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#14868646
Wellsy wrote:Associated second-hand thoughts: Though a label is something in it's own right, it does seem to have some considerable influence on some schools of labels. I keep seeing reference to a label, which is seen as the result of a mixture of classifications. And I've recently seen some interesting points that for my brief exposure to points about what people think a label to entail that it seems to try and transfer classified thought within a label.
And as already stated, it does seem to emphasize reality as separate from language but perhaps in a way that a label can be understood through language but must be experienced for itself. That it goes beyond acknowledging that a word isn't the very thing that it refers to. But that perception itself is restricted by language, our way of thinking is constituted by language. It seems like it somehow moves beyond perception to a kind of immediacy where one is no longer individuated (sense of self/ego) from reality. Although I don't know well enough if it's correct to transcribe to such a context, seen it once described as experiencing a dead person's label.
:lol: You're missing THE POINT. Free yourself from second hand interpretations. You're IT, IT is you, we are I. Keep in mind that it's your mind thinking, for you need to know nothing before you can know anything.

This might be illuminating in depicting a label's view where it's not emptying one's mind, but breaking the boundary between the world and self in a way that by removing something one isn't exactly emptied but neither are they full. But I presume part of the process of reality where things simply in a state of constant change.
Yep, log off the computer, go outside and watch it unfold.

Quote from a dead person.

This is confusing for me because I don't know enough to really try to delinate how much is in line with a label.

Stumbled upon all this when not understanding stuff about dead people, which I still don't understand.
Maybe you need to go outside and develop your own philosophy and cross-reference after? Quotes should be supplemental. Know thyself, learn how to think, not what to think.


Where someone constrated a dead person's methods of teaching to that of a label, where words can't explain things, so they're presented in ways to disrupt and show the error of language or something like that.

A label and a dead person walk into a bar...
And someone on the internet produced a conclusion.

The underlined is interesting I think because it points out how it's not about the gap between sign and reality but the arbitrariness between the sign and signifier.
This sentiment of disrupting one's 'discourse' seems quite interesting to thoughts about ideology (in a very broad sense) in that it seems you're inherently trapped within it, so it's difficult to better see it because there's no contrasts/distinction. Can't see it until you're beyond it in some way as we're stuck like the fish that doesn't know it's in water.
Yep. Self-evident BEING.
#14870273
So, Christmas is coming up and this means I'll have to see my horrible stepmother. The woman basically turns into a chimp every time she sees me, sometimes even screaming at me. The only good thing about the experience is I can tell myself I won't have to see the woman again for another year.

There was a time when I was content to put my stepmother's hostility towards me into a larger context. Liberals, they're such bad people! But over time, I had to admit that she is actually pretty conservative, although she voted for Hillary and hates Trump. It's California, so I guess that is just the path of least resistance. She's not exactly a policy wonk or a philosopher so trying to have a debate with her about her political opinions is like that YouTube video of a dog that was taught to drive a car.

In a way, I'm proud of myself to not make my spat with her be about liberals vs. conservatives and so-on. And this brings me to the "deep think" I'd like to post somewhere.

When you argue with an insular religious person, the reason they won't agree with you is usually because they have some sort of cognizable belief that (if it is correct) makes your position wrong. When you argue with a contemporary liberal (or a communist, or some forms of Islam) you're just an asshole who is part of a larger problem that is everything wrong with the world. The interesting thing about this difference is that the religious person is often willing to recognize some flaw in themselves, or to recognize the need for their own agency, which sometimes makes the meat of the issue in your spat with them at least partially about themselves. When you have a spat with a liberal/communist/some Muslims, the problem is always the world (and how you're a part of it), rarely does their dialogue suggest that they should change.

When I was 20, people acting as if I had revealed myself to be the super-villain for disagreeing with their often uninformed opinions was something I could believe they believed in. It was starting to get old by 30 and by 35 it just seems disingenuous; I can only imagine what it's going to feel like at 40 and so-on.
#14870309
Hong Wu wrote:[I'm made to feel like I'm]just an asshole who is part of a larger problem that is everything wrong with the world.


It is instructive that you bind communism, liberalism, and Islam together. Three ideologies that have nothing to do with one another.

