From: Howard Engelskirchen (howarde@TWCNY.RR.COM)
Date: Tue Jan 03 2006 - 23:22:48 EST
Hi all, The issues opened up are vast and I hope we will continue to come back to them. I join Ian in thanking Antonio for intervening, and also Jerry for the Ruccio essay that started this thread. I will try to put manageable limits on a long list of short notes, questions and comments. 1. Quantum mechanics. Paul's point that quantum uncertainty doesn't have much to do with the relation of thought to reality seems to me correct. No one has argued that nature is observer independent. We intervene as one of nature's causal structures all the time, intentionally and unintentionally. 2. Inversion hysteria. Georg Molnar is a philosopher who died a few years ago. He has an interesting background. He was a Jew born in Budapest before WWII and he and his family were saved from the camps by Wallenberg's work. After the war he went to Australia and began a career in philosophy (having failed as a professional gambler). He became an anarchist in the sixties (Sydney Push?) and as an anti-authoritarian decided he could not continue with academic philosophy. He went to England, Leeds, and spent a generation working for women's rights, children's rights, gay rights and in the anti-nuclear movement. Perhaps some of you know of him. He returned to Australia in the 80s and then returned to academic philosophy. Just before his death he completed, mostly, a manuscript, Powers, which has been published (while short, the book is unfortunately a bit technical). The last paragraphs of the book contain an instructive and funny lament over what Molnar calls 'inversion hysteria'. Here are examples: Because necessary causal connection in the world enables us to infer the future from the past, this gets inverted to "Our habit of inferring the future from the past is all there is to causal necessity" (Hume). Or, "It is possible to perceive material objects exist," is converted to "objects are the permanent possibility of sensation" (Mill). Molnar observes: "There is a pattern here: some piece of objective reality has characteristic effects on and in humans. You then turn around and define this piece of reality in terms of its effects on humans, thereby making it mind-dependent. Inversion hysteria is a kind of subjectivizing of reality, a kind of subjective idealism." 3. The separation of the real and the mind. Antonio is skeptical of all efforts to separate the real from the mind -- these reflect simply the classical dodges of traditional philosophy. On the other hand, doesn't this qualify as an example of inversion hysteria? Because the mind cannot be separated from the 'real', we invert this and say instead, 'the real can't be separated from the mind." 4. Anti-science. I agree with Ian on this point. The inversion just described is an example of 'anti-science.' I don't mean this in the sense that Antonio or postmodern materialism generally is engaged on an attack on science, or as some crude slur, but in the sober sense, necessary to be made explicit, that refusing to acknowledge there is a 'real' separate from mind is simply to ignore or refuse the best scientific evidence available and the background theories which interpret it for us. Our best interpretations of what we can observe and investigate tell us that there were things like chemical elements, compounds, galaxies, suns, moon and planets before the emergence of life on earth. Unless you reject these understandings, this makes them mind independent in some important sense. By contrast, according to the same science, the mind is not and never has been independent of the physical environment from which it emerged. What I've argued above is, as I've insisted, fallible and revisable, and Antonio has appealed to science and new understandings. But it needs to be acknowledged that there is quite a boatload to be revised and I haven't understood from what's been said how this works. 5. Interpretation. Another example of inversion hysteria. Because we have come to realize that all scientific observation and investigation is theory dependent, this is turned around to mean that all there is to our observation is the meaning we find in theory. 6. Uncles. The point I made above that mind is not and never has been independent of the 'real' is important because it insists on the material embedding of all things social and mental. Materialist semioticians like the Italian Marxist Rossi Landi have critiqued the idealist thread of semiotics represented by Sassure for ignoring the fact that meanings are always materially embedded. A Tomahawk missle may be a phallic symbol, but it has terrible destructive power. Antonio argues that 'uncle' is a social relation, which of course it is. But he argues that it is a social relation that does not depend on a genetic link so that if I did not know that someone was my uncle, he would not be. Presumably, as well, if I thought someone was my uncle who was not genetically linked to me, nonethless he would be. It is not clear what has happened to error here. Anyway, I have this question -- if I put aside all consideration of genetic link, how would I recognize the social relation 'uncle' when it was presented to me? The point is far reaching in the sense that if we ignore the embeddedness of mind in the materiality of the world -- in the world's mind independence -- we have no way to explain the causal efficacy of either the social or the mental. So I am not misunderstood, I add that while social relations are always materially embedded, they need not be genetically so! 7. Substituting conversation for practice. Antonio suggests that the fact that two people define commodity differently doesn't mean that they can't have a conversation and that the conversation may well produce knowledge. I wondered if this actually responded to my question about objective truth arbitrating between truths that are intra-theoretic. Does conversation among theories become the arbiter rather than practice? If so, this would continue the inversion above, wouldn't it? -- since observations of practice must be interpreted and conversation facilitates interpretation, what matters is not practice but conversation among interpretations. 