[RhetoricThug]

Why does Marxist thinking obsess over efficient cause and ignore the rest of reality?

In Physics II 3 and Metaphysics V 2, Aristotle offers his general account of the four causes. This account is general in the sense that it applies to everything that requires an explanation, including artistic production and human action. Here Aristotle recognizes four types of things that can be given in answer to a why-question:

The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.
The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.
The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.
The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.

All the four (types of) causes may enter in the explanation of something. Consider the production of an artifact like a bronze statue. The bronze enters in the explanation of the production of the statue as the material cause. Note that the bronze is not only the material out of which the statue is made; it is also the subject of change, that is, the thing that undergoes the change and results in a statue. The bronze is melted and poured in order to acquire a new shape, the shape of the statue. This shape enters in the explanation of the production of the statue as the formal cause. However, an adequate explanation of the production of a statue requires also a reference to the efficient cause or the principle that produces the statue. For Aristotle, this principle is the art of bronze-casting the statue (Phys. 195 a 6-8. Cf. Metaph. 1013 b 6–9). This is mildly surprising and requires a few words of elaboration. There is no doubt that the art of bronze-casting resides in an individual artisan who is responsible for the production of the statue. But, according to Aristotle, all the artisan does in the production of the statue is the manifestation of specific knowledge. This knowledge, not the artisan who has mastered it, is the salient explanatory factor that one should pick as the most accurate specification of the efficient cause (Phys. 195 b 21–25). By picking the art, not the artisan, Aristotle is not just trying to provide an explanation of the production of the statue that is not dependent upon the desires, beliefs and intentions of the individual artisan; he is trying to offer an entirely different type of explanation; an explanation that does not make a reference, implicit or explicit, to these desires, beliefs and intentions. More directly, the art of bronze-casting the statue enters in the explanation as the efficient cause because it helps us to understand what it takes to produce the statue; that is to say, what steps are required to produce the statue. But can an explanation of this type be given without a reference to the final outcome of the production, the statue? The answer is emphatically “no”. A model is made for producing the statue. A mold is prepared for producing the statue. The bronze is melted and poured for producing the statue. Both the prior and the subsequent stage are for the sake of a certain end, the production of the statue. Clearly, the statue enters in the explanation of each step of the artistic production as the final cause or that for the sake of which everything in the production process is done.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aris ... ty/#FouCau

Causality is tested by experience as precept, not concept.

Mario Bunge explains that, according to Hegel, "cause and effect are but the two poles of the interaction category, which 'realizes the causal relation in its complete development.' Besides, in Hegel's system of objective idealism, the category of interaction enjoyed an ontological status, whereas Kant had treated it, alongside the remaining categories, as a purely epistemological element, and even as prior to experience. . . . Hegel held nature in contempt," Karl Marx and Friederich Engels who were Hegel's pupils, stood on his toes rather than on his shoulders. They turned Hegelian dialectics upside down by postulating the primacy of "matter-in-motion" asymptotically reflected by mental processes. Their ambitious aim was "not merely to understand the world but to change it." They proclaimed human "experience" as the sole arbiter and the ultimate test of any "truth" whatever. But in "testing" their "truths" via dialectical materialism, they ignored the hidden ground underlying all their figures of "experience" - the visual assumptions of Western "sciences" and "humanities" alike.

In his Dialectics of Nature, Engels outlines the Marxian concept of causality: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /index.htm

"This music is worse than it sounds," for it is played literally by eye without ear. Although its epistemology is dialectical, its ontology still rests on abstract Greek Nature. Marx and Engels saw conflicts of old figures as creating grounds for each other while they remained oblivious of the new information surround that had transformed their assumptions. They were attempting to match the concepts of an earlier age to the experience newly visible in the "rear-view mirror" of the 19th century. They were unaware that precepts of existence always lie behind concepts of Nature. Their hidden hang-up was the visual bias of all "objectivity," whether "materialist" or "idealist." They also ignored the acoustic "message of the birds" - the output of any process, biological or psychic, always differs qualitatively from the input. There are no "through-puts" or connections between processes but only gaps or interfaces for "keeping in touch" with "where the action is." When the "play" between the wheel and the axle ends, so does the wheel. While the "subjectivist" puts on the world as his clothes, the "objectivist" supposes he can stand naked "out of this world." The ideal of the rational philosophers still persists: to achieve an inclusive "science of sciences." But such a science would be a monster of preconceived figures minus grounds. No "objective" dialectics of Nature or of science as visually ex-plainable can stand up to the resonant interface with the existential. For "testing the truth" is not merely matching by congruence or classification; it is making sense out of the totality of experience- a process of pattern recognition that requires not only concepts but active perception by all the senses. Today, as "hardware" is transmuted into pure information by the process of "etherialization," the "inner" and the "outer" merge- thinking becomes doing.

