I don't think it's that we observe physical laws. We use physics to explain what we observe. Do we really observe acts of volition? Or is volition a theory to explain observations? In other words, is there a clash of explanations when we try to reconcile decision making with physics? I would be one who says there's no bridge between the two. — frank

"volition" is too squishy to count as a theory, I think, unless we mean folk-theory. But then I'd be hesitant to use "observations".

I think what I'd say is that we're so ignorant we don't know if there is or is not a clash. So I agree with you in believing there's not a bridge between the two.

Physics, especially when viewed as an all-encompassing body of explanations, is essentially a deterministic domain, right? — frank

I could argue the case elsewise, but I'm fine with dropping it too.

The area of decision making is about identity (who makes the ATP? who shot down the balloon?) Decision making marks off the natural from the supernatural (per the literal meaning of that word.) And ultimately, it's the engine of emotion we call morality. I suspect that reduction is never going to happen here. Any attempt to reduce is going to give way to eliminativism.

Do you agree with that?

I think identity is a rich concept. I'm not following how decision making marks off the natural from the supernatural.

I'm interested in this idea of giving way to eliminativism. Not that you're wrong. However, sometimes a defense of reducitonism, as you noted, is that it does not lead to eliminativism.

So why is it that reductionism, when it comes to -- let's just say people? -- gives way to eliminativism?

Yes. It's a bad time in history to be reductive because the foundation of physics is unfinished. We could make bridge laws to what we've got, only to find out tomorrow that it's all completely different from what we thought. — frank

I think what I'd caution against is the idea that science has foundations that can be finished. At least, some very intelligent people have claimed to have found these foundations, and they don't all agree with one another.

The lense I understand science through is as a social activity. So supposing a unity between the general theory of relativity and quantum theory is widely accepted, since that's generally thought to be the foundational science, then what's stopping some smart guy in the future from pointing out a mistake or fudge or possibility -- which, given that it's a human activity, is inevitable -- just to make their mark?

I think that there will always be scientists who desire to be the foundation, and so further foundations shall be built.

Which isn't the same as to say it's false! I'm just uncertain about foundations.

Rather than cannot know I would say we do not know. But methodologically reduction has been enormously successful. I take a pragmatic approach. We should not abandon reductionism, but we should be aware of its limits. — Fooloso4

I think with what I've said thus far I should say "we do not know", but I feel we cannot know. Just because of the sketch I already gave to say where my thinking is coming from. I know it needs work to establish the claim.

I agree that we should not abandon reductionism. I think we're on the same page in just trying to understand its limits, though perhaps disagree on our general assessment of where those limits are, or at least are expressing different sorts of notions on limits at the moment -- I'm sure we could come to understand one another.

I'm glad that I'm at least sensible to someone other than myself.

Definitely going out on a limb here, but responding to your ending about the beautiful more than anything. Perhaps off topic from reductionism, and should be splintered off, but I'll see what you think. (I'm loving the exchange btw):


I sometimes wonder about the beautiful. Especially its relationship to the just. Justice was a concern of Plato, yet I question his commitment on the basis of owning slaves. This is clearly an anachronism, yet I don't think it an ethically inappropriate one. It's just one of those things which humans do (still today, I might add) that clearly isn't ethical.

I think, at times, the beautiful can seduce us away from the just. Not that it's bad -- but we are easily led away from the pursuit of justice. (tho I still think the beautiful very important. I'm no aestheteascetic)

Not that I blame people. In its pursuit, justice is almost inhuman -- or, at least, implementations of justice are inhuman.

So I can see wisdom in the beautiful games. And perhaps the beautiful games will lead us to something serious.

But justice still calls -- in a way if I wiled my time pursing beautiful games, I'd be forgetting the people I know who suffer: We will always need bronze souled people, and they ought to be comfortable and happy and know that their children will be OK because we are living a stable life together. When we let go of myth, we see that there are no hierarchies of souls, only different tasks to be done from different positions within the social organism.

Cool, glad someone else is on the same page as me there.

Ahhh OK that helps me.

Oh I wouldn't go so far as to call it an account. This is all very rough, scratch-pad level wonderings on my part. Usually I do this in a notebook, but others were wanting to read along so I thought it might be a good way to eventually get a conversation started, or at least be able to read others thoughts and notes as they go through the text.

The format of the class means that how much you get out of it depends very much on the student (at least for those like me who aren't taking this for a grade) -- no grades and no certificate and no feedback from writing papers to see if you have misread something and all that. So this was a way of maybe, somehow, focusing myself enough to stay on target ;)

I'm not sure what Harvey will or will not cover. I myself haven't read the Grundrisse, so I couldn't even give you heads up beyond the table of contents.

But I'm not so sure about this:

It may be concluded that instead of this appearance - ‘the totality of the process appears as an objective interrelation,’- it is indeed generated by ‘the mutual influence of conscious individuals on one another and by their own collisions with one another.’ — Number2018

except perhaps in a dialectical sense where there is another moment, which is generally what I think socialism is meant to be: When what was an alien relationship becomes something which is controlled by those who live under that relationship, and so it is no longer an alienation but rather political autonomy.

Trying to address your post @Fooloso4

You would assert that

I mean that the most basic "stuff" of the world is physical — Fooloso4

As I am using the term in the sense that nothing else is posited as fundamental. All that comes to be, life, consciousness, mind, comes to be from the physical structures, forces, and interactions that underlie them. — Fooloso4

and that we need to look at the two-sidedness of reduction, needing to know both what we are reducing and what we are reducing to, and realizing that what we are reducing might be a better way to look at things even if it is reducible.

Would you say this is in conflict with my belief that we cannot know these statements? I'd say we cannot know that the most basic stuff of the world is physical, and we cannot know there is nothing else. But, simultaneously, I would say we don't need to know it either, and that knowledge of such things is beyond us.

Why?

I suppose it's because I don't know that it's the case, and I'm not sure what could even be a good reason to believe it. My argument would be from the multitude of beliefs about what reality fundamentally is: this sort of question has been answered in so many ways by intelligent people. Just look at philosophy! One reason I doubt any assertion about what reality fundamentally is is because people smarter than I have disagreed upon the subject. And they had their reasons, too. So why should I trust a belief just because I have a reason when they had their reasons, and yet we'd assert, today, that they were wrong?

One reason I can think of that I find persuasive is that there is some ethical justification for the belief. But, then, you can see why I'd assert that scientific knowledge does not lead to knowledge about the fundament. Instead, I'd say it's our activity which gets us closer to the fundament, but then as we interact with it the richness of being overflows our concepts. However, this is an encounter rather than a reason. I can't reason my way to the boundary of concepts -- I'd be staying within the concepts at that point. I have to grasp the world, and do so through my concepts, but in grasping it becomes a part of my projects, my desires, my way of manipulating the world: the elementality is brought under my categories of desire, converted into my hammer, my house, in which there is always a horizon, or, rather, an exteriority. But an exteriority is always exterior, and never brought under my grasp.

For Levinas I think it was clear that this lead to God. But I'm an atheist, and so what I see is the absurd: depending upon which project a person is pursuing, how they grasp the world, so the world appears. And if you take the time oftentimes you can sort of see where a person is coming from, yet you would never have thought the things you're thinking without the human relationship with a person who told you a new perspective.

So in the place of the absurd, I'd say there is still a face-to-face, and it is this which forms a materiality beyond our own self. It's the social which creates our ability to even speak of the physical, and so it is more fundamental, and yet due to the face-to-face, the Other's exteriority, we will also never know the totality of this materiality.

We would start with chemistry and bridge up to the biological function as a category of processes required for the endurance of the system. All chemistry has to do is explain cell respiration, digestion, metabolism, etc. We enter the bridge when we collect those explanations and serve them up as to how the organism endures? — frank

I'm wondering if @apokrisis has an opinion on this they'd be willing to share.

My intent in using the metabolism example is to say, hey, yes, we can already map the chemical pathways of these things. But that chemical map doesn't explain why the animal eats. Why does an animal make decisions at all? In what way are even single-celled organism's decisions to respond to sugar gradients predicated upon any physical law? (or is the observation that they respond to sugar gradients a physical law? are all observations observations of physical laws?)

