel's logic would require pretty complicated maths, but I know I can't really comment on the formalization -- but what is exciting about it is that in some sense the work has already been done, and so rather than guess-and-check there's something to build on that I didn't know about. Sweet!

'Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds
Roll up its waste of waters, from the land
To watch another's labouring anguish far,
Not that we joyously delight that man
Should thus be smitten, but because 'tis sweet
To mark what evils we ourselves be spared; — Lucretius, The Nature of Things, Book II Proem

Link


Which gets along a bit with Aristotle's notion -- that the distance between the audience and the subject is what allows a certain kind of pleasure in the unfortunate to arise.

But I also want to quote Artaud, whose theory of theatre gives a different picture to the pleasure of tragedy:

The theater will never find itself again--i.e., constitute a means
of true illusion--except by furnishing the spectator with the
truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his
erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of
life and matter, even his cannibalism, pour out, on a level not
counterfeit and illusory, but interior. — Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double, VII. The Theater and Cruelty

Artaud is a more poetic writer and so subject to interpretation, but what I've always taken him to mean is that the function of tragedy is to fulfill our anti-social desires through the magic of theatre: the savage desire to kill your enemy can be not just seen from a distince, but felt in the interior -- so it gives an opposite reason for the pleasure of tragedy. Rather than because we are distant from it we come to experience a part of ourselves that we normally couldn't.

That's pretty much what I believe, and yet the temptation to complete a system -- or to extend it -- is still there. Kant's claim to having set The Truth on the matter once and for all demands a level of scrutiny that becomes a kind of creative engine unto itself -- it's a paradox of philosophy.

oof. Alas we can all be sweet summer children at one point...

So, it's even worse than that! A group riding an economic wave because why not, when the people involved see the why not and would like to, like, not....

Ban academic paywalls. That's a cause I can get behind. Especially when it's taxpayer-funded research. But even the so-called privately funded universities take plenty of taxpayer dough. Ban the paywalls.

ps -- I came to the thread late and I see that wonderer1 and others have made this point. — fishfry

No worries, it's nice to hear that others' have similar thoughts on something that seems pretty esoteric with respect to the usual issues. And I agree that paywalls are a big burden, especially for international researchers. Whereas I can, if I feel the gumption, usually find some route to a paper through going to libraries and asking people and whatnot, a researcher on the other side of the world only has access to what is available, the internet is a great tool for distributing that sort of thing, but the owners of these properties -- and it's really really complicated, I don't understand the revenue streams of research very well -- put that stopgap in there; my guess is it's mostly there so that they can charge institutions the amount that they require to continue running, but that in turn means that individuals have to align with an institution, and that create a huge barrier to international scholarship.

Does bookkeeping involve wonder and investigation? I'm not sure science is bookkeeping at all. It seems more basically to be an investigation of the unknown in nature. — Leontiskos

In terms of practices the bookkeeping is important: the reference to the same kinds of units so that methods and findings can be shared, for instance, can be characterized as a formalized method of collective bookkeeping so that they can communicate what they observe to one another.

And the honest part is because it's a pretty valued trait in the sciences, I find.
 

There can be motivations to do science like a sense of wonder, but there are also motivations like "I want to make more money", or "I want scientific glory" or "I want to disprove that sunavabitch!" :D

But even moreso I don't think the motivation matters as much as the activity: whether you're there out of a sense of wonder or because it's how you pay your bills the work that is valuable requires communicable findings.

But also in reflecting on this -- I'm interested in reducing scientific practice to something easily communicable as well as true of the those practices for pedagogic and philosophical reasons. The philosophical reason is that I think there's a temptation to treat science as a kind of magic, which I don't believe it to be: More like an intricate conversation that's been recorded over time and modified in light of good bookkeeping (so that the conversation can happen over time, for the most part) of some clever guesses with checks -- mathematically it's "Guess and check" within a community that spans over time.

