On Wed, 1 Mar 2006 13:27:34 -0000 "Rosa Lichtenstein"
<rosa.lichtenstein3@ntlw...> writes:
> Charles, thanks for those comments.
>
> I absolutely agree, much anti-dialectic stuff is hackneyed to high
> heaven.
>
> As to my claim that my ideas are largely original to me, you will
> have to
> check for yourself. What can I say...?
>
> "You know. Like that Lenin is using a metaphysical concept when he
> analyzes
> "John is a man."   That's not exactly a new criticism."
>
> Ah, but if you check the line I take, you will see I do develop it
> in new
> ways (along neo-Fregean lines -- if you know of anyone else who has
> done
> this, I will be gob-smacked!). And where have you come across this
> before
> (posted at Revolutionary Left a few weeks ago)?

I think some other people have attempted similar things in
the past. You, yourself alluded to Gerald Cohen with his
*Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence*.
Concerning your treatment of the Dialectician's Dilemma, didn't
Sidney Hook advance a similar line of argument in his book,
*Reason, Social Myths and Democracy*?  And Hook was
insistent that diamat, while being formally atheist, would
up smuggling Hegel's God into its concept of matter.
And Otto Neurath, one of the founders of the Vienna Circle, likewise
made the equation of metaphysics with ideology long ago.
Neurath believed that it was possible to ground Marxism without
appealing to any sort of qausi-Hegelian metaphysics, which
he rejected as being literally nonsensical and meaningless.

In Italy, the Communist philosopher, Galvano della Volpe
in writings like his *Logic as a Positive Science* took a
strongly anti-Hegelian stance, rejecting the Hegelianized
Marxism that had been handed down in Italy by Gramsci,
who had been profoundly influenced by Croce and Gentile.
Della Volpe in his writings talked of dialectics but his
treatment of the subject drew upon such thinkers as
John Dewey, David Hume, and even Rudolf Carnap

>
> "Comrades might like to think about this (taken from my site):
>
> The quandary facing dialecticians we might call the "Dialecticians'
> Dilemma"
> [DD]. The DD arises from the uncontroversial observation that if
> reality is
> fundamentally contradictory then any true theory should reflect this
>
> supposed state of affairs. However, and this is the problem, in
> order to do
> this such a theory must contain contradictions itself or it would
> not be an
> accurate reflection of nature. But, if the development of science is
>
> predicated either on the removal of contradictions from theories, or
> on the
> replacement of older theories with less contradictory ones, as
> DM-theorists
> contend, then science could not advance toward a 'truer' account of
> the
> world. This is because scientific theories would then reflect
> reality less
> accurately, having had all (or most) of their contradictions
> removed.
>
> [DM = Dialectical Materialism.]
>


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