**

One of the things I want to mention, though it could throw us too far off course so I'm separating it off -- something that threw me off of thinking reductionism could take place is the fact that we cannot analytically solve any Schrödinger equation other than the one which represents the system of one proton and one electron -- the hydrogen system.

But the physical systems which comprise life are much more complicated than that system. We don't have analytic, logical access to that at this point in time in terms of scientific knowledge. So I think this thought is also causing some of my doubts.

I tend to think of functionality as a result of happy accidents, and then natural history. And there's nothing wrong with cherrypicked examples, because this is philosophy -- we're not doing statistical analysis to determine the likely best guess! :D

Mitochondria have a number of functions, including producing ATP. — frank

Right! So this is a statement which seems to link a name and two biological concepts (Name,concept,concept: Mitochondria,functions,producing) with one chemical name (which, sure, I'll count that as a concept).

Is this now a bridge law? Is it enough to find a harmonious example between two disciplines?

It's true that once we start explaining function in this way (that it's stuff that happens accidently), the line between life and non-life fades. But I think that's the point of reduction? — frank

I'm not so sure that the distinction fades, at least not for me. But I hasten to add I don't mind it fading. And I'm not sure what the point of reduction is :D -- maybe, as @Fooloso4 mentioned, I'm getting stuck on "reduction" too much.

Perhaps the belief is just that, someday, the sciences will form a coherent whole of some kind?


What I've always felt about science is that it provides several ways of looking that enrich understanding rather than limit it. We could restate everything in terms of some physical laws, especially once we allow logical functions and fiat such that any set of sentences can count as bridge laws as long as their extensions are the same and they are true (so I imagine at least, it wasn't exactly spelled out I'm just giving an interpretation). But that restatement wouldn't be as rich as knowing both it and what it is a restatement of -- propositions which utilize the locution "function" stated by scientists writing textbooks, at least (this is a valid avenue of attack, I'd say -- textbooks are pedagogic, rather than literal. They are written to catch people up rather than state, here is the true scientific analysis).

I would say the sciences are independent of one another, and their harmony is something sought after by us because we like it. And sometimes we find it, which is nice! But that's not the same thing as to say everything will, or could be, reduced to physics. But I'm questioning "reduced" now...

I'm thinking that my mechanics example is a good one to work through, along with the mechanics to biology contrast.

So let us define a theory, first. I would say theory is understood by coming to understand particular theories, which we find in science textbooks and learn through training. By coming to learn particular theories we can get a sense of what we generally mean by "theory". It is this usage of "theory" that I intend.


Physics textbook
Biology textbook

Mostly providing the links to coordinate our conversation, not to delimit the set of possible examples. Just "here's a ballpark estimate of the sorts of theories I believe we're talking about"

It seems to me, from reading your article, that as long as the terms being used by scientists have the same extensions then they are considered reduced to one another, while also admitting in bridge principles.

Nagel’s major (and perhaps most controversial) contribution was the introduction of bridge principles. The notion of bridge principles, (also: ‘bridge laws’ and ‘coordinating definitions’) can be spelled out in several different ways. The most common way in accord with Nagel (1961: chap. 11, Sec. II.3) is to describe them syntactically as bi-conditionals linking terms in the vocabularies of the two theories. In the same context, however, Nagel describes them in terms of the ‘nature of the linkages postulated’ (Nagel 1961: 354). He distinguishes three such linkages:

The links mimicked by the bridge laws are ‘logical connections’ (1961: 354), which are understood as meaning connections.
The links postulated by bridge laws are conventions or stipulations (‘deliberate fiat’; 1961: 354).
The links postulated by bridge laws are ‘factual or material’ (1961: 354); that is, bridge laws state empirical facts (these truths are then described as empirical hypotheses).

So, one thing I'd like to note here is that insofar that we are able to introduce auxiliary propositions to a theory then, naturally, we can always save the belief that the sciences reduce to physics. If we find something inconvenient, we can use link type 2 in the above -- I'm guessing "fiat" is any consistent set of logical functions which are chosen to ensure the extensions between terms being compared are the same -- and bridge two principles together.

But then later the SEP article notes an informal distinction between arbitrary and non-arbitrary reductions.

Finally, it is worth noticing that Nagel introduces a distinction between arbitrary and non-arbitrary reductions: These criteria are “non-formal” (1961: chap. 11, Sec. III). The first criterion Nagel mentions is that the premises of a reduction—the bridge laws and the reducing theory—should be well established rather than arbitrarily chosen (1961: 358). Second, Nagel alludes to the fact that the reducing theory should be better established than the reduced one. The third criterion states that reduction is concerned with unification. The fourth criterion states that the reducing theory corrects and augments the reduced theory.

Which is good because it blocks against the argument I was thinking of making :D

So as the biology textbook highlights, chemistry could serve as a non-arbitrary set of bridge laws between biology and physics.

But then the second condition of non-arbitrary reduction "the reducing theory should be better established than the reduced one" -- that is an odd notion. But just going along with the words and seeing where it takes me: I tend to think biology is better established than chemistry! :D

But we can overlook that. The biology textbook utilizes chemical concepts to talk about how cells and life work. But what I do not see is a reduction of the functions of the cell to the physical level. The functions of the cell are still an important part of understanding the phenomena of life, even if understanding the molecular interpretation of life further elucidates and deepens our understanding of why life is behaving in accord with such and such a function.

But the way biologists use "function" -- you won't find an extension for that in the physics textbook, nor will you find anything but metaphoric talk in the chemistry textbooks about function. So on page 109 of the above pdf biology book: "Organelles are cell structures with specialized functions that will be discussed in section 4.4" -- this is my intended meaning of "function".

Now if we can ignore the intension then that would take away the argument from meaning that I'm making. Though that'd also strike out one of the kinds of links proposed as bridge laws, leaving fiat, and empirical fact. Fiat is ruled out by arbitrary/non-arbitrary distinction, but that's how I got here in the first place. Which leaves link 3, an empirical fact, and that much we can say is true of chemistry. However, it's also true that Mars is the 4 planet from the sun. Why not propose that as a bridge law, if all we need is an empirical fact? (comes back to arbitrary/non-arbitrary...)

... I'm not sure. I'm coming back to "what's the point of these bridge laws again?" It seems to me that, sure, we'll be able to come up with sentences that fill in the gaps to make up a totality, but then as science changes we'll have to continue to update that picture.

Happy to hear that Harvey thought this section was definitely one with gems buried in a lot of muck that needs historical explanation to be of interest, because that was definitely how I was feeling.

Glad to hear Harvey confirm my implementation of "use-value" in the above. :D

"electronic monies are even more superior" -- yes! I'm glad to hear Harvey say this, because one of the things I've always thought about Marx's theory of what makes a commodity a good commodity for money actually are consistent with electronic balance sheets, and makes sense of a transition from gold-based to fiat money (even though I know Marx doesn't believe in fiat money, but that gold must back paper money)

"We always have to ask the question: who is the master behind these ideas?"

"ideas are the vehicles which change the world" -- Theses on Feuerbach

Ahhh "free time is a measure of socialism" -- nice. Reminds me of the best theory of communism: "Communism is free time and nothing else"

"Capital does not like a world in which there is free time. It colonizes it. And capital does not like a world in which people have time to think. They want people to be able to act on information, not think"

"we get mixed up on money as a form of price, and money as a form of value"

"we are actually producing experiences"

****

Ooo this is interesting. The conflict between Marx's nihilism and Marx's clear and obvious moral commitments. Nice question.

"they are not thinking about morality as a political question -- as far as they are concerned, how much morality is there on wall street?" -- yup. You get this even from the manifesto.

"will you actually change capital by changing people's ideas and changing their morality? i think that the evidence of that is very very negative" -- I like that he's taking the hard line against belief as an agent of change. Not that it's unimportant! And he's emphasizing that, with Marx. But "activity" is a category distinct from belief.

***

Interesting that he took a question from the youtube chat while they were streaming. I'll keep that in mind while reading. I might come up with one.