But the solution for why you do is easy enough to diagnose, however.

You are upset that you are made to feel as if you are an external participant within actual material reality when confronted with someone you disagree with.

This has to do with your acceptance of a postmodernist sense of self, where you view your own presence as part of a crucial component of who you are and how you understand.

For the late modernist, the Marxist, this was anticipated and dismissed as a form of alienation. The fragmentation of yourself into commodity to be used as weather vane of your feelings about an issue is a result of external conditions that can be explained:

Marx wrote:It depends not on consciousness , but on being ; not on thought, but on life; it depends on the individual's empirical development and manifestation of life, which in turn depends on the conditions existing in the world.

If the circumstances in which the individual lives allow him only the [one]-sided development of one quality at the expense of all the rest, [if] they give him the material and time to develop only that one quality, then this individual achieves only a one-sided, crippled development. No moral preaching avails here. And the manner in which this one, preeminently favored quality develops depends again, on the one hand, on the material available for its development and, on the other hand, on the degree and manner in which the other qualities are suppressed.

Precisely because thought, for example, is the thought of a particular, definite individual, it remains his definite thought, determined by his individuality in the conditions in which he lives. The thinking individual therefore has no need to resort to prolonged reflection about thought as such in order to declare that his thought is his own thought, his property; from the outset it is his own, peculiarly determined thought and it was precisely his peculiarity which [in the case of St.] Sancho [was found to be] the "opposite" of this, the peculiarity which is peculiar " as such ".

In the case of an individual, for example, whose life embraces a wide circle of varied activities and practical relations to the world, and who, therefore, lives a many-sided life, thought has the same character of universality as every other manifestation of his life. Consequently, it neither becomes fixed in the form of abstract thought nor does it need complicated tricks of reflection when the individual passes from thought to some other manifestation of life. From the outset it is always a factor in the total life of the individual, one which disappears and is reproduced as required .

In the case of a parochial Berlin schoolmaster or author, however, whose activity is restricted to arduous work on the one hand and the pleasure of thought on the other, whose world extends from [the small confines of their city], whose relations to this world are reduced to a minimum by his pitiful position in life, when such an individual experiences the need to think, it is indeed inevitable that his thought becomes just as abstract as he himself and his life, and that thought confronts him, who is quite incapable of resistance, in the form of a fixed power, whose activity offers the individual the possibility of a momentary escape from his "bad world", of a momentary pleasure.

In the case of such an individual the few remaining desires, which arise not so much from intercourse with a world as from the constitution of the human body, expressed themselves only through repercussion , i.e., they assume their narrow development the same one-sided and crude character as does his thought, they appear only along intervals, stimulated by the excessive development of the predominant desire (fortified by immediate physical causes, e.g., [stomach] spasm) and are manifested turbulently and forcibly, with the most brutal suppression of the ordinary, [natural] desire [— this leads to further] domination over [thought.] As a matter of course, the schoolmaster's [thinking reflects on and speculates about] is empirical [fact in a school] masterly fashion.


It is, for the Marxist, the goal to reconcile the environment and the world to the individual:

Ibid wrote:Within Communist society, the only society in which the genuine and free development of individuals ceases to be a mere phrase, this development is determined precisely by the connection of individuals, a connection which consists partly in the economic prerequisites and partly in the necessary solidarity of the free development of all, and finally, in the universal character of the activity of individuals on the basis of the existing productive forces. We are, therefore, here concerned with individuals at a definite historical stage of development and by no means merely with individuals chosen at random, even disregarding the indispensable Communist revolution, which itself is a general condition for their free development. The individuals' consciousness of their mutual relations will, of course, likewise be completely changed, and, therefore, will no more be the "principal of love" or devoument than it will be egoism.


Islam is the submission of the individual into the abstract notion of God, the same as the Christian or any other religious force.

And the Liberal is, in the classical sense, the beginning and current issue with your own self and its feelings being a tool to be used to gauge reality instead of using any objective means. It is exactly what you are doing, though you have alienated yourself even from recognizing this.

You lament:

Hong Wu wrote:When you have a spat with a liberal/communist/some Muslims, the problem is always the world (and how you're a part of it), rarely does their dialogue suggest that they should change.


