From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Fri Mar 23 2007 - 16:20:52 EDT
Hi Jerry, I was just reading Stutje's new biography of Ernest Mandel, just published, and he notes that Mandel also ran into this problem of dynamic models back in 1972. "What had to be analysed was how the partially autonomous variables would develop under different circumstances; how a new balance would be restored, why new disturbances would appear and when and under what conditions these would culminate in an overproduction crisis. Mandel did not succeed in designing such dynamic schema's. Harry Chester, an American statistician, wrote to him: "The difficulty is not the large number of independent variables - in this age of the computer this is only a technical problem. The greatest difficulty is rather the dialectical aspect of the system, the fact that the same variable at different points in time and under changing conditions yields opposite effects. How can a model be designed for that?" (translated from Jan Willem Stutje, Ernest Mandel: Rebel tussen Droom en Daad. Antwerpen: Houtekiet, 2007, p. 183). Chester referred to the example of technological change, which could have quite different effects in times of slump and times of boom (op. cit., footnote 1000). Hence also Dr Carchedi's reference to "dialectics": "phenomena are both determinant and determined. As determinant, they are the condition of existence of other phenomena, the determined ones; as determined, they are the condition of further reproduction or supersession of the determinant phenomena" etc. For example, the female nipple can stiffen and protrude outwards upon excitation; but it can also invert. Logically of course it is not impossible to formalise such a thing, if we can specify and formalise the combination of trends which would cause a variable to have the opposite effect of what it previously had, i.e. a change in configuration. As a rule, if we are able to think it, we can formalise it at least in principle - but the formalisation might be enormously longer that a thought we can easily express in ordinary language. Mandel himself remarked (in Socialist Register) that the number of permutations which a chessgame permits is larger than all the stars in the universe; the human brain is nevertheless capable of winning a chessgame, even against a computer at times. www.socialistregister.com/socialistregister.com/files/SR_1985_86_Mandel.pdf "Computers are becoming more and more dominant against everyone but the top 200 players in the world. That is leading to an overall performance rating for computers that is getting higher and higher. However, the players in the top-200 are holding their ground even against the latest and greatest computers. Perhaps that group will soon shrink down to only the top-100, or the top-50, but not inevitably, and not irreversibly." http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1244 The basic problem, I suggest, that lies at the root of this whole controversy concerns the purpose/role of theory or models. The purpose of theory is to make sense of the facts of experience and orient experience, and the simpler they are, the better. By the time we make theory and models extraordinarily nuanced to make sense of experience, then we are defeating the purpose and we ought to be looking at the very conditions under which the theory and the models themselves are formed. Something can be overtheorised, to the extent that the fine distinctions have no real purchase anymore on reality, and a far simpler explanation is possible that satisfies all the conditions of a good explanation. For many Marxists, it seems, Marx's theory is a classy ornament with which they like to adorn themselves, it makes them feel proud and confident that truth and history are on their side, and so on. In reality, the theory does absolutely no work whatsoever - no attempt is made to explain real facts - and it merely provides a sophisticated language with which the so-called Marxist can flaunt his erudition and interpret the nature of reality. Jurriaan
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