Of course the nature of science has changed since Newton, but I'd say that truth is very much a part of its enterprise still even though it's industrially aligned -- science, like any human activity, changes with the changes in economic forms, but that doesn't mean you can make a science without truth. (it does not surprise me that most published research is false -- that's one of the explicit reasons for publishing research is so others can read and check it and publish a reply. This is why you can't just grab a study and claim to know something)

Agree 100%, that research results paid for by tax dollars should in general be more freely available. However, I'm afraid the fraction of the electorate that cares much about the issue is rather small, and I don't forsee much change anytime soon. — wonderer1

That's how everything that's ever been important starts ;)

Earlier in this thread, apokrisis wrote about sustainable agriculture and estimated it might work with a world population of about a billion. It strikes me that the kind of anarchist system you are talking about might work at a similar scale. That means that both are post-apocalyptic scenarios. — T Clark

How many do you think the present system will support when the oil is gone?

Are there examples of large scale, politically effective anarchist organizations. It seems almost like a contradiction in terms. — T Clark

How large scale are you thinking here? At a certain point I already admitted that the answer is simply no: states are larger than functioning anarchist organizations.

But I'm familiar with some non-state scale success such as: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/10/village-against-world-dan-hancox-review or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation . and the form that I think of as a synthetic blend is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

But, really, what you say here is true regardless of these examples:

I guess that's where politics and ethics comes in. We need everyone, or at least enough of us, to agree on what doing good means in this context. And then we're back where we started. — T Clark

If enough people agree then they can pursue it -- I'm not sure if we're back where we started with that, though. Recognizing that agreement is allows collective action makes agreement a worthwhile pursuit, which gets along generally with how I think: It's more about building relationships regardless of the philosophical ideas we might be thinking about in doing politics that orient us when it comes to the doing of politics.

Cool. Thanks for the link. More stuff to work through . . .

I'd certainly be interested. It's sorta the thing I've attempted to do and failed at :D

No worries. I started this in the lounge once upon a time for the reason that I don't really understand science, and also know others here are scientific sorts: but I didn't want the burden of argument to inhibit the thoughts.

As the title suggests: brainstorming science (together)

If you could say what more there is to science than honest bookkeeping then I'd be happy: I agree with you, but I also wonder "how much more is there to it?"

The only way to arrive at truth is to desire truth, — Leontiskos

Yes, I agree here.

and those who desire truth as a means to something else do not desire truth qua truth. Scientists were once lovers of truth, and because of that they were reliable. But now that science has become a means, scientists are no longer reliable. Their science (and its truth) is a means to some further end, and because of this the science has lost its credibility. When the scientist was a man who sought truth we believed him to be speaking truth, but now that the scientist is an employee of institutions, we believe him to be acting in the interests of those institutions.

I believe scientists are very much still in that pursuit.

Covid is a very good example. Fauci appealed to his scientific bona fides to inform us that masks are ineffective against Covid-19. We later learned that he was lying in order to ensure enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical professionals. We thought the scientist was speaking the truth, whereas in fact he was acting in the interests of his institution by speaking outright lies.

Surely what Fauci said and did is not the same as what scientists do?

And, with respect to brainstorming science, Covid is only understood cuz of science. We only know about it because of the various pursuits into virology and biology and so forth. We could detect it because of the advances in ELISA and qPCR techniques.

Which is to say: Some scientists say outright lies to use the mantle of science for their cause, but in the long run scientists will criticize them and point out the truth because that's what we do: be annoying nerds about technical truths. lol

Science is a practice of bookkeeping guess work.

But the only way to make that bookkeeping guess work worthwhile is through honesty, or perhaps another virtue.

So, transcendentally: How is it possible to arrive at scientific truth? The only possible way is through honest bookkeeping.

