Are you serious?

PRC, I know it isn't not boring to reasonable comrades like you; what I said was merely a rhetorical flourish. When Gil is in dialectical waffle mode, I cannot resist winding her/him/it up

Hyperbolic -- but serious --, yes.

Gil:

You will be telling me that an order for an extra pint of milk is 'philosophical' next.

But:

That needs even more justicfication; let's see if you can summarise your answer sufficiently enough for me not to doze off before I get to the end of it.

Thanks for that clarification against vulgar materialism, comrade. Nevertheless, I prefer to use the term "subjective dynamics" as opposed to "dialectics," which has the fetish of binary analysis.

You yourself praised my geocentric model over the reductionist base-superstructure. The former is based on "subjective dynamics" (so yes, ideas are important).

Dialectics pulls us into the social world, rhetoric comforts and consolidates us in our inadequate solipsism.

Here is another piece of philosophy for you, philosophical logic this time, from this thread :

Gil:

I rather think that our position as social agents 'pulls' us into the social world, but just call me a sentimental old materialist for such marxist thoughts.

And rhetoric is useful for taking the piss out of you ruling-class dupes.

I see you have given up with the other red herring, and now are trying your luck on this one.

Logic is not philosophy.

But, silly me for expecting you to know that...

Will I never learn.

And there is another piece of philosophy, see Rosa, your writings are studded with philosophical claims - you trained in philosophy, you object to dialectics because of your own philosophy, your very claim that you dont rely on philosophy is itself a philosophical claim, put forward philosophically and defended with a range of arguments that are entirely philosophical in character. Your are completely embedded in philosophy and unable to escape it at all. You dont speak the romaticised language of the workers which you idolise in an idealist fashion, you speak the language of analytical philosophy. Thats why you like Callincos cos he speaks the same language you do. Thats why you like Wittgenstein, cos he speaks that language also. Your whole project is one of defence of an ordinary language philosophy with a gapping self-referential failure at its heart in that it denies its own philosophical character

Gil, obviously suffering from an "Aha, that's another example of philosophy' tic:

Says who? You?

Oh well, that settles it, then.

You mistake my use of philosophy to help destroy it for my own alleged acceptance of some of its assumptions.

That is about as knuckle-headed as someone saying: "Aha, you Marxists are all hypocrits, since you use money, run publishing houses, and sell books, etc., -- so you must all be supporters of the capitalist system".

Are you that stupid, Gil?

I have to say that the case for your defence gets weaker with each of your posts.

And, at every turn, all my arguments contain or end with an appeal to the ordinary language of the working class, and not, as you allege (with no proof -- see, you are making stuff up again -- you just can't resist it, can you?) an idealised version of it. I use ordinary language examples, literally hundreds of times, right throughout all my essays.

Furthermore, I merely use the results of analytic philosophy to help tie you mystics in knots (which is not difficult to do, given the seriously impoverished logical and conceptual tools Hegel left all those who think he has anything of use to tell humanity).

Like Wittgenstein, I regard all the philosophical results of analytic philosophy as nonsensical (as, for example, is outlined in Cora Diamond's work). So, Wittgenstein is only an analytic philosopher in so far as his method helps bring it to an end. The sooner the better, in my view.

In comparison, you have prostituted yourself with the language and thought-forms of the boss-class.

And you have the gall to point your grubby, class-compromised fingers at me!

Kettle calling the sterilising dish 'sooty', in my opinion.

And as far as Alex is concerned, I do not like his philosophy (easily the worst part of his work), just his take on historical materialism (a scientific, not a philosophical theory).

So, you are wrong once more.

This is getting to be a bad habit with you.

I blame dialectics...

I wonder if you have the slightest regard to a) how problematic that stance is (the idea of 'using' the 'results' of philosophy while considering them 'nonsensical'.) and b) how completely philosophical the Wittgensteinian method is.

You talk about mysticism, this is the mysticism of the Cathars in secular form...... It is completely incoherant because, as I have pointed out to you many times, You have no regard to the meaning of the term 'nonsensical'....... and that disregard is itself a characteristically analytical philosophical stance.

What you try to wish into existence, simply by claiming you already embody it, is something that has to be created by the historical process.

To answer the OP in crude terms, contradiction is when two things try to acheive different things which negate each other, i.e. the acheiving of one means the failure of the other. a marxist believes this, because we believe that class struggle is the driving force of history, i.e. the primary contradiction in society is contradiction in the interests of the accumulating class and the producing class.