***

I like that Harvey is pointing out the centrality of the military to our situation. And, in general, I like how Harvey is tying this old text to our current world throughout his lecture and Q&A. I agree that the military is our economic center.

***

"both merchants and industrialists are subservient in the United States to the financiers"

"one of the most important thing about money is how mobile it can be and so many of the innovations in block-chain technology are about reducing the cost of exchanges"

Interesting that he's bringing in the idea of the velocity of transaction which Marx keeps mentioning. And then qualifying why monetary policy is still not the vector of revolutionary change.

***

I'm impressed that Harvey committed to central planning. It's something I'm still "eh" on. But he puts to words some of the things I think -- like, can you say that central planning failed in the Soviet Union?

***

Why was marx convinced money would not go off the gold standard? because it seems...

ahh! this question is great. It's the exact sort of thought I was having that his theory actually supports fiat currency.

"first, I don't know. i just think at that time there was no reason for it. and as marx is a person of his time it was irrelevant"

definitely a different answer than I thought. More or less Harvey points to the passage which is a hypothetical to make a reductio of Proudhon as a good description of what we actually did; whereas what I think is that if labor-time is the basis of value then fiat currency makes sense as a development of money. Eventually, exchange-value rules. Money as measure and medium and goal becomes a concrete social which is alien to any individual (individual, worthwhile to remind ourselves, coming about as a reality only because of the economic relations which allow individual rights to property).

***

Yup, just posting my notes while listening. I'm glad to have you along @fdrake -- I hope you get to feeling better soon.

I was not, I just went back to the youtube page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkeaMEUxWrc&ab_channel=ThePeople%27sForumNYC Listening now.

I am not advising you or anyone else who might be reading this to accept this or any other likely story. It may be that what is and has been going on may turn out to not be likely at all. I am approaching these questions speculatively and dialogically, but I don't expect much will come of it. The real work is being done elsewhere.

M'kay, cool.

I guess I just have a feeling about an answer to the question, more than anything. So I was attempting to work out that answer in the thread.

So dialogic, speculative -- but not work. I don't labor under the delusion that there aren't others who are better than I at this working on these very questions :D. I just have that itch to scratch!

Although I was responding to your post I was speaking in general terms. It is common in these discussions for someone to insist that ontology or reductionism or metaphysics means this or that, and will carry in their baggage.

I may have been misled by your mention of Kant. Kant on metaphysics and ontology leads to the kind of rabbit hole you are wisely trying to avoid. — Fooloso4

Cool. That helps me in thinking through your post.

The one thing I'm importing from Kant is the denial of metaphysics as knowledge -- however, in some of my initial attempts at responding I was trying to qualify in what way and all that, and it started to spiral off :D. But I'm not as clear on it as he is, and I don't even agree with his project. It's in the background of my thinking, however. And roughly what I think I'd try to defend is the belief that scientific knowledge does not lead to knowledge about what fundamentally is the case, or the fundaments of reality. Now, maybe that's entirely off base from the notion of likely stories, or even of theory reduction. But just to say more about why I mentioned Kant.

I'm not going to lie, all this about what determines the amount of money that should be in circulation is a bit dry, but here's one of the gems Harvey talked about:

Circulation is the movement in which the general alienation appears as general appropriation and general appropriation as general alienation. As much, then, as the whole of this movement appears as a social process, and as much as the individual moments of this movement arise from the conscious will and particular purposes of individuals, so much does the totality of the process appear as an objective interrelation, which arises spontaneously from nature; arising, it is true, from the mutual influence of conscious individuals on one another, but neither located in their consciousness, nor subsumed under them as a whole. Their own collisions with one another produce an alien social power standing above them, produce their mutual interaction as a process and power independent of them. Circulation, because a totality of the social process, is also the first form in which the social relation appears as something independent of the individuals, but not only as, say, in a coin or in exchange value, but extending to the whole of the social movement itself. The social relation of individuals to one another as a power over the individuals which has become autonomous, whether conceived as a natural force, as chance or in whatever other form, is a necessary result of the fact that the point of departure is not the free social individual. Circulation as the first totality among the economic categories is well suited to bring this to light.

One of the innovations of Marx, in social theory, is exactly this -- the notion that the social is independent of individuals, and that it can be described. He's talking about " the social movement itself" and not what a bunch of people are doing together.

It's an idea that I've had a hard time getting across, sometimes, because we are so habituated to thinking ourselves as individuals, and thinking of the social as that which arises out of what a collection of individuals do.

***

Oi, these notebooks are pretty rough. :D How many times do I need an example of two different commodities being equated to one another, and the explanation that money is the commodity which mediates the use-value (or physical) differences between products, and its value is expressed in price which is related, through the process of circulation, to labor time, and therefore it acts as both a medium of exchange and a measure of value. (apparently, hundreds of pages worth)

(I feel like these notebooks are responding to some very particular criticisms that I'm probably missing, given this conversation happened some 150 years ago)

But another gem, or at least a conclusion in what appears to be some difficult to follow reasoning:

Only within circulation, then, is it such a material symbol; taken out of circulation, it again becomes a realized price; but within the process, as we have seen, the quantity, the amount of these material symbols of the monetary unit is the essential attribute. Hence, while the material substance of money, its material substratum of a given quantity of gold or silver, is irrelevant within circulation, where money appears as something existing in opposition to commodities, and where, by contrast, its amount is the essential aspect, since it is there only a symbol for a given amount of this unit; in its role as measure, however, where it was introduced only ideally, its material substratum was essential, but its quantity and even its existence as such were irrelevant. From this it follows that money as gold and silver, in so far as only its role as means of exchange and circulation is concerned, can be replaced by any other symbol which expresses a given quantity of its unit, and that in this way symbolic money can replace the real, because material money as mere medium of exchange is itself symbolic.

Ahhh, at last, any commodity can serve the function of money.

That's not the only thing he's trying to establish, but due to the historical nature of the debates I'm just admitting to struggling with some of the assertions (in trying to figure out why they are relevant).

The story I'm gathering is -- money has moments. In its first moments it behaves in accord with C-M-M-C (interesting to note that in Capital, this equation is C-M-C -- here I'm guessing he's treating the equation as a particular exchange) (measure of value between two commodities?), in its second moment it begins as money to return as money (medium of exchange and realizer of prices), and then in the third moment money becomes an end unto itself and exits the field of circulation.

In the case of money as capital, money itself is posited (1) as precondition of circulation as well as its result; (2) as having independence only in the form of a negative relation, but always a relation to circulation; (3) as itself an instrument of production, since circulation no longer appears in its primitive simplicity, as quantitative exchange, but as a process of production, as a real metabolism. And thus money is itself stamped as a particular moment of this process of production. Production is not only concerned with simple determination of prices, i.e. with translation of the exchange values of commodities into a common unit, but with the creation of exchange values, hence also with the creation of the particularity of prices. Not merely with positing the form, but also the content. Therefore, while in simple circulation, money appears generally as productive, since circulation in general is itself a moment of the system of production, nevertheless this quality still only exists for us, and is not yet posited in money. (4) As capital, money thus also appears posited as a relation to itself mediated by circulation – in the relation of interest and capital. But here we are not as yet concerned with these aspects; rather, we have to look simply at money in the third role, in the form in which it emerged as something independent from circulation, more properly, from both its earlier aspects.

Heh, didn't quite finish the assignment. I'll have to block more time this coming week. But that's where I'm at as of right before class.

I'm having a hard time coming up with a response. I've written a few and then I feel like it's entirely wrong :D I can't tell if we're in agreement here now, in that we cannot know that such a reduction could take place (so it is perhaps better to believe in a void), or if you advising me to adopt physicalism and reduction on the basis that it's the most likely story, and we cannot know more, so it's wise to accept this likely story?

And I'll try not to get stuck on terminology. I at least share your suspicion of philosophical terminology, in that while it can clarify it can also be the thing your mind is getting stuck on and it's actually confusing in some circumstances. But I'm not sure where in this conversation the terminology has led me astray. My guess is it's with the use of "ontology" and "reduction" and "metaphysics" -- but I thought we're using the terms closely enough. I understood your definitions of ontology and reduction.