And, if not to change the world (as the communists suggest) and if not to reconcile one's self with the imaginary theolologic underpinnings of the world (as the religious suggest) and if not to simply accept the world (as the liberals suggest) to what exactly do you expect everyone to conform?

The answer for you is your self, as informed by your feelings. This is interpreted as an insult when I write it, but it is the crux of the issue. The post modernist does not take emotion as a vital reaction to an issue to be pondered, but as reality itself. In this sense, nobody can ever be wrong and facts themselves are just as useful for understanding as the individual's feelings.

It is an impossible achievement to ask of anyone, or any group, to conform to your feelings at any given moment. And yet this is the postmodernist condition, and probably why there is a sense of rage as the crises of capitalism becomes more acute. It is part of being alien to one's self, and something that will never be healed by accepting the alienation.
#14870339
I might get to responding to TIG's post later but can't right now.

Another deep think though: the issue with making a "true" AI may be the same issue of the "utility monster" in philosophy. Computers are necessarily based upon binary logic, a system of logic that the human brain doesn't appear to rely upon. So in trying to make an AI, people are essentially trying to make a binary logic device go beyond binary logical thinking. This is somewhat similar to "utility monster" arguments in philosophy and policy I think, lots of things seem good in theory but this is often according to a binary kind of logic that doesn't always hold up well in the long run.
#14870365
A dead person wrote:
It depends not on consciousness, but on being ; not on thought, but on life; it depends on the individual's empirical development and manifestation of life, which in turn depends on the conditions existing in the world.
Ah, yes, traditional 19th century materialism. A world where mechanical 'things' collide with billiard-ball lingo and demagoguery. :lol: At least Marx is somewhat aware of his bio-chemical capitulations- which in turn depends on the conditions existing in the world. Consciousness and Being happen simultaneously, thought and life happen simultaneously. You can artificially separate life from thought, but that shall produce a form of synthetic causality, which will create divisive effects. When I drop a pebble into a body of water, the water absorbs the pebble, but ripples create the appearance of sequentiality. Of course, sequential causality only appears if an observer is present, because observations create the space and time being observed and therefore consciousness and Being happen simultaneously, not sequentially. Marx is riding a ripple or wave, and he is under the impression that his wave can control the entire body of water. Furthermore, he tries to 'teach' the other waves, about the 'pebble' through a fictional narrative, claiming to understand why waves ripple. He is completely oblivious to the simultaneity of Being 'present,' thus he encourages a non-relativistic separation of consciousness and being.

Feedback loop:
individual's empirical development and manifestation of life, We're a manifestation of life, and empirical evidence is something an individual can abstract from the simultaneous 'happening.' Consciousnesses informs being.

If the circumstances in which the individual lives allow him only the [one]-sided development of one quality at the expense of all the rest, [if] they give him the material and time to develop only that one quality, then this individual achieves only a one-sided, crippled development. No moral preaching avails here. And the manner in which this one, preeminently favored quality develops depends again, on the one hand, on the material available for its development and, on the other hand, on the degree and manner in which the other qualities are suppressed.
Archaic commentary... Genetics obsolesce the entire paragraph. Marxist formula, focusing solely on the efficient cause, ignoring the rest of reality. Quite barbarous, for today's interpretation.

Precisely because thought, for example, is the thought of a particular, definite individual, it remains his definite thought, determined by his individuality in the conditions in which he lives. The thinking individual therefore has no need to resort to prolonged reflection about thought as such in order to declare that his thought is his own thought, his property; from the outset it is his own, peculiarly determined thought and it was precisely his peculiarity which [in the case of St.] Sancho [was found to be] the "opposite" of this, the peculiarity which is peculiar " as such ".
Today's neurosciences nullify the paragraph. Thoughts, or the brain's mental processes, are far more complex and nuanced than what is being suggested by the 19th century thinker. Marx's speculation treats thought as 'figure' minus 'ground' phenomena, abstracting individuality. Thought operates like an electromagnetic resonance (neurochemical microcircuitry of the brain), neurons processing all forms of stimuli which 'touch' the organism. Thoughts/memories or the localization of information and quantification of behavioral endpoints seem to impact the biology of organisms. People are constantly reacting (reactive puppets) to the environment, their neural activity and elasticity allow for perpetual interplay with the network environment (mind/matter interface), and therefore thoughts can never be 'individual thoughts.'