I've been shocked over the past 20 years or so how much progress has been made in doing what everyone said was impossible - increasing renewable energy production and distribution. Elon Musk and a relatively few entrepreneurs have changed everything. They took a bet on finding a way to make good environmental sense also make good economic sense. Of course technology had to improve in order for it to work, but no one had even really tried before. — T Clark

I'm afraid I don't share your optimism with respect to the powers that be.

Hottest day on earth ever recorded happened this week.

And I know that in spite of these various positions that we've only increased fossil fuel expenditure: the green tech future sounds nice, but it all runs on coal and oil at bottom.

Though I have optimism towards people's ability to overcome.

I don't see how this would work. It's not trust and friendship, it's making doing good economically advantageous. That's the only way I can see. — T Clark

Upon making "doing good" advantageous, the people seeking advantage will start doing good.

But then when "doing good" changes, because the world always changes, they'll insist that the old "doing good" is the new "doing good"

I think trust and friendship are more powerful than these technocratic motives, though certainly more unreliable for the spreadsheet bean counters.

Is this true? The current US administration, Biden, have had a dramatic effect on the direction of technological growth and change by just throwing a few billon, or is it trillion, dollars at it. — T Clark

Yes. I'm voting for Trump due to my location, regardless of who I vote for. And "reasonings" don't garner votes.

I know who I prefer, and it's not Trump, but I think what I'm saying is true still.

Doesn't apokrisis's scaling require central planning? How can it possibly grow from the anarchist bottom up? — T Clark

There are many examples of anarchist organizations, but the one I like to refer to is https://quaker.org/ -- because they aren't strictly anarchist in the sense of ideology, but they are anarchist in that they utilize consent-building techniques to a point that everyone has to agree to something.

It takes time, it takes commitment to your fellow humans, it takes care: but it doesn't take rules or programs. Central planning is one possible path, but not the only one.

I like this from your quote:

We can identify three major 'roots' of the Enlightenment: the humanism of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Protestant Reformation. Together these movements created the conditions in Europe for the Enlightenment to take place.

I think it gets along with my speculations

Also gets along with my belief that Kant is the pinnacle of The Enlightenment: both rational and romantic.

Implement life as the Enlightenment imagined it? But add planetary limits to human aspirations as part of the political and ethical equation this time around. — apokrisis

Implement life as we imagine it together, which can include some Enlightenment, as a treat :D -- though that'd be the same response to every imaginary of the future. It's not like the imaginary of the Enlightenment is easy to specify, right(and the same for all the other Big Movements)? And it's important to imagine, I believe, though allow others' to do so as well, and share those sorts of things.

But all communication is propaganda in being a message with a meaning and so coming from a point of view - a message with some intention conveyed from a “me” to a “you”.

Are you wanting to split the world into those messages that are particularly annoying to you and those are matchingly pleasing? Your world needs this new message setting.

Do you see this as a pragmatic job for AI browser settings or a case of “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee”? — apokrisis

I thought you were going to tell me? — apokrisis

I believe I did in defining philosophy as an anti-propaganda, at least. Propaganda is a virus, as you say, but philosophy is an anti-virus in that it inhibits the mechanisms of propagation by asking questions and not giving answers, but rather methods of thinking through things.

If this is your belief then in what sense are you interested in a real inquiry into solutions? And you should steer well clear of me as all I’ve got nothing but those. :wink: — apokrisis

Oh, I like the idea of solving some of these problems, I suppose.

Give me your wisdom, o lord! ;) :D

And so on and so forth in terms of Maslow’s familiar hierarchy of needs. — apokrisis

Why Maslow?

Is it true?

Perhaps something along the line that any should be free to have an opinion and yet everyone ought to be fact-checked? — apokrisis

I'd be on board with that, roughly.

Sounds a shit notion of philosophy. Sounds exactly like propaganda run wild in feigning reason so as to spread its irrationalism. — apokrisis

It may sound that way, but is it that way? What is propaganda?