OK, tomorrow, I'll read up. But the thoughts are still buzzing so that's what's shared here:


That's not how I'd put it, mostly because syntactic entities usually do not include activity. But I could go along with the notion all the same, because I believe I'm tracking what you've typed: and I'm still on the "no" side and working through the reasons why. (I have opinions, but I'm talking because I'm still not clear on them.)

"Logical consequences" seem odd to me. Do theories have logical consequences? It seems to me that theories have interpretations which can be used to do experiments to demonstrate or build upon what's been demonstrated. Theories, once called, usually are the means by which we explain individual experiments, rather than some kind of coherent uber-picture. They are very particular -- so we have the science of mechanics, and within the science of mechanics you have statics and dynamics of classically sized objects, you have thermodynamics and electrodynamics, statistical and quantum mechanics, and each of these has their own statements within their books that do not logically imply one another. They cohere, but that's not the same thing. If you're doing a thermodynamical experiment, you wouldn't use "F=ma" because that's not the sort of experiment you are doing.

However, you can crib from other sciences for your purposes (hence the kinetic theory of heat). If it works for your question, for your experiment, go ahead. And I'd say that treating the sciences as if they cohere is a very common, regulative belief that is fruitful. (But notice that's not the same thing as to say that it's a true belief).

But that's not the same as seeing theories as logical consequences of one another. And I don't think that's generally even a goal of scientists.

And if the sub-fields within mechanics don't even logically imply one another, and they are much closer in concept, I then have a reason to doubt that there will be, say, a mechanics which logically implies, say, that all living creatures are related through speciation of a common ancestor.

Hey no worries. I'm glad to do it. For the 21'st of February you'll stop at this paragraph on this page. I'll keep updating every week so you can follow along.

This is the occasion to draw attention to a moment which here, for the first time, not only arises from the standpoint of the observer, but is posited in the economic relation itself. In the first act, in the exchange between capital and labour, labour as such, existing for itself, necessarily appeared as the worker. Similarly here in the second process: capital as such is posited as a value existing for itself, as egotistic value, so to speak (something to which money could only aspire). But capital in its being-for-itself is the capitalist. Of course, socialists sometimes say, we need capital, but not the capitalist. [7] Then capital appears as a pure thing, not as a relation of production which, reflected in itself, is precisely the capitalist. I may well separate capital from a given individual capitalist, and it can be transferred to another. But, in losing capital, he loses the quality of being a capitalist. Thus capital is indeed separable from an individual capitalist, but not from the capitalist, who, as such, confronts the worker. Thus also the individual worker can cease to be the being-for-itself [Fürsichsein] of labour; he may inherit or steal money etc. But then he ceases to be a worker. As a worker he is nothing more than labour in its being-for-itself. (This to be further developed later.) [8]

The term ontology does not have an single agreed upon usage or definition . I mean that the most basic "stuff" of the world is physical. The term reductionist does not have a single agreed upon usage or definition either. As I am using the term in the sense that nothing else is posited as fundamental. All that comes to be, life, consciousness, mind, comes to be from the physical structures, forces, and interactions that underlie them. — Fooloso4

Fair points.

So the belief that "The most basic "stuff" of the world is physical" and the belief that "all that comes to be, life, consciousness, mind, comes to be from the physical structures, forces, and interactions that underlie them" -- I think both of these beliefs would qualify as "ontologically" as I was using the term.

I am uncertain to the extent it is rational to believe either of those. Which isn't the same as to say they are not true. However, if they are not rational to believe, even if they are true, they'd fall into the mythic portion of philosophy: the stories told for those who need a story.

For my money it's a good myth. But I'm uncertain to what extent I believe it, really, or to what extent one can believe anything about what is fundamental. It seems to me that any posited fundamental stuff can be justified. You just have to pick the right rules of rationality for them.

:lol:

Look, in the people's scientific resistance to the romans...

I think I'm tracking. I didn't think you were positing eliminativism.

More bringing up difficulties that come to mind. I'll admit to not reading the Nagel yet -- I gotta do Marx. I just had thoughts to get out there to share.



Cool.

I mean, it's Schrodinger, so I'm guessing it's pretty esoteric :D -- dude had beliefs about the reality of waves in opposition to the particle interpretation of quantum mechanics. (spoiler: turns out they are mathematically reducible to one another). All the quantum pioneers had very different beliefs, it seems to me. It has thus far been judged as uninteresting for scientific purposes.

But to concur with part of where you started, with respect to science really beginning in the mundane (I just hadn't thought of anything to respond to it until now): the reason quantum interpretation is judged as "pure theory" (so only pursued by the brave few who stake their career on it) is because we live within the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie!

I appreciate you even trying, because I too am stumbling.

Ontologically I'm an absurdist, or at least that's how I like to put it now. I'm obviously still thinking through things. But this is just to say where I'm at, rather than go down another rabbit hole.

In the vein of Kant's denial that metaphysics is knowledge -- I'm uncertain where I'm at ontologically. It seems as if one could posit anything, and it would be accepted more based upon where we're at, how it'd help us, and all that. But ontology is supposed to be more general than desire, usually.

So while the words of philosophers which speak ontologically make sense I'm not comfortable with committing to any ontological reductionism I've come across so far.

Epistemologically, I think, is how I'm approaching the problem, through the lens of the history of science as scientists being the ones who make science.

. We cannot understand life without beginning with things that are alive. We must work at it from both ends. The problem with reductionism is that it reduces things to something other than they are. — Fooloso4

I agree with this! And I believe that is @frank's point, too, only noting that we might be able to make a reduction after all.

I suppose, given the diversity of all the sciences, I still feel skeptical about a reduction to physics.

"Who designed the designer?" is a question, not an argument -- so I'd say it is neither valid nor invalid.

I think your argument is a strong statement of Premise 1 which is attempting to refute a counter objection, but in argument form. It looks more like a dialectic.

In response to the conclusion, I'd say it's plausible that another starting point could account for the designer other than the designer. For instance, the guy who designed airplanes is accounted for by being human and where all that came from. So why is it that the designer must be the starting point? Some designers are not starting points after all.

Yes and No. ;)

That's a great question. Are physics and biology a distinction between species which branched from one another, or are they of a distinction between kinds? (also, very true what you said of Darwin -- I wouldn't have been able to put Darwin's contribution so succinctly as you did)


I want to say they are a distinction of kinds, but I think I get there from the more general question about science as a whole, i.e. my reading of the interplay between mostly Popper and Feyerabend, plus just thinking about all the things science consists in when taken as a historical entity rather than a conceptual one.

So I want to say that biology, even with time and in an intelligence highly developed, cannot reduce to physics. However, I want to say it in this qualified sense where I just want to bring difficulties forward, rather than say, categorically, this cannot take place.

That is, I think that's my side. That's my suspicion. But, hey, I'm talking here for a reason. :D

Picking up where I left off (weekends are for rest) --


Even More on the Differences Between Time-chits and Money (and how that doesn't add up):

In this case the bank is simultaneously the general buyer and the general seller in one person. Or the opposite takes place. In this case, the bank chit is mere paper which claims to be the generally recognized symbol of exchange value, but has in fact no value. For this symbol has to have the property of not merely representing, but being, exchange value in actual exchange. In the latter case the bank chit would not be money, or it would be money only by convention between the bank and its clients, but not on the open market. It would be the same as a meal ticket good for a dozen meals which I obtain from a restaurant, or a theatre pass good for a dozen evenings, both of which represent money, but only in this particular restaurant or this particular theatre. The bank chit would have ceased to meet the qualifications of money, since it would not circulate among the general public, but only between the bank and its clients...