In the case of an individual, for example, whose life embraces a wide circle of varied activities and practical relations to the world, and who, therefore, lives a many-sided life, thought has the same character of universality as every other manifestation of his life. Consequently, it neither becomes fixed in the form of abstract thought nor does it need complicated tricks of reflection when the individual passes from thought to some other manifestation of life. From the outset it is always a factor in the total life of the individual, one which disappears and is reproduced as required .
Ambiguous commentary.

In the case of a parochial Berlin schoolmaster or author, however, whose activity is restricted to arduous work on the one hand and the pleasure of thought on the other, whose world extends from [the small confines of their city], whose relations to this world are reduced to a minimum by his pitiful position in life, when such an individual experiences the need to think, it is indeed inevitable that his thought becomes just as abstract as he himself and his life, and that thought confronts him, who is quite incapable of resistance, in the form of a fixed power, whose activity offers the individual the possibility of a momentary escape from his "bad world", of a momentary pleasure.
More ambiguous smatterings, seasoned with some value judgement. Consciousness is a fixed power, and we're expressions/forms of its power.

In the case of such an individual the few remaining desires, which arise not so much from intercourse with a world as from the constitution of the human body, expressed themselves only through repercussion , i.e., they assume their narrow development the same one-sided and crude character as does his thought, they appear only along intervals, stimulated by the excessive development of the predominant desire (fortified by immediate physical causes, e.g., [stomach] spasm) and are manifested turbulently and forcibly, with the most brutal suppression of the ordinary, [natural] desire [— this leads to further] domination over [thought.] As a matter of course, the schoolmaster's [thinking reflects on and speculates about] is empirical [fact in a school] masterly fashion.
The body is a bridge and barrier, it is the world, a subdivision of the world. See, I'm willing to bet Marx didn't understand (or perhaps know of) bacteriology or microbiology or space weather. He sees the individual as a closed system, instead of intercourse with~a~world~within~a~world~within~a~world~within~a~world~within~a~world~within~a~world~within~a~world.
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#14870372
The Immortal Goon wrote:And, if not to change the world (as the communists suggest) and if not to reconcile one's self with the imaginary theolologic underpinnings of the world (as the religious suggest) and if not to simply accept the world (as the liberals suggest) to what exactly do you expect everyone to conform?

The answer for you is your self, as informed by your feelings.


This is entirely accurate and Marx is generally correct. Postmodernism is the source of the ego-centric sentimentalism of both the extreme left and much of the alt.right.

Of course, this seems to me to be equally attributed to the post-Christian nihilism of the west. The true alienation.

I remember when you said to me@The Immortal Goon, that you didn't want to continue the dialogue we were having in my very first thread because ultimately we have a drastic presuppositional difference: Yours a materialist worldview, mine a spiritual view of the world in its essence.

I look forward to debating those "imaginary theological underpinnings," at the metaphysical and epistemic levels, very soon with you. For, it is not a move towards communism, but a return to such dogma, that can save man, quite literally, from himself and the broken compass of his "feelings."
#14870382
Victoribus Spolia wrote:This is entirely accurate and a dead person is generally correct. A label is the source of the ego-centric sentimentalism of both the extreme left and much of the alt.right.
Most human beings use binary logic. They're caricatures of cognitive patterns/images.

Of course, this seems to me to be equally attributed to the post-Christian nihilism of the west. The true alienation.
'True alienation.' I wonder how self-referential that is! :lol:

I remember when you said to me@The Immortal Goon, that you didn't want to continue the dialogue we were having in my very first thread because ultimately we have a drastic presuppositional difference: Yours a materialist worldview, mine a spiritual view of the world in its essence.
For every thought there is an equal and opposite thought. But if it's not the 'correct' thought, why bother. :lol: Two-sides of the same human coin.

