Thanks Jim,

I am aware of the work of most of those you list, but not all.

I will have more to say about Jim Lawler's attempt to defend DM in a later
Essay.

RL

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Farmelant" <farmelantj@juno...>
To: <marxism-thaxis@list...>
Cc: <marxism-thaxis@list...>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] People's History of Science


>
>
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 02:22:29 -0000 "rosa lichtenstein"
> <rosa.lichtenstein3@ntlw...> writes:
>> Jim,
>>
>
>
>> I share with Cohen only an antipathy toward Hegel; his attempt to do
>>
>> analytic Marxism I reject because it wasn't analytic enough (by a
>> long way),
>> and scarcely Marxist. However, I greatly admired his attempt to
>> bring
>> clarity to historical materialism. It's a pity his detractors failed
>> to copy
>> his here, and quickly returned to the Hegelian mire.
>
> Rosa,
>
> It should be noted that we do have on this list  andie nachgeborenen
> (AKA Justin Schwartz) who was in a former life a practicing professional
> philosopher at Ohio State and was then a proponent of
> Analytical Marxism, although his brand, I think, was closer to
> the views of Kai Nielsen and Rodney Peffer, rather than to
> those of Cohen and his No-Bullshit group. Also, Schwartz doesn't,
> I believe, share the anti-Hegelianism of Cohen, or yourself.
> I know that Justin, in the past, has said that he subscribes
> to a kind of analytical Hegelianism, expressing some affinity
> with people like Tony Smith, Ken Westphal, Terry Pinkard, Michael
> Hardimon, Robert Pippin, and Alan Wood amongst others.
>
> BTW, changing the subject just a bit. Having noticed that on
> your website, you devoted a significant amount of discussion
> to critquing Jim Lawler, you might be interested to know that
> he is a subscriber to this list, although I think it's been some
> ages since he last posted anything here.
>
>>
>> I was aware of Neurath, but my take on this is not the same as his
>> (as you
>> will soon see if you look at my summary of Essay Twelve -- the full
>> Essay
>> will appear much later). I do not accept Neurath's criterion of
>> meaning,
>> since I am not a positivist, logical or otherwise. But that is not
>> the only
>> difference.
>>
>> And I was also aware that I am not the first anti-Hegelian Marxist
>> (!!); my
>> criticisms of Hegel bear no relation to dela Volpe (or Colletti,
>> or....).
>>
>> Some of my most original material you will find here:
>>
>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2003_01.htm
>>
>> and here:
>>
>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2005.htm
>>
>> Even though my ideas are dependent on Frege and Wittgenstein, I
>> apply them
>> to these areas of DM in a totally new way.
>>
>> Where else will you find a neo-Fregean/Wittgensteinian dissolution
>> of (but
>> not solution to)  Zeno's paradox, for example? Or someone who shows
>> exactly
>> how Hegel's confusion of the 'is' of predication with the 'is' of
>> identity
>> is the heart of this dialectical beast?
>>
>> To be sure this is Bertrand Russell's point, but here I share about
>> 1% with
>> him.
>>
>> In Essays Three and Twelve I reveal how this confusion arose in
>> ancient
>> Greece and why leisure-dominated Greek thinkers imagined the world
>> could be
>> understood by an appeal to abstractions (and thus how super-truths
>> could be
>> derived from language alone), and how they created these
>> abstractions by a
>> syntactically inept interpretation of a superficial feature of
>> Indo-European
>> grammar, and how this destroys the capacity language has for
>> expressing
>> generality, thus undermining DM itself. DM thus becomes its own
>> grave-digger; a nice dialectical inversion, this.
>>
>> [Re Indo-European grammar, Nietzsche had a somewhat similar idea,
>> but I push
>> it much further, and back it up with a totally new analysis.]
>>
>> Of course, I could be 100% wrong in all I say, but I defy you to
>> find where
>> else this stuff can be found.
>>
>> However I am holding back the vast bulk of the original material for
>> my PhD
>> thesis (for obvious reasons).
>>
>> RL
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jim Farmelant" <farmelantj@juno...>
>> To: <marxism-thaxis@list...>
>> Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 1:42 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] People's History of Science
>>
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > 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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>>
>>
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