..The bank would thus be the general buyer and seller. Instead of notes it could also issue cheques, and instead of that it could also keep simple bank accounts. Depending on the sum of commodity values which X had deposited with the bank, X would have that sum in the form of other commodities to his credit. A second attribute of the bank would be necessary: it would need the power to establish the exchange value of all commodities, i.e. the labour time materialized in them, in an authentic manner. But its functions could not end there. It would have to determine the labour time in which commodities could be produced, with the average means of production available in a given industry, i.e. the time in which they would have to be produced. But that also would not be sufficient. It would not only have to determine the time in which a certain quantity of products had to be produced, and place the producers in conditions which made their labour equally productive (i.e. it would have to balance and to arrange the distribution of the means of labour), but it would also have to determine the amounts of labour time to be employed in the different branches of production. The latter would be necessary because, in order to realize exchange value and make the bank’s currency really convertible, social production in general would have to be stabilized and arranged so that the needs of the partners in exchange were always satisfied. Nor is this all. The biggest exchange process is not that between commodities, but that between commodities and labour. (More on this presently.) The workers would not be selling their labour to the bank, but they would receive the exchange value for the entire product of their labour, etc. Precisely seen, then, the bank would be not only the general buyer and seller, but also the general producer. In fact either it would be a despotic ruler of production and trustee of distribution, or it would indeed be nothing more than a board which keeps the books and accounts for a society producing in common. The common ownership of the means of production is presupposed, etc., etc. The Saint-Simonians made their bank into the papacy of production.

What Adam Smith, in the true eighteenth-century manner, puts in the prehistoric period, the period preceding history, is rather a product of history.

This reciprocal dependence is expressed in the constant necessity for exchange, and in exchange value as the all-sided mediation. The economists express this as follows: Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual’s pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others’ interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation. The point is rather that private interest is itself already a socially determined interest, which can be achieved only within the conditions laid down by society and with the means provided by society; hence it is bound to the reproduction of these conditions and means. It is the interest of private persons; but its content, as well as the form and means of its realization, is given by social conditions independent of all.

Heh, those are right next to one another, but they are both really good sections. The first, as criticism of naive socialisms (one which mimics the same criticism I've heard levied against socialism, that the Party now is both the State and the Employer), and the second for talking about scope. "Private interest" is a social relation, which Marx here points out, while real, is the product of the time (the private interests come on the scene as soon as bourgeois politics begins to undermine feudal social relations) -- one could do worse in reading Marx in always remembering that Feudalism is the historical analogue of Capitalism: it's on a scope larger than the individual, in that case, fiefs and duchies and kingdoms and the entire mess that was medieval ownership, but it's those over time, and they are independent of any individual kingdom, duchy, fief, and so forth.

But more on our relationship, in capitalism to the social bond:

The reciprocal and all-sided dependence of individuals who are indifferent to one another forms their social connection. This social bond is expressed in exchange value, by means of which alone each individual’s own activity or his product becomes an activity and a product for him; he must produce a general product – exchange value, or, the latter isolated for itself and individualized, money. On the other side, the power which each individual exercises over the activity of others or over social wealth exists in him as the owner of exchange values, of money. The individual carries his social power, as well as his bond with society, in his pocket.

Something interesting to note here is in relation to We-Intentions. Note how money, here, is not given power due to We-Intentions, but because it is an independent, social entity with objectively determinable properties.

But, back to the badness of time-chits:

Individuals are subsumed under social production; social production exists outside them as their fate; but social production is not subsumed under individuals, manageable by them as their common wealth. There can therefore be nothing more erroneous and absurd than to postulate the control by the united individuals of their total production, on the basis of exchange value, of money, as was done above in the case of the time-chit bank.

Or, really, I'm just stressing the point about the social being both real and independent of individuals.

Something often misunderstood with Marx is how he feels about capitalism. He's actually quite fascinated with its operations. And he judges it positively:

It has been said and may be said that this is precisely the beauty and the greatness of it: this spontaneous interconnection, this material and mental metabolism which is independent of the knowing and willing of individuals, and which presupposes their reciprocal independence and indifference. And, certainly, this objective connection is preferable to the lack of any connection, or to a merely local connection resting on blood ties, or on primeval, natural or master-servant relations.

Equally certain is it that individuals cannot gain mastery over their own social interconnections before they have created them. But it is an insipid notion to conceive of this merely objective bond as a spontaneous, natural attribute inherent in individuals and inseparable from their nature (in antithesis to their conscious knowing and willing). This bond is their product. It is a historic product. It belongs to a specific phase of their development. The alien and independent character in which it presently exists vis-à-vis individuals proves only that the latter are still engaged in the creation of the conditions of their social life, and that they have not yet begun, on the basis of these conditions, to live it. It is the bond natural to individuals within specific and limited relations of production. Universally developed individuals, whose social relations, as their own communal [gemeinschaftlich] relations, are hence also subordinated to their own communal control, are no product of nature, but of history. The degree and the universality of the development of wealth where this individuality becomes possible supposes production on the basis of exchange values as a prior condition, whose universality produces not only the alienation of the individual from himself and from others, but also the universality and the comprehensiveness of his relations and capacities. In earlier stages of development the single individual seems to be developed more fully, because he has not yet worked out his relationships in their fullness, or erected them as independent social powers and relations opposite himself. It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness [22] as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint has never advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the latter will accompany it as legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end.)

I'm sort of just quote-dumping here, but these are some great sections for clarifying misunderstandings I've come across in reading Marx : the social is independent of the individual, and alienation is a stage in seeking control over the social -- the original fullness that we might dream of cannot come back, either, because we now depend upon the world market. We were raised in an environment which taught us to become industrial citizens: if we "returned to how things were" we'd be peasants or hunter gatherers, and a great deal of the population would die off because those means of production are not able to support a population the size of what we have now.

For Marx he's always pointing out that these relationships are not natural, because they are different from how they were (feudal), and so the bourgeoisie, like every class which has ruled the world, sees itself as the end of history when it's just a moment in history.

Ye olde appearance/reality distinction -- the social appears natural because the individual has no control over the natural, but is born into a world with such and such social realtionships already at play. But in reality, the social relationship is much larger than our immediate surroundings, and our immediate surroundings, as well as ourselves as individuated people with personal bank accounts (the individual right to own property), are the product of social forces.

A particular expenditure of labour time becomes objectified in a definite particular commodity with particular properties and a particular relationship to needs; but, in the form of exchange value, labour time is required to become objectified in a commodity which expresses no more than its quota or quantity, which is indifferent to its own natural properties, and which can therefore be metamorphosed into – i.e. exchanged for – every other commodity which objectifies the same labour time. The object should have this character of generality, which contradicts its natural particularity. This contradiction can be overcome only by objectifying it: i.e. by positing the commodity in a double form, first in its natural, immediate form, then in its mediated form, as money. The latter is possible only because a particular commodity becomes, as it were, the general substance of exchange values, or because the exchange values of commodities become identified with a particular commodity different from all others. That is, because the commodity first has to be exchanged for this general commodity, this symbolic general product or general objectification of labour time, before it can function as exchange value and be exchanged for, metamorphosed into, any other commodities at will and regardless of their material properties. Money is labour time in the form of a general object, or the objectification of general labour time, labour time as a general commodity. Thus, it may seem a very simple matter that labour time should be able to serve directly as money (i.e. be able to furnish the element in which exchange values are realized as such), because it regulates exchange values and indeed is not only the inherent measure of exchange values but their substance as well (for, as exchange values, commodities have no other substance, no natural attributes). However, this appearance of simplicity is deceptive. The truth is that the exchange-value relation – of commodities as mutually equal and equivalent objectifications of labour time – comprises contradictions which find their objective expression in a money which is distinct from labour time.

This is an interesting paragraph to me because it highlights what "contradictions" means by Marx. Money is a concrete which resolves contradictions -- that's really interesting. "contradiction" is still a notion I'm suspicious of within the general wheel-house, because the rules for thinking dialectically are very far from clear to me, and are likewise easily subject to abuse because of that. Don't like a conclusion you've drawn? Just think dialectically about it, comrade! ;)

Here I'm noticing how the concrete object resolves conceptual contradictions from a time period before -- so money comes about because we have division of labor which segments the population into roles which could not survive on their own, yet they don't produce commensurable goods. If you have 2000 pairs of shoes at the end of the day, while you are one hell of a shoe crafter, you don't have the things you want. You're reliant upon all the other laborers to do their part, and exchange their goods: basically the need for money. Hence why we have all the talk about time-chits -- I take it that it was thought to be a viable replacement to capital, where Marx is clearly coming down against that, saying that capital takes us to a better place than we were, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for the possibility of a new society).