-Marshall McLuhan, Media and Formal Cause

Life is a process, not a conclusion.
There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.
Marx is obsolete.


-RT

[The Immortal Goon]

Moved to philosophy

[ingliz]

Karl Marx and Friederich Engels who were Hegel's pupils, stood on his toes rather than on his shoulders.

Who gives a fuck where they stood, when the end justifies the means, and "one can always get out of it with a little dialectic".*

Propaganda can be broken into ten stages when analyzing it in detail. These stages are: 1. the ideology and purpose of the propaganda campaign, 2. the context in which the propaganda occurs, 3. identification of the propagandist, 4. the structure of the propaganda organization, 5. the target audience, 6. media utilization techniques, 7. special various techniques, 8. audience reaction to various techniques, 9. counterpropaganda, if present, and 10. effects and evaluation.

* Marx, Letter to Engels 15 August 1857

[RhetoricThug]

Oh, did you move this to philosophy because it threatens your closed system of ignorance? You certainly wouldn't wish for a newbie to read this over in the communism sub-reality forum, it might stop em from becoming a full-pledged dogma darling.

Who gives a fuck where they stood, when the end justifies the means, and "one can always get out of it with a little dialectic".*




* Marx, Letter to Engels 15 August 1857

You're not addressing the original post, you're deflecting and using confirmatory reasoning (circulatory reasoning) to defend a pathological desire to admire Marxist thought. Again, why does dialectical materialism obsess over efficient cause and and ignore the rest of reality? Marxism itself would be a fallacy of incomplete evidence, pure speculation, constructing an intellectual cult of dogmatic thought. Lastly, since evolution doesn't produce conclusions, there is no end to justify (Machiavelli is a caveman not a statesman and his fetish is 2nd hand psychopathy). Humans invent an end and fight over the means.

[ingliz]

You're not addressing the original post...

The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.
The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.
The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.
The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.

Consider building a socialist state.

The material cause: The biological individual.
The formal cause: Social status and mental states and, hence, an ensemble of social relations and cognitive representations.
The efficient cause: Reform/Revolution.
The final cause: The role played by such relations and representations.

[RhetoricThug]

Consider building a socialist state.

The material cause: The biological individual.
The formal cause: Social status and mental states and, hence, an ensemble of social relations and cognitive representations.
The efficient cause: Reform/Revolution.
The final cause: The role played by such relations and representations.

Are you under the impression that those causal factors happen sequentially instead of simultaneously? Causal theory is no longer limited by Newton's physical law of universal gravity (billiard ball logic), the forces which set 'things' into motion occur non-locally and simultaneously. Please read carefully, "This music is worse than it sounds," for it is played literally by eye without ear. Although its epistemology is dialectical, its ontology still rests on abstract Greek Nature. I mean, you might as well be using Euclidean geometry to explain Marxism as a social theory because according to your understanding of causality it behaves like a 2-dimensional plane with definitive vector points. The problem here- (r)evolution is spontaneous, simultaneous, non-local, and spherical. The material-formal-efficient-and-final cause, happen simultaneously during the resonant interval of interplay; all things happen inside the mind-matter interface, the effects bend through space-time and manifest the present moment we experience. Furthermore, observation will always be a consequence of perspective (where you are in the polycentric ripple). Ingliz, Stop using 19th century physics to justify Marxism. Nature doesn't produce conclusions.

[ingliz]

observation will always be a consequence of perspective

Correct.

Ignorance of remote causes disposeth men to attribute all events to the causes immediate and instrumental; for these are all the causes they perceive.

Hobbes, Leviathan (1668)

(r)evolution is spontaneous, simultaneous, non-local, and spherical.

If knowledge is the discovery of causes; power turns on the directing of causes.

[RhetoricThug]

Correct.

Ignorance of remote causes disposeth men to attribute all events to the causes immediate and instrumental; for these are all the causes they perceive.

Hobbes, Leviathan (1668)

Knowledge is the discovery of causes; power is the directing of causes.

Are you a computer program? I'm beginning to doubt your authenticity as a contributor. Do you not grasp casualty as a simultaneous happening? You're dancing around the topic.

EDIT: No, I'm not a computer program. If you take the time to read my posts, you can tell I'm very human... Too human. So human it might get on your nerves. Now, I posted a thoughtful response to your 'let's build a socialist state,' so let's explore how your 2D perspective, that printed on paper-logic construct, does not work within the framework of 21st century casualty theory.