Also, on philosophy: I think of it more of an anti-propaganda. Rather than giving easy answers to difficult questions it raises difficult questions without answers. Rather than attaching emotions to particular actions it questions emotions at every turn (to a point that's a bit much, at times).

So, in a way, teaching philosophy and doing philosophy is an anti-propaganda, and thereby useful, insofar that we think propaganda ought not rule our lives.

Also, on Propaganda:

I understand its necessity, but I like to imagine a world without it. In order to do so, though, there'd have to be some agreed upon definition of propaganda which could possibly serve as a basis for law. I mention it as separate because I believe the liberal state is fully capable of combating propaganda. Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works I read recently that I'd recommend to anyone interested in the topic. (I also read Bernays Propaganda, but I don't recommend it so much because it's basically just propaganda for propaganda)

So in criticizing liberal theory I don't mean to say it's all bad either, and I see possible solutions within the institutions we have.

Preference is good in my opinion. Creative people usually have all kinds of preferences, and its in working together I've noticed that interesting things result.

Also, I just like ideas, I don't care when they were made -- I don't even care if the idea is true. Since we don't really know what will work to solve our problems I like to keep an open mind and simply try things out to see where they go. It's not like I really know what I'm talking about anyways (as the scary part of that is: I'm pretty sure no one does. We're strapped to a rocket without knowing where it's going, when it will stop, or how to control it)

After graduating with my chemistry degree something that dawned on me was how we already have every scientific bit of technology we need to address climate change. The problem isn't a matter of scientific knowledge, but political ability: At present the social organizations we have to deal with collective problems are unable to come to a global solution to a global problem.

So the answer to does it scale is: No. None of them scale across the globe. That's the problem to be worked upon: How to build social global social organizations that are able to address these major problems without killing each other along the way?
***

Here what are we able to do, though? I'd say all we have the power to do here is share ideas. Creativity is what's needed, and creative thought is fostered by collective trust and friendship. If we want to win and prove that we're the idea-maker then we'll compete and keep to ourselves and make sure we say nothing until we have our name on it and can say "See! I am the creator of this idea!": But that's exactly the problem. To even make a science of the economy we'd have to agree upon a unit, and have access to financial records of private institutions, which we don't. We'd have to have political control over the economy, and political influence in the first place.

The problem with coming up with different scenarios is that it doesn't matter which we choose since the powers that be will do what they do regardless of our reasonings.

This gets back to the reality of doing politics: There's plenty of propaganda to go about (and in fact I think that's a separate but related problem). But what politics is about is about building relationships with one another. The politicians job is to talk because talking is how we build relationships. And to do that you need trust, which in turn is only earned by being trustworthy, forthright, and caring.

But these aren't programs. These are character traits -- that is, ethical virtues.

For the ideas of anarchy and marxism, though, I point to the obvious with Marxism at marxists.org, and the ironically canonical anarchist faq. -- the important part to me here is that these are just ideas that I'm working through and from. I'm not advocating as much as exploring the ideas, because that's what this space is for, though I also want to be honest in saying hey, duh, I'm attracted to these ideas because I see possible solutions in them to the modern world.

And what I like about pairing these ideas is it gives both a critical problem -- the Marxism -- and a different solution than Marxism-Leninism -- organizing along anarchist lines. Further the "anarchy" makes it to where it's not something I'm going to cook up all on my own: I'm going to explore and share and hope we can come up with something that works, because that's all that's ever worked to address collective problems before anyways.

Because of its various failures, too: colonialism, racism, and the atom bomb come to mind. The ideas about appropriation of land and the need to civlize the lesser races are part of the Enlightenment as much as the romantic vision of the Human Being. It has good and bad, like everything.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096251/
Technically I just finished it, but it was interesting enough to share.

NSFW whatsoever tho

Yeah, I like the enlightenment in a general sense. It's not like I pine for religious institutions to be in charge again, and the enlightenment helped with that transition.