***

Through all the parenthetical notes it's easy to get lost in just what Marx is talking about and why, so I'm going to post the conclusion:

This much proceeds from what has been developed so far: A particular product (commodity) (material) must become the subject of money, which exists as the attribute of every exchange value. The subject in which this symbol is represented is not a matter of indifference, since the demands placed on the representing subject are contained in the conditions – conceptual determinations, characteristic relations – of that which is to be represented. The study of the precious metals as subjects of the money relations, as incarnations of the latter, is therefore by no means a matter lying outside the realm of political economy, as Proudhon believes, any more than the physical composition of paint, and of marble, lie outside the realm of painting and sculpture. The attributes possessed by the commodity as exchange value, attributes for which its natural qualities are not adequate, express the demands made upon those commodities which ϰατ᾽ ἐξοχήν [36] are the material of money. These demands, at the level to which we have up to now confined ourselves, are most completely satisfied by the precious metals. Metals as such [enjoy] preference over other commodities as instruments of production, and among the metals the one which is first found in its physical fullness and purity – gold; then copper, then silver and iron.

So eat it, Proudhon!

I'm going to be real -- I totally skipped part a where he's going into why different metals couldn't be used as money, thereby scientifically demonstrating his conclusion. And I only skimmed part b.

d, though, has some interesting parts I'm slowing down and reading now. I like this clear statement about money:

But first let us note that what is circulated by money is exchange value, hence prices. Hence, as regards the circulation of commodities, it is not only their mass but, equally, their prices which must be considered. A large quantity of commodities at a low exchange value (price) obviously requires less money for its circulation than a smaller quantity at double the price. Thus, actually, the concept of price has to be developed before that of circulation. Circulation is the positing of prices, it is the process in which commodities are transformed into prices: their realization as prices. Money has a dual character: it is (1) measure, or element in which the commodity is realized as exchange value, and (2) means of exchange, instrument of circulation, and in each of these aspects it acts in quite opposite directions. Money only circulates commodities which have already been ideally transformed into money, not only in the head of the individual but in the conception held by society (directly, the conception held by the participants in the process of buying and selling). This ideal transformation into money is by no means determined by the same laws as the real transformation. Their interrelation is to be examined.

Also pushes against some of the We-Intentions notes I put before; maybe because here he's talking about money in its ideal character in addition to its real character?

But mostly I like Marx's clear statement on the dual character of money, that it is both the means of exchange and measure of value.

One of the things I think that was "lost" in dropping Marx is looking for a material analogue that connects economics to the sciences. If economics is a science, as Marx holds, then it must have some measurable natural quantity -- hence Marx positing labor-time as the measurable quantity which all commodities share in common. Not that the price is in these units, it's not -- but with the discussion about money from before, it should be seen that since money is itself also just another commodity, nothing is explained by saying it's a medium of exchange. Of course it is, but what Marx is trying to understand is why it is a medium of exchange -- how is it that value, objectively (scientifically) increases? And for it to increase, you'd have to first say what it is, which for Marx is labor-time (though price tracks accreted concrete labor time, too -- so price is a measure, though its value fluctuates with its market)


A quote about ideal/real:

If exchange values are ideally transformed into money by means of prices, then, in the act of exchange, in purchase and sale, they are really transformed into money, exchanged for money, in order then to be again exchanged as money for a commodity. A particular exchange value must first be exchanged for exchange value in general before it can then be in turn exchanged for particulars. The commodity is realized as an exchange value only through this mediating movement, in which money plays the part of middleman. Money thus circulates in the opposite direction from commodities. It appears as the middleman in commodity exchange, as the medium of exchange. It is the wheel of circulation, the instrument of circulation for the turnover of commodities; but, as such, it also has a circulation of its own – monetary turnover, monetary circulation. The price of the commodity is realized only when it is exchanged for real money, or in its real exchange for money.

Also, a good quote to hammer, again, how Marx's theory of capitalism depends upon an account of exchange

The circumstances which determine the mass of commodity prices to be realized, on the one hand, and the velocity of circulation of money, on the other hand, are to be examined later. This much is clear, that prices are not high or low because much or little money circulates, but that much or little money circulates because prices are high or low;

All the previous to just say how monetary policy isn't all you need to look at.


Hrm, I'm thinking I'm going to call it there today. Tomorrow, finish before the lecture. I'm probably going to restart at the beginning of part D... I can feel the reading fatigue setting in and I'm starting to speed up. :D

(Top of Page 186 in Penguin Grundrisse)

One of the things I keep thinking of is how if I were to deny the reduction, in a way that, too, would be a transcendental condition on the history of science, which I want to deny(EDIT: i want to deny transcendental conditions of history). So I also don't want to come hard against it the reduction, but more highlight where there are problems and difficulties.

At the end, I think what convinces me that it's not possible is just the sheer diversity of the sciences today. There's so much, and so much of it has been successful without bothering with physics, that I begin to wonder what's the point of bridge laws anyways?

If your point is that Darwin didn't start with Newtonian laws and work his way up to evolution, I don't think that's what reductionists are suggesting scientists should do. Are they? — frank

Oh no, I don't think they'd make that simple of a mistake. So not the latter. I haven't read Schrodinger's book, so I cannot comment on that work, only to say that even if we perform this reduction, the practice of science, rather than the concepts of science, are what make it what it is This distinction between concept and practice is mostly what I was trying to get at -- the reduction occurs between concepts, but science is defined by what scientists do rather than the conceptual content of their theories. At least with respect to how I generally come to understand science in my method (where history trumps conception, though there is an interplay there too)

What's your assessment of the book?

But as a theory, I think evolution is amenable to reduction to physics. Darwin just didn't live long enough to read Schrodinger's book on it. I don't think he would have objected.
...
Any reasons why? — frank

More in the realm of "difficulties" than full on reasons -- but then noticed your opening point fit closer to your question here.

The thing I'd bring up is that "species" doesn't have a physics analogue. And, at present, though we are still building a mechanical theory of life, there's no reason to believe that said mechanical theory of life will reduce to physics, since biochemistry still utilizes chemical terms (like identifying molecules by structure, mass, temperature, etc.). And descriptions of life frequently utilize teleological notions, which is something else you'd have to figure out how to reduce or explain away (something like "what they really mean is..." rules) Even with our metabolic pathway mapped out molecularly, you won't find a behavior in that map that puts the food into the mouth to get the metabolic pathway going. Animal behavior, psychology, frequently utilizes notions which at least are not clearly reducible to physics... you see a pattern. :D

I guess it would be looking at, what constitutes a bridge law? What counts as a reduction to physics?

Could you explain what's meant by "transcendentalism"? — frank

There's a habit of thought where we come to see things with respect to that thought a lot. So with Popper you have this account which supposedly solves the problem of induction as well as the problem of demarcation, and lays out a rationality that scientists should follow in their theorizing.

It's all very interesting, only it doesn't look much like what scientists actually do.

Yet, we can double down and say, where scientists are not following a purported rationality, that is where they are being irrational and unscientific.

That's the move I think I'd guard against. I think it better to let history trump our ratio-centric re-statements of what we believe might be going on, in accord with a certain rationality we choose (because how else would you judge it rationally than be first choosing your rationality?)

For some reason or other, this way of doing things seems to produce sentences which are applicable to more than one -- and in fact many -- circumstances. But that "for some reason", so I believe, is not a conceptual boundary. So I think to answer your question here:

So let me ask: do you think biology can't be reduced (in the Nagelian sense) to physics? Or are you just saying it hasn't been as of yet? — frank

I was thinking how given that Darwin's proposal, in his own time, did not reduce to physics, yet it was science, and we continue to believe it and count it as science (though the story gets more complicated along the way), then that shows how science does not always reduce to physics.

Maybe in some sense in the future it could, but just having a moment is enough to show how scientific practice, in particular, does not reduce to physics.

But, more straightforward for what I believe: I don't really believe it could be reduced, though I'm not firm on that notion. But that's where I stand.