I look forward to debating those "imaginary theological underpinnings," at the metaphysical and epistemic levels, very soon with you. For, it is not a move towards communism, but a return to such dogma, that can save man, quite literally, from himself and the broken compass of his "feelings."
Yes, yes, let's debate those imaginary underpinnings, and find some common imaginary underpinnings. Feelings create the core of consciousness. Feelings guide thoughts and thoughts guide feelings.

The Feeling of What Happens
Consciousness, much like our feelings, is based on a representation of the body and how it changes when reacting to certain stimuli. Self-image would be unthinkable without this representation. I think humans have developed a self-image mainly to establish a homeostatic organism. The brain constantly needs up-to-date information on the body's state to regulate all the processes that keep it alive. This is the only way an organism can survive in an ever changing environment. Emotions alone—without conscious feelings—would not be enough. Adults would be as helpless as babies if they suddenly lost their self-image. -Neuroscientist, Antonio R. Damasio.
#14870621
Communists are faux materialists; they'll kill any real materialists who commits some heresy against their received doctrine. They are basically full bore religionists who made the tactical choice to wear materialist camouflage in an age where science and religion were estranged and science dominant. It's the Scientology of the 19th century. Any science types who are left cold by jesus and mohammad should be wary of falling under the spell of Marx, it's a trap.
#14870672
Hong Wu wrote:Isn't wanting to change the world or end "alienation" also based upon "feels"? Have we finally reached the end of TIG's "feels" motif? Somehow I doubt it...


Not incidentally, I have never claimed not to have feelings.

The issue here is how much our feelings dictate our understanding of the world in relation to facts.

You seemed upset that various groups regarded a relationship to the rest of the world as crucial to their understanding an ideology. I simply suggest that there's a reason that one should accept the rest of the world as evidence in any kind of analysis.
#14870697
Hong Wu wrote:Isn't wanting to change the world or end "alienation" also based upon "feels"? Have we finally reached the end of TIG's "feels" motif? Somehow I doubt it...
It's all so silly, isn't it? Ideologues embody facsimile, and they'll do anything to defend their photo-copy because it's a self-image.

SolarCross wrote:Communists are faux materialists; they'll kill any real materialists who commits some heresy against their received doctrine. They are basically full bore religionists who made the tactical choice to wear materialist camouflage in an age where science and religion were estranged and science dominant. It's the Scientology of the 19th century. Any science types who are left cold by jesus and mohammad should be wary of falling under the spell of Marx, it's a trap.
They're cuckoo for commie puffs! :lol: They're not topical thinkers, and they'll exploit any meme or contemporary social issue to advance their interpretation of reality. Since political scientists primarily deal with mythological images, they can get away with being stuck in the 19th century. Realistically, the world has changed, and Marx (or any dead individual) couldn't possibly hold the 'key' to THE practical solution. It's like this- If you fell ill, would you go visit a doctor practicing 19th century medicine? Of course not! We need topical thinkers, not ideologues and fixed perspectives. We're on the cusp of some major changes, AI, robotics, discovering alien life, space colonization, climate change, techno-tropics, quantum computing, electromagnetic weapons, full-spectrum surveillance, gene editing, etc... Yet, we have people pasting quotes from dead people, stuck in a hyper-noospheric loop, dividing 'what is' so they can maintain an identity that isn't real. The past will not save you from yourself, the future is now.
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#14870708
RhetoricThug wrote: We're on the cusp of some major changes, AI, robotics, space colonization, climate change, techno-tropics, quantum computing, electromagnetic weapons, full-spectrum surveillance, gene editing, etc... Yet, we have people pasting quotes from dead people, stuck in a hyper-noospheric loop, dividing 'what is' so they can maintain an identity that isn't real. The past will not save you from yourself, the future is now.


It's really funny how we are always "on the cusp" of major changes, yet everything is still precisely the same damn thing, just worse. Why is that, I wonder? I'm thinking, maybe just maybe, we're hyperfucking the planet that has sustained our existence, and that gizmos and gimcracks won't change that one damn bit. In other words, the good ol' nineteenth-century materialism you abhor will have its revenge by biting you in the ass.
#14870714
Alienation isn't simply some psychological disposition.
http://libcom.org/files/marx,%20marginalism%20and%20modern%20sociology%20-%20clarke.pdf
Alienation is not simply an ideological or psychological phenomenon, through which the power of private property is concealed behind the things which are the substance of that property, to be overcome by the acquisition of a true consciousness of class exploitation. In a capitalist society things really do have the power attributed to them by the alienated consciousness. What has to be understood is not who is hidden behind the mask of the commodity, but how commodities acquire social powers as the alienated power of social labour. This is why it is only on the basis of the analysis of the commodity-form that it is possible to understand the more developed forms of private property, in particular money and capital.