I live in the world and act within it. Existential musings serve no practical purpose.

Sounds like something a digital assistant would say. Let's get back on topic, shall we?

[ingliz]

Are you a computer program?

Are you? I live in the world, and act within it. Incoherently verbose and platitudinously existential, your musings serve no practical purpose.

[Rich]

Are you a computer program?

You must surly realise that's a difficult question for any philosopher to answer.

@ingliz I don't agree with everything you say but I would give you some likes if I could ever get the damn like button to work again.

[RhetoricThug]

You must surly realise that's a difficult question for any philosopher to answer.

@ingliz I don't agree with everything you say but I would give you some likes if I could ever get the damn like button to work again.

It was a rhetorical question, dude. Ingliz is dancing around the thread topic. As for his remarks on practicality- pragmatism may be an extension of logical necessity and I find logical necessity to be a side-effect of 'being' entangled inside the NOW. I suppose you could say (f)utility is a subjective pleasure, disguised as an objective critique. We invent purpose and manifest purpose, but that doesn't mean that our perception of that purpose has a purpose. All good propagandists know- “It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.” Hence why Marxists are full of repetitious propaganda. We co-program reality.

[ingliz]

pragmatism

There may be many "possible worlds" but we are stuck with *this one*.

... a picture, incomplete yet not false, of the universe as Ts'ui Pen conceived
it to be. Differing from Newton and Schopenhauer, ... [he] did not
think of time as absolute and uniform. He believed in an infinite series
of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging
and parallel times. This web of time - the -strands of which
approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through
the centuries - embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of
them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not,
and in yet others both of us exist. *In this one, in which chance has
favored me, you have come to my gate*. In another, you, crossing the garden,
have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words,
but am an error, a phantom.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

logical necessity

Determinism is an abstract theoretical ideal. An adequate (or statistical) determinism is sufficient to determine outcomes in the world.

entangled inside the NOW... the effects bend through space-time

Quantum indeterminacy/Determined probabilities? The "effects" are negligible when considering the causally determined will and the causally determined actions set in motion by decisions of that will.

[RhetoricThug]

There may be many "possible worlds" but we are stuck with *this one*.

... a picture, incomplete yet not false, of the universe as Ts'ui Pen conceived
it to be. Differing from Newton and Schopenhauer, ... [he] did not
think of time as absolute and uniform. He believed in an infinite series
of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging
and parallel times. This web of time - the -strands of which
approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through
the centuries - embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of
them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not,
and in yet others both of us exist. *In this one, in which chance has
favored me, you have come to my gate*. In another, you, crossing the garden,
have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words,
but am an error, a phantom.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths


Determinism is an abstract theoretical ideal. An adequate (or statistical) determinism is sufficient to determine outcomes in the world.


Quantum indeterminacy/Determined probabilities? The "effects" are negligible when considering the causally determined will and the causally determined actions set in motion by decisions of that will.

Sure, I agree (Heck, I admire David Bohm and his interpretation of reality, he entertained dialectical materialism) we're stuck (as far as we know) in this 'one world.' Now, before our discussion becomes too tangential... I'll ask again- Why does Marxist thinking focus on efficient cause and ignore the rest of reality? You can direct your will and force it to represent Marxism, but that doesn't mean Marxist thinking will dominate global consciousness. I'll reiterate something I said in the 'Does Marxist thinking create a Kakistocracy' thread.

Effects are perceived whereas causes are conceived.

"Unable to explore actual processes perceptually from every side, the conceptual man apprehends only visual goals. For example, the conventional ideas of 'evolution' and 'technology' are illusions engendered by the visual bias of literate cultures. Such cultures translated the 'chain of being' metaphor from the astral to the biological plane. For the use of the 'missing link' idea we are indebted to a missing inventor. So far nobody has appeared as originator of this phrase. The gap created by the 'missing link' has sparked more exploration and discovery than the established links in 'connected' science. Conceptual choices, like 'natural selection,' can come only after the fact. The 'origins' of all species vanish in rear-view perspectives, while the music goes round and round."

Causality is not merely reciprocal action but complementary process. Science organizes knowledge, not ignorance, labels rather than processes. It's better to 'see' causality as a probe, instead of a program. Marxists (and humans in general) intellectually abstract an 'end,' and seek to gain control over the means to achieve such an end, typically through bloodshed. How does the Marxist preconception of causal relations differ from all the old dialectical programs which had failed throughout human history? If Nature doesn't produce an end, and humans invent an end, doesn't that create a natural form of conflict or entropy that ultimately defeats Marxist thinking (or any human conclusion)? After-all, Nature is the first cause, and humans just pretend to be its final cause.