Some distinct theories that we still hold that don't reduce to one another though they do receive support from one another, which is one reason why we look for this more general structure of science:

Mechanics (all kinds)
Molecular theory and its relationship to the atom. (in particular I think the notion of molecular structure, rather than just the structure of things smaller than atoms, is something which chemists use that isn't exactly physics)
Evolutionary theory of speciation
Anthropogenically caused global warming (chemistry gives this a lot of support, in my view, but it was climate scientists doing climate science)
The germ theory of disease (and medical science, generally, I think walks its own way while simultaneously using other sciences in its own practices)
The theory of Plate tectonics

At least, these are the sorts of theories that I think of as distinct, and non-reductive with respect to one another.

But that's just the big-picture theory of science where we really believe it constructs some kind of unified picture. As soon as we let go of that, reductionism really is everywhere in scientific practice. It's just not so straightforward as a reduction to physics.

Heh, well I'd say pretty good, considering you're on the losing side of the debate :D -- but that's clearly just what I think, too, so hey, it's always good to stretch no matter the side we find ourselves on. I'm still interested. "Anything goes" isn't exactly satisfying either, in the end, even if it guards against a certain kind of transcendentalism that is worse than not having a theory.

I believe "reductionism" can definitely be made richer than your opening does. If you could make the case that individual sciences utilize reductionism, and that said utilization is the most rational way of doing science, then that'd undercut my second point since I was arguing against the notion that science reduces specifically to physics, which I think is just an easily disproven belief. All you need do is point out the theory of evolution, which is clearly a novel scientific theory which didn't reduce life to physics. But if reductionism isn't just the restatement of scientific theories in the terms of physics, my second argument, at least, would then be irrelevant. (EDIT: And, to be clear, my first paragraph points out how my answer, while rationally defensible, is at least unsatisfying, so there's still room for conversation)

Just to be clear, no sarcasm on my part. The ideas are thick enough, no need to add more complexity :D

The second meaning of reductionism is the assertion that all sciences should reduce to physics (just as Apollo did). The argument for this hinges mainly on the success of physics up to this point. At least methodologically, scientists should continue to stick to what's been working for thousands of years. We should approach all topics available for scientific inquiry as if the goal is further reduction to physics.

Thoughts? — frank

I'd argue against this form of reductionism.

Scientists haven't stuck to any methodological consideration for thousands of years. What works is dependent upon a community of scientists. And sometimes reductionism is a method which works to resolve problems, and sometimes it doesn't. It's this view of science being that Feyerabend targets when he says "anything goes" -- if science is an immutable, transcendental method of knowledge generation, and the method to understanding said method is to be gleaned by understanding what scientists actually do, and we look to the historical evidence of science the only theory one can propose that unites all historical scientific activity is to say "anything goes" -- whatever the scientists do in a current era, that's what the science is. Else, you'll find counter-examples of a proposed transcendental methodology.

Even removing the historical scope wouldn't work to make way for the claim that scientists reduce to physics: chemistry nor biology concern themselves with reducing to physics, and yet both will utilize physics for their own purposes and both utilize mathematical expressions in their own domains. (of course, this would depend upon which chemist and biologist -- organic synthesis in chemistry, for instance, is more concerned with synthesizing novel molecules, which follow their own set of rules which ahve been documented from experiments, and the only area of biology I can think of where physics would commonly interact would be bio-chemistry, such as the description of proton pumps which utilize quantum tunneling).

Roughly, the diversity of sciences outside of physics (where their methods are certainly more than reducing to physics) argues against the claim that scientists should reduce things to physics. Rather, science, as a whole, is a multiplicity of methods and approaches and foci. It's a social practice rather than a methodology.

fyi, if you are following along with the marxists dot org website version, Tuesday's reading gets us up to everything before this point: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm

For theodicy?

Not in my opinion. If karma plays the same role as heaven/hell, then it serves the same purpose as papering over inconvenient philosophical thoughts, I think.

The strong response, at least from my perspective (and I believe I've made this argument before), is to accept faith.

Or, to dress it up philosophically, the teleological suspension of the ethical.

One thing I'm wondering about -- I'm interested to see how Harvey begins to bring out the structure of the Grundrisse, because he mentioned that in the first lecture of his. And so far it just seems like a grab bag of topics that are loosely connected.

The chapter on money -- begins with criticizing the belief that owned metal and monetary value are in any way related. And while fights with Proudhoun are more just for historical interest, the following reflects upon Marx's method:

Economic facts do not furnish them with the test of their theories; rather, they furnish the proof of their lack of mastery of the facts, in order to be able to play with them. Their manner of playing with the facts shows, rather, the genesis of their theoretical abstractions.

Marx against clouds onin the sky revolutionary thinking:

But no, says the Proudhonist. Our new organization of the banks would not be satisfied with the negative accomplishment of abolishing the metal basis and leaving everything else the way it was. It would also create entirely new conditions of production and circulation, and hence its intervention would take place under entirely new preconditions. Did not the introduction of our present banks, in its day, revolutionize the conditions of production? Would large-scale modern industry have become possible without this new financial institution, without the concentration of credit which it created, without the state revenues which it created in antithesis to ground rent, without finance in antithesis to landed property, without the moneyed interest in antithesis to the landed interest; without these things could there have been stock companies etc., and the thousand forms of circulating paper which are as much the preconditions as the product of modern commerce and modern industry?

Personally I'm enjoying the discussion on money's value, but I can see it as being pretty dry too. A gem in the discussion, though, to disabuse certain misinterpretations of the labor theory of value:

What determines value is not the amount of labour time incorporated in products, but rather the amount of labour time necessary at a given moment.

There's a lot more where Marx talks about the value of money in relation to other theories of value, in particular he criticizes the use of time-chits as a replacement for money, noting that the time-chits would basically function exactly as money does now, where it'd have a relationship to price such that 3 hours time-chit= 1 hour labor time, due to market fluctuations -- a common distinction Marx makes is between price and value, or exchange value and real value. If you think of the little charts they put up to represent a Market, the average between the fluctuations is here being posited as the value and the number on the graph is the price. I'm not sure if this was my understanding of Capital's distinction... I would have said that the two are entirely separate, or in contradiction, which is what Marx says here but he's also intimating that the market price more or less "tracks" value (if we wanted to dispute, say, the use of the average function, but wanted to posit another one, some kind of aggregate function EDIT: Like median or mode, for instance, but I'm sure we could come up with more)

...

Also, I am not following this line:

Value is at the same time the exponent of the relation in which the commodity is exchanged with other commodities, as well as the exponent of the relation in which it has already been exchanged with other commodities (materialized labour time) in production;

I'm not sure what the exponent of a relation is, for Marx. (or, really, in general...)

But, I like this paragraph which gets closer to what I understand of Marx's theory of value:

Two commodities, e.g. a yard of cotton and a measure of oil, considered as cotton and as oil, are different by nature, have different properties, are measured by different measures, are incommensurable. Considered as values, all commodities are qualitatively equal and differ only quantitatively, hence can be measured against each other and substituted for one another (are mutually exchangeable, mutually convertible) in certain quantitative relations. Value is their social relation, their economic quality. A book which possesses a certain value and a loaf of bread possessing the same value are exchanged for one another, are the same value but in a different material. As a value, a commodity is an equivalent for all other commodities in a given relation. As a value, the commodity is an equivalent; as an equivalent, all its natural properties are extinguished; it no longer takes up a special, qualitative relationship towards the other commodities; but is rather the general measure as well as the general representative, the general medium of exchange of all other commodities. As value, it is money.

More or less pointing out that any commodity can serve as a repository of value, and hence be currency. (but there are material reasons you'd pick one commodity over another).

All this talk about how money works to arrive at the conclusion:

Now, just as it is impossible to suspend the complications and contradictions which arise from the existence of money alongside the particular commodities merely by altering the form of money (although difficulties characteristic of a lower form of money may be avoided by moving to a higher form), so also is it impossible to abolish money itself as long as exchange value remains the social form of products. It is necessary to see this clearly in order to avoid setting impossible tasks, and in order to know the limits within which monetary reforms and transformations of circulation are able to give a new shape to the relations of production and to the social relations which rest on the latter.