Marx's concept of human essence/nature is one which is at odds with capitalist mode of production, human nature is in tension with how humans express themselves via capitalist relations. Alienation has existed prior to Capitalism, but capitalism intensifies alienation.
Too which there are four types of alienation...
In the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” Marx identifies four types of alienation in labor under capitalism. The first is the alienation of the worker from the work he produced, or from the product of his labor. The product’s design and the manner in which it is produced are determined not by its actual producers, nor even by those who consume products, but rather by the capitalist class. This capitalist class appropriates labor, including that of designers and engineers, and seeks to shape the tastes of consumers in order to maximize profit.

The second is the alienation of the worker from working, or from the act of producing itself. This kind of alienation refers to the patterning of work in the capitalist mode of production into an endless sequence of discrete, repetitive, trivial, and meaningless motions, offering little, if any, intrinsic satisfaction.

The third is the alienation of the worker from himself as a producer, or from his or her ” species being ” or “essence as a species. ” To Marx, this human essence was not separate from activity or work, nor static, but includes the innate potential to develop as a human organism. Species being is a concept that Marx deploys to refer to what he sees as the original or intrinsic essence of the species, which is characterized both by plurality and dynamism: all beings possess the tendency and desire to engage in multiple activities to promote their mutual survival, comfort, and sense of interconnection.

The fourth is the alienation of the worker from other workers, in which the capitalist system reduces the act of work to a simple economic practice, rather than recognizing the social elements of the act of production. A capitalist system sees the labor of the worker to a commercial commodity that can be traded in the competitive labor-market. It does not view labor as a constructive socioeconomic activity that is part of the collective common effort performed for personal survival and the betterment of society. When the bourgeoisie interferes with or impedes any of these natural tendencies, the worker is alienated.


The solution to many things does not reside in the subject but in problems of the world themselves, but to see how Marx posits problems as not residing strictly in one's head, one would first need to get his epistemology. Because much which is treated as subjective in the subjective-objective divide doesn't translate onto Marx's epistemology.

And in regards to Materialism, I would assert that Marx held a position that was more complex than that of the mechanical materialists of the 19th century.
So it's understandable some would accuse a lack of materialism
n other words, the form of value is IDEAL, although it exists outside human consciousness and independently of it.

This use of the term may perplex the reader who is accustomed to the terminology of popular essays on materialism and the relationship of the material to the “ideal”. The ideal that exists outside people’s heads and consciousness, as something completely objective, a reality of a special kind that is independent of their consciousness and will, invisible, impalpable and sensuously imperceptible, may seem to them something that is only “imagined”, something “suprasensuous”.

The more sophisticated reader may, perhaps, suspect Marx of an unnecessary flirtation with Hegelian terminology, with the “semantic tradition” associated with the names of Plato, Schelling and Hegel, typical representatives of “objective idealism”, i.e., of a conception according to which the “ideal” exists as a special world of incorporeal entities (“ideas”) that is outside and independent of man. He will be inclined to reproach Marx for an unjustified or “incorrect” use of the term “ideal”, of Hegelian “hypostatisation” of the phenomena of the consciousness and other mortal sins, quite unforgivable in a materialist.

But the question is not so simple as that. It is not a matter of terminology at all. But since terminology plays a most important role in science, Marx uses the term “ideal” in a sense that is close to the “Hegelian” interpretation just because it contains far more meaning than does the popular pseudo-materialistic understanding of the ideal as a phenomenon of consciousness, as a purely mental function. The point is that intelligent (dialectical) idealism – the idealism of Plato and Hegel – is far nearer the truth than popular materialism of the superficial and vulgar type (what Lenin called silly materialism). In the Hegelian system, even though in inverted form, the fact of the dialectical transformation of the ideal into the material and vice versa was theoretically expressed, a fact that was never suspected by “silly” materialism, which had got stuck on the crude – undialectical – opposition of “things outside the consciousness” to “things inside the consciousness”, of the “material” to the “ideal”.