In terms of the OP though it seems that here we are wondering about how to make the real world fair and just while we are also the children of The Enlightenment. It's just that influential that even the appeals that matter changed.

At the time it makes total sense, but now, in light of its various successes, I come to doubt it.

I must agree, but with a touch of irony, if it be granted the single most influential textual representation contained an offer of benefit to posterity, and at the same time, the cause of its demise. — Mww

I mean every philosophy carries the seeds of its own destruction just by being philosophy :D -- no surprise. (EDIT: Well, maybe a small surprise given The Enlightenment project...)

It's still really interesting stuff and worth pulling from and developing. I just think it, like any philosophy, has limits. (where those limits are... well, that's the philosophical question)

But this was your choice of example. I just followed through with the historical facts. And these seem to tell another story. — apokrisis

Yeah, but there's a but, but it goes into a digression on the differences between science and history which I'm guessing would diverge the thread from the original topic into, well, just that.

Yet again you simply ignore that I have already said that your disjunction is my conjunction. Is and ought wouldn't be separate, they would have to be openly complementary or reciprocal under a dichotomising systems logic.

A two-way mutuality is assumed as a condition of them being the larger thing of a causal-strength relation.

The top and bottom levels of a hierarchy must be in support of each other even if they are doing opposite things.

Even Bongo tried to make this point in his homily about corporate management where the board level ought must cash out as the bottom level office manager's is. The boss sets the strategy, the underlings beaver away at the monthly targets.

But in a fast moving world, underlings become closer to the changes that matter. The leisurely decision horizons of the board become a growing problem. Theories of flat hierarchies and the entreprenurial employee become the vogue.

Management science is another department of system theory. Like the rest of the humanities (even if the tap on the door hasn't quite been heard in the dusty forgotten corners of this large ramshackle institution). — apokrisis

How am I ignoring what you said? I'm asking a question for how you put it all together: How does the conjunct of is^ought work, in your view?

But he said you don't need good grammar, philosophy or science in general. Just Jesus. Or at least the plain commonsense that Jesus expressed in saying competition must be tempered by cooperation. The social and ecological organising principle that hierarchy theory captures with mathematical crispness. — apokrisis

In history I'd call this "cherry-picking" -- he says this in some context at some point, but what else did he say? What else did he do?

You might have approved of Prigogine as a person. — apokrisis

We definitely sound like kindred spirits :D

It is worth keeping an open mind and reading on. Your reaction to the term "thermodynamics" maybe because you view science and scientists as it they were some race apart from their worlds. Your lens is the one set to "scientism" as being dialectical to ... its righteous other. — apokrisis

My reaction may be due to this. How would you know, though? I agree that keeping an open mind and reading on is worthwhile.

I think the question is more of a: where does the rubber meet the road? Same sort of question Marx receives. If we start from any thermodynamic paper, how do we get to "ought"?

Were you referencing? — apokrisis

No.

Though any other activist would do the job just as well, and I reached for King because he's familiar and a person who, no matter what we say here, did good things. And in order to do good things, so it seems to me, we must know something about the world.

Whatever King said his actions resulted in various good things, so we must accept that King knew something about social organisms since he had real effects upon them that continue on into this day.

At least, I'd suggest that. And so his writings on how to do things become interesting in light of that fact. They do not include thermodynamics as a base of thought to come from, though.

What was the Enlightenment all about then? — apokrisis

Oh, the easy questions, eh? :D

Maybe I should say: I don't believe, at present, we can science our way into future social organizations, and I'm skeptical of the attempt due to the many attempts thus far.

I'd say the Enlightenment is over. I'm not sure where we're at now, but what could succeed in the Enlightenment as done so and what couldn't could do so again -- but that doesn't mean it's the only philosophical project in town either.

Well exactly. And are you planning to do that individually or collectively? Do you expect it could be done collectively and not hierarchically? Is it some form of evidence here that you can’t even advance anarchism or Marxism as politics that achieve their stated in advance goals?