Super interesting paragraph distinguishing social existence of value from natural existence:

The product becomes a commodity; the commodity becomes exchange value; the exchange value of the commodity is its immanent money-property; this, its money-property, separates itself from it in the form of money, and achieves a general social existence separated from all particular commodities and their natural mode of existence; the relation of the product to itself as exchange value becomes its relation to money, existing alongside it; or, becomes the relation of all products to money, external to them all. Just as the real exchange of products creates their exchange value, so does their exchange value create money.

Got up to the break on page 153, or at the top of https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm today ~80 pages to go before Tuesday, laundry day should cover it.

No Exit. — Banno

Yeh, tho is hell other people really?

It's a temptation to say for me, but... naw, not really.

So you adopt the attitude of Homo Economicus? Yes, that's what games theory says we should do. But few of us actually act in this way. Offers of less then 20% are routinely rejected, despite being a win-win. — Banno

Only in matters of money. Though I acknowledge that it was a training, and not a natural inclination. But I'll note that even in adopting that attitude I was attempting to say I agree that I'd tell the other guy to eat it, just to be clear. My thought was if I have what is being offered I'm in a position that I don't have to say yes. So, in fact, I have a good bargaining position compared to the other guy. The other guy can only make an offer, I'm the one who gets to say yes or no. That means the outcome depends upon my wishes, and not theirs.

It's a trained way of thinking, I'll admit.

What I'm interested in is that the game shows that we intuitively reject the correct games-theoretical response, which is to accept any offer. Compare that with the recent discussions here of Moore's arguments that we intuit the good. — Banno

We're on the same page with the first sentence, then. I agree that's interesting, even with upping the ante.

I only feel comfortable saying maybe on the second sentence?

Is our intuition of the good the manifestation of an evolved strategy? Is what feels fair is a result of natural selection towards an appropriate stochastic games theoretical strategy? — Banno

I tend to believe that the social environment is where we can find causal explanations for what we feel in regards to ethical intuition.

So, in a very broad sense of natural selection, I would say yes -- but I'd hasten to add that this is an application of the notion (because nothing has been specified) of natural selection in a new domain, namely, culturally -- perhaps even anthropologically.

And if it is, does that matter? — Banno

Heh, well, I'd say it doesn't in an ethical sense. We are, for better or worse, condemned to be free. I think Sartre got that right.

But as soon as we care about ethics, then it clearly matters because you have to know where you are to get to where you want to be.

In the introduction there's a number of times Marx really "shows his ass" -- and this is where my heterodoxy comes into play -- where he truly believes there are higher and lower forms of civilizational development, in the same vein as the positivists like Comte, but instead with a proposed socialism which could develop out of capitalism as an even higher form of economic development.

Given the influence historiography, and even tangentially anthropology, has had on my thinking I cannot agree with Marx on stages of history, or even a material teleology. However, with historiography I've learned there's always a theory of history which makes the writing of history possible -- there is no "way things were" in a scientific sense. (which is another point of contention I have with the orthodox view, though not so strongly as the above).

But to give an end quote to show what I'm saying:

In the case of the arts, it is well known that certain periods of their flowering are out of all proportion to the general development of society, hence also to the material foundation, the skeletal structure as it were, of its organization. For example, the Greeks compared to the moderns or also Shakespeare. It is even recognized that certain forms of art, e.g. the epic, can no longer be produced in their world epoch-making, classical stature as soon as the production of art, as such, begins; that is, that certain significant forms within the realm of the arts are possible only at an undeveloped stage of artistic development. If this is the case with the relation between different kinds of art within the realm of the arts, it is already less puzzling that it is the case in the relation of the entire realm to the general development of society. The difficulty consists only in the general formulation of these contradictions. As soon as they have been specified, they are already clarified.

Let us take e.g. the relation of Greek art and then of Shakespeare to the present time. It is well known that Greek mythology is not only the arsenal of Greek art but also its foundation. Is the view of nature and of social relations on which the Greek imagination and hence Greek [mythology] is based possible with self-acting mule spindles and railways and locomotives and electrical telegraphs? What chance has Vulcan against Roberts and Co., Jupiter against the lightning-rod and Hermes against the Crédit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them. What becomes of Fama alongside Printing House Square? Greek art presupposes Greek mythology, i.e. nature and the social forms already reworked in an unconsciously artistic way by the popular imagination. This is its material. Not any mythology whatever, i.e. not an arbitrarily chosen unconsciously artistic reworking of nature (here meaning everything objective, hence including society). Egyptian mythology could never have been the foundation or the womb of Greek art. But, in any case, a mythology. Hence, in no way a social development which excludes all mythological, all mythologizing relations to nature; which therefore demands of the artist an imagination not dependent on mythology.

From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?

But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model.

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child’s naïvité, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many of the old peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art for us is not in contradiction to the undeveloped stage of society on which it grew. [It] is its result, rather, and is inextricably bound up, rather, with the fact that the unripe social conditions under which it arose, and could alone arise, can never return.

There is an interpretation in there that minimizes the cultural chauvinism, but I'd say this is one of the things I find most unattractive in Marx -- he, too, was a product of his time, and chauvinism is a part of his writing.

I am mainly concerned with the question of whether someone's descendant can inherit guilt. It is a common theme in religion with the original sin and in the Notion of Karma.

I was bought up being told that I was inherently sinful and deserving of hell. And there is the doctrine of total depravity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity

But it doesn't necessarily make sense.

But some times the continued presence of malicious human behaviour through history can make you support a notion of original sin. Are we born with innate antisocial traits? — Andrew4Handel

I think I'd like to split up these questions into three:

1) Can a person inherit family guilt, or be subject to some kind of original sin outside of their control?
2) Is that the same as original sin and being born to deserve damnation?
3) Are we born with innate antisocial traits?


To 1 I'd want to say yes. 2, no. 3, no, with a but.

1) Mostly thinking, what's stopping you from inheriting family guilt? It seems like a truism that if one lives within a culture where such a thing is enforced that that person has to deal with the consequences of that family guilt, whether they like it or not. (Now, should they? That's a different question)

2) For me a sort of boring no, because I simply don't believe in the premises that even give these words meaning.

3) No, we're not. And it's worth noting that "antisocial" is dependent upon which social environment we're in, so in a boring way we cannot be born with antisocial traits, even if we have inherent traits, because it's not dependent upon the traits it's dependent upon the evaluation of those traits in a given social environment.

The "but" -- we all have this potential, so I believe, to be persuaded to do evil. "Evil" is a funny word for materialism, but what I'd highlight is that we are all frail, prone to make mistakes, and so on, and the evils of the world were done by ordinary people like ourselves.

Finished up the introduction reading today, and I like this quote from Marx on methodology because it relates to a number of debates we have on the forum with respect to realism:

It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with e.g. the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the entire social act of production. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. E.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price etc. Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception [Vorstellung] of the whole, and I would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards ever more simple concepts [Begriff], from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations. The former is the path historically followed by economics at the time of its origins. The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin with the living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc.; but they always conclude by discovering through analysis a small number of determinant, abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly established and abstracted, there began the economic systems, which ascended from the simple relations, such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, to the level of the state, exchange between nations and the world market. The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into being. For example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc. It can never exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete, living whole. As a category, by contrast, exchange value leads an antediluvian existence. Therefore, to the kind of consciousness – and this is characteristic of the philosophical consciousness – for which conceptual thinking is the real human being, and for which the conceptual world as such is thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of production – which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside – whose product is the world; and – but this is again a tautology – this is correct in so far as the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above observation and conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of observation and conception into concepts. The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head’s conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as the presupposition.

Definitely a "Hegel on its head" move, where the categories are real both concretely and within one's own head. (EDIT: or as I've said before, Marx gets to cheat on the problem of consciousness, but the solution might be judged worse than the problem)


My aim is to have a writeup for the next reading to post before the class this time, so as to exercise the mind more.

An anecdote of the phenomena: I remember a contract negotiation where part of the bargaining unit cared more about the difference in pay between themselves and another group than what they would earn overall. I don't remember the numbers, but while the new pay schedule gave them a larger raise, they were more concerned with the pecking order than the raise they got.

"Which Rationality?" indeed.