8. Overdetermination. I have argued that overdetermnination cannot be taken as a methodological a priori. It has enormous utility in explaining the actuality of events. It does not follow that it is always useful when we explore underlying features of the world, natural or social, that give rise to such events. For example, what does overdetermination contribute to understanding why H2O is a possible molecule, but HO2 is not? (H2O is possible because of hydrogen bonding.) 9. What does it matter? Jerry asked why these issues matter, or at least why particular scientific issues in a particular science matters. I guess part of it is that doing science we try to situate ourselves within the whole of science. Marx said there was one science, or that was the goal. It's a good working hypothesis. Each special science is determined by its object and the emergence of social life from nature raises all sorts of complexities that are different from those presented by the natural sciences. But that does not mean there is not a common foundation. Moreover, getting foundations wrong may skew our ability to deal with the social -- for example, the social remains embedded in the material. Also, in general it's necessary to keep pace with the progress of thinking about science. Consider Marx. I think also Antonio's point below is responsive. The issues of realism and anti-realism have been most vigorously fought out in the natural sciences, but there is no reason to think that they are specific to the natural sciences, nor have those issues not been joined in the social sciences. So if a particular domain of any science bears importantly on that debate it is relevant. For postmodern materialism there is this, too -- since it developed in part as a necessary attack on implausible forms of empirical realism, as Antonio notes, then as more sophisticated forms of realism develop it seems appropriate that it respond. 10. Let me narrow the differences. Scientific realism insists on the mind independence of the causal structures of the world. This is because we need to accommodate our practices to them in order to get our practice right. Beyond that, because all observation and investigation is theory dependent, realism might readily be prepared to concede virtually all the important postmodern critiques of social theory. And whether or not there are mind independent causal structures that we need to accommodate our practice to does seem itself to be a question open to the test of practice. Thanks, Howard ----- Original Message ----- From: "antonio callari" <antonio.callari@FANDM.EDU> To: <OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU> Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 6:39 PM Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Overdetermination & Science > Jerry, > the reason to discuss something like quantum mechanics, in my view, > is that it gets at the nature of the science model that seems to > frame the methodological concerns people express about postmodernism, > overdetermination, anti-essentialism etc.. If the model of > science/knowledge we use in social analysis rests on certain > presumptions about the properties of reality, then it seems to me > that a discussion about those properties is pertinent (and, in the > end, inescapable). i don't remember the 2002 discussion of the > uncertainty principle. Do you have the approximates dates of the > postings on that? thanks > Antonio > > >Antonio, Ian, Howard, others, > > > >Do Marxists whose concern is political economy really have > >to take a position on the character of objectivity and > >scientific research in physics? Can't we be 'agnostics' on that > >question? (relatedly: can't we be 'agnostic' on the question of > >the 'dialectics of nature'?) > > > >*To the extent that* a particular understanding of the natural > >sciences has important social consequences, then we should > >have some grasp of the issues (e.g. the application of laws > >of thermodynamics to the environment?). But, is it really > >important for us to take a position on quantum mechanics? > > > >I'm not asking that the discussion stop; I just want to know > >why you think it is important for us. > > > >In solidarity, Jerry > > > >PS: we discussed the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in > >November -- December, 2002. > > > > > >> The 'strong' argument I will now add (and I'll have > >> to preface it by saying that I do not claim the expertise/voice here > >> that I hold more confidently with respect to the issue of social > >> structures) is that, in my understanding, the notion of objectivity > >> that the critics of postmodernism seem (to me) to be using is/may-be > >> untenable (or questionable) even when it comes to nature. I am > >> referring here not only to Heisenberg's original formulation of the > >> uncertainty principle (that you can know either the position of a > >> particle or its direction, but not both) but also to lots of other > >> experiments/theories since then that seem to question the very > >> independence of matter from thought ( a recent article in the science > >> section of the December 27 New York Times, "Quantum trickery: testing > >> Einstein's Strangest Theory," outlines the theories and experiments). > >> In practice, scientists have chosen to ignore this, but it seems to > >> me that the existence of > >> these theories/experiments undermines any philosophical defense of > >> something "real" in the objectivist (mind independent) terms that I > >> have been discussing. Some scientists do not like the implications > >> of these developments (but only on practical and philosophical > >> grounds; they can't quarrel with them as a matter of logic or > >> experimentation as i understand things); but that's not a standard on > >> which to base a defense of "objectivist real" as anything that has > >> structure. I myself don't mind it: I don't mind it for Marxism, which > >> argued/s that we make the world (not as individuals, of course, and > >> not under circumstances of our choosing--for the circumstances always > >> involve us in relationships with others we can only partially > >> control) but collectively (through dialogue, negotiations, politics, > >> class relations, etc. etc.: overdetermination). > > > -- > Antonio Callari > Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Professor of Economics > F&M Local Economy Center > P.O. Box 3003 > 713 College Avenue > Lancaster PA 17604-3003 > e-mail: acallari@fandm.edu > phone: (717) 291-3947 > FAX: (717) 291-4369 >
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