If one ought not piss oneself does that not require one ensures he/she is not pissing into the wind?

Nature created human social order in its image. How you piss about starts from that thermodynamic foundation. The rest is the unfolding of history as an ever-enlarging and hierarchically complexifying growth project. With its own grumbling chorus of dissent. — apokrisis

To take it back down a few notches of abstraction: Did Martin Luther King begin with thermodynamics? No of course not, but surely he knew something about how social organisms work. Or is everything he wrote and did parochial in the face of the new science?

Heh, I think he paints himself the clown so it's all in good taste. I also like Žižek, though find him frustrating for similar reasons.

And I bet it's even less central to your Doing! — Banno

Well, here's where we can get critical of ourselves and maybe don't realize what it is what we are doing. So the dialectic plays no role in my doing, I'll say, but I go to work and pay my bills and dance around the boss all the same: so the material dialectic would play a role in my doing even if it's not a part of my thinking.

But, I take your point. It's not clear enough to myself to say one way or the other -- I can give some nascent beginnings of an attempt to give clear distinction, but that's about it, so clearly it doesn't play a role in thinking or my conscious doing.

Wittgenstein and Anscombe are lurking in the background here, pointing out that it's the use of our metaphysics that has meaning. — Banno

Heh. So Hegel's metaphysic is a good way to ensure the continuation of philosophy professors? :D (EDIT: I ought say this would be a point in its favor, for me)

Of course. Marx was a decent critic of his times. He took a systems view. He and Engels had their model of Dialectical Materialism.

But diagnosis did not produce the cure. Fukuyama points to the historical evidence that dialectics can't balance things. You need trialectics to achieve that.

After the madness of Stalin, the USSR achieved a stable political formula in having the triadic balance of the Politiburo, Army generals and KGB. An arrangement of power was institutionalised.

So we do know what makes systems work. And it ain't demolishing hierarchies. It is ensuring that hierarchical order does in fact have the two way information flow where top-down constraints exist in balance with bottom-up construction. A society is well balanced when it is a collective of interest groups formed over all scales of its existence. — apokrisis

My view is that you can't science your way into future social organizations -- I think it's the scientific claim of Marx's that fails. Though it describes a pattern we still are contending with fairly well, it's not at present a scientific theory in the sense that it wants to be.

So when I see these sorts of claims it looks to me that you guys are in the same camp: you have the Newtonian Laws of social organisms and from those Laws we can control the direction of development of social organisms. Something like Comte's positivism?

And what social purpose was that existentialism shaped to serve?

At what point did a revolutionary political idea become the basis of modern mass consumerism? The "because you're so individual and special" reason that you deserve a Lamborghini or Rolex?

At what point did it become the justification for neo-liberalism and the worker as entrepreneur?

Counter-culture mutates into mainstream culture to the degree that it fuels the end result – fossil fuel burning and resource consumption. If it is a "good idea" in that sense, it becomes the norm. The new ought. — apokrisis

We can describe norms, but that's not the same as saying which norm we should pursue. The question isn't "What social purpose was that existentialism shaped to serve?" but rather "How shall we shape this existentialism?"

hink about it this way: if you became convinced that all of the Dialectic was in error, would that change your view of what ought be done? — Banno

Oh no. It's not that central to my thinking.

So what is it that dialectic does?

Mostly cause me a headache :D -- it's more that it's so undeniable to Marx's philosophy that it's something I have to contend with and figure out its boundaries in understanding that philosophy. Although I see value in understanding a thinker in his own time on his own grounds even where I disagree with him -- but here it's not clear enough yet for me to agree or disagree, but it's something I like to work out.

Apo, Way and Moli are all attempting to answer the Big Questions with various stories. Much easier to point out the problems with their accounts, — Banno

Heh, I don't mind. Without something to think against the thoughts kind of just drizzle away in the day to day. So pick away.