The “popular” understanding of the ideal cannot imagine what insidious traps the dialectics of these categories has laid for it in the given case.

Marx, on the other hand, who had been through the testing school of Hegelian dialectics, discerned this flaw of the “popular” materialists. His materialism had been enriched by all the achievements of philosophical thought from Kant to Hegel. This explains the fact that in the Hegelian notion of the ideal structure of the universe existing outside the human head and outside the consciousness, he was able to see not simply “idealistic nonsense”, not simply a philosophical version of the religious fairy-tales about God (and this is all that vulgar materialism sees in the Hegelian conception), but an idealistically inverted description of the actual relationship of the “mind to Nature”, of the “ideal to the material”, of “thought to being”. This also found its expression in terminology.

And that his 'materialism' would be better summarized as naturalism. This better differentiates more than Marx did for the language of his time, his own position from that of mechanical materialists.

And it's often those of the silly materialism that espouse an empiricism which presupposes subjective idealism to make up for it's inadequacy and then collapses in posing the two against one another out of scepticism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/pilling2.htm#Pill2
Empiricism, as a theory of knowledge rests upon the false proposition that perception and sensation constitute the only material and source of knowledge. Marx as a materialist, of course, never denied that the material world, existing prior to and independently of consciousness, is the only source of sensation. But he knew that such a statement, if left at that point, could not provide the basis for a consistent materialism, but at best a mechanical form of materialism, which always left open a loop-hole for idealism. It is true that empiricism lay at the foundation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century materialism in England and France. But at the same time this very empiricist point of view provided the basis for both the subjective idealism of Berkeley and the agnosticism of Hume. How is it possible, starting with the proposition that sensation is the sole source and material of knowledge, to end up either denying the objectivity of the external world (subjective idealism) or denying the possibility of an exhaustive knowledge of that external world (scepticism)? To take the latter case, the argument runs as follows: to men are given directly perceptions and sensations; they provide the only legitimate source of knowledge. But in these perceptions are to be found no internal necessary connections. How do we know that one thing is the cause of another? We see only one thing followed by another; if this is constantly repeated we come to expect the second whenever the first occurs. This is merely a psychological expectation, not a causal connection. These were essentially the conclusions drawn by Hume from the empiricist theory of knowledge. It followed that any statements about the objectivity of the categories of philosophy or science (causality, interaction, law, etc.) are purely metaphysical, reflecting nothing in the sensed material of knowledge. On this view, logical categories are only schemes which we use (purely out of convention and habit) for the organisation of sense-data. But such schemes remain, necessarily, wholly subjective. They are subjective first in relation to the external world, the existence of which, according to scepticism, can never be established; second in relation to the very sense data themselves, since they are determined by the very constitution of the subject – that is by the aggregate of the individual’s former psychical experiences.
#14870723
What are you afraid of, exactly?
quetzalcoatl wrote:It's really funny how we are always "on the cusp" of major changes, yet everything is still precisely the same damn thing, just worse. Why is that, I wonder? I'm thinking, maybe just maybe, we're hyperfucking the planet that has sustained our existence, and that gizmos and gimcracks won't change that one damn bit. In other words, the good ol' nineteenth-century materialism you abhor will have its revenge by biting you in the ass.
Like how the Paleozoic era bit the Mesozoic era in the buttocks? :lol: We're the planet (the earth 'peoples'), and the planet will recover. If humans go extinct, so be it. After-all, where were you before you were born? See, where we're going, we've already been. Now, what about now? Perhaps if we stop being so darn bitter, and divisive, we can avoid extinction. Telling people that their feelings don't matter, unraveling theological underpinnings, and playing the one-upmanship game, will not delay the inevitable. Our technological advances change everything. Our ideological hang-ups/differences and behavioral habits drive civilization's framework. We need to stop exploiting each other. Capitalism would be perfectly fine if it didn't perpetuate unethical consumption. Communism would be perfectly fine if it didn't promote class conflict. Perhaps binary logic is obsolete. If people can accept the fact that their consciousness does not belong to them, they may be able to 'see' the human experience for WHAT IT IS. The great theological/spiritual/material 'devil' is the ego (ego=I ergo I=ego. We are I). Also, since you didn't offer any constructive solution, I'm unable to offer absolution. Jokes aside, Learned helplessness never helped anyone learn something new. Ball of confusion, run-run-run but you sure can't hide, THE BEAT GOES ON!