Gil:

Only about as 'problematic' as is using Marx's method to help end capitalism.

And, as Cora Diamond (and those associated with her: Rupert Read, John Conant, Juliet Floyd, etc.) have shown, this claim is about as accurate as WMD dossiers tend to be:

Once more, W's method is 'philosophical' only in so far as Marxism is pro-capitalist -- they both seek to end either.

http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/F...on=1#_Section1

http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j339/publications.htm

http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/conant.html

What the hell have the Cathars got to do with anything? Your mysticism is Hermetic (and shot-through with aprioristic, dogmatic ruling-class thought-forms):

http://www.marxists.org/reference/su...s/en/magee.htm

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N...with-thumbnail

This is a bit rich coming from someone who confused the meaning of words with the sense of propositions (and who still does not know the difference).

And you haven't seen my PhD work on 'nonsense' -- so you can shut your mystical cake-hole.

Ah, more aprioristic dogma.

Well, I suppose we can be grateful that you are at least consistently dogmatic.

Z:

Thankyou for that Z -- we can always rely on you to assume the role of naive dialectician, somewhat equivalent to those who think that passages from the Bible, or quotes from the local pastor, are the answer to all life's problems.

As my posts here have shown, this 'definition' does not work.

You need, therefore, to stop reeling-off comforting dialectical platitudes, and address the serious problems this incoherent notion (i.e., 'dialectical contradiction') faces.

I haven't read your posts int his thread Rosa, because judging by your past form on dialectics, I can have a guess that the thread descended into nitpicking over biological minutiae.

The OP asked "what is contradiction", i.e., within the tradition of dialectical materialism. I answered it - that annoys you, because you rest on the asusmption that the question can't be answered, let alone in every-day language.

It's ironic isn't it, because my answer didn't even claim that dialectical "contradiction" applies to the real world, I simply explained what is meant when someone uses the term - as the OP requested. Surely it's then up to him to decide if he thinks it's rubbish or not.Personally, I have no trouble seeing how the concept applies to the historical development of human society. Whether it applies to physics or not I won't presume to judge.

Z:

Ok, stay ignorant.

And, the last time we 'debated', it did not 'descend' as you say. I raised substantive objections to Engels's first 'law', derived from chemisrty, physics, biology and everyday experience. You just could not answer my criticisms, truth be told.

In addition, I pointed out that key terms were left undefined, making that law completely vague and subjective.

Same with Lenin's belief in Santa Claus.

The question can no more be answered than can this: "What is the precise nature of God?" -- as I have shown

But like simple-minded Christians, you prefer to cling on to naive and comforting beliefs.

But, the term has no meaning; so you are mistaken yet again.

No more than this has:

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

Rosa, browbeating those you think disagree with you isn't an argument. I agree with Gil that you have no philosophical legs to stand on. You'd have to rewrite all of Marx's ouvre in your own pristine logic sans a whiff of Hegel in order to make your argument cogent. It's not enough to be against something as you state:

However, to give an analogy, we can surely be highly critical of Newton's mystical ideas while accepting the scientific nature of his other work. The same applies here.

You'd have to expound Marxism scientifically per your own pristine, un-Hegelian logic. I.e., show how the class struggle and historical materialism is logical. Until you can do so, your @nti-dialectics don't convince, they are built on sand.

Trivas:

Look, sunshine, you weren't here when the above debate took place, so you have no opinion on it.

And, I have no need to re-write Marx's work (Why would I want to do that, anyway? All I have to do at present is ignore the mystcial sections, and concentrate on the scientific parts -- mercifully they outnumber the former by a huge margin). I freely admit Marx had absorbed far too much Hegel in his early work. The point is that in Das Kapital, according to Marx's own words, every trace of Hegel has been removed.

Now, if I were to skim read, say Das Kapital, and merely say 'it does not work' we both know what you'd say in response.

Same here: unless you can say why my ideas do not work, your comments are peurile -- at best.

And, you do not need an ounce of logic to write or re-write historical materialism --whether or not it is dialectical 'logic' or fomal logic (in fact, 'discursive logic' already shows that the scientific parts of Marx's theory are sound).

[The fact that you think this shows how little of my work you have actually read -- or grapsed.]

You really are scratching around, looking desperately for something, anything, negative to say about my ideas (no matter how irrelevant it is to my actual work) -- not doing too well, so far, are you?

Quit now before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.

In the meantime, may I suggest you look up 'relevant' in the dictionary?