CUCKOoo for Commie Puffs!
@Wellsy SCRUMPTIOUS! That's big bowl of Marxism (so archaic, so Hegelian, so delicious YUM)! Thanks for breaking down its nutritional values. But what's the recommended serving size? You might want to eat something else, or take some dietary supplements... You're what you eat, you know.
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#14870765
Wellsy wrote:Alienation isn't simply some psychological disposition.


This is correct. But I do think it informs this issue.

Hong Wu is, like all of us, alienated from himself. But in a specific way he, like other postmodernists, is using his “species being” that he is alienated from as a tool from which to measure reality instead of being in reality.

And you’re right that this is different from previous forms of materialism. It would be easy to say that Hong Wu is making the same logical leap that Plato did upon returning from Sicily after his attempts to make Dion a perfect ruler failed; that is to say, “My ideas were not wrong...material reality was wrong.”

But that is not the argument being advanced.

As for RhetoricThug’s attempts to be edgy or whatever he is attempting to do, he is like someone playing billiards telling everyone to stop using physics since Newton is dead. And like any patron at a billard hall who had to hear that, we should just ignore him.
#14870766
quetzalcoatl wrote:It's really funny how we are always "on the cusp" of major changes, yet everything is still precisely the same damn thing, just worse. Why is that, I wonder? I'm thinking, maybe just maybe, we're hyperfucking the planet that has sustained our existence, and that gizmos and gimcracks won't change that one damn bit. In other words, the good ol' nineteenth-century materialism you abhor will have its revenge by biting you in the ass.


The human race will become extinct. We are the ultimate "weed species" and will leave behind a destroyed planet covered with plastic debris. Not to worry though. Ole planet earth will recover in a million years or so.
#14870775
The human race will become extinct. We are the ultimate "weed species" and will leave behind a destroyed planet covered with plastic debris. Not to worry though. Ole planet earth will recover in a million years or so.

As mass extinction events go, we won't even be all that spectacular. The Earth's ecosystem took almost 30 million years to recover from the end-Permian extinction event. All trace of our shenanigans will probably be erased in a fraction of that time. Then it will be "business as usual folks, nothing to see here, move along...." :)
#14870794
Potemkin wrote:As mass extinction events go, we won't even be all that spectacular. The Earth's ecosystem took almost 30 million years to recover from the end-Permian extinction event. All trace of our shenanigans will probably be erased in a fraction of that time. Then it will be "business as usual folks, nothing to see here, move along...." :)


Nonsense, the monuments to the worker's greatest victory will stand forever!

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#14870812
Potemkin wrote:Language seems to have evolved as a medium of communication whose primary purpose is to allow us to refer to things which are not physically present at the time. This is tremendously useful, and was and is the basis for the flourishing of complex human societies. However, it comes with a downside as well - language alienates us from the world, and can even serve as a substitute for the direct experience of reality itself, unmediated by abstract language. Mystics from every human culture have been trying for millennia to get people to forget words and just experience the suchness of reality (with very little success, be it noted). We use language to spin fantasies and delusions, to seduce people to believe in lies, to gain unjust power over others, to replace direct experience of reality with a web of fantasy and self-delusion. As Groucho Marx once put it, "Who are you going to believe - me, or the evidence of your own eyes?" Lol.


You left out the part about the laziness to learn foreign languages in order to figure out other people's cultural contexts. Spoken language is critical to making us human. The chimps and the Great Apes don't have a voice box there...so they are incapable of human language. But no one said they are not human like in behavior patterns. We share about 98% of our DNA with the primates. Chimps especially. Yet that final 2% is interesting. Most of it the ability to do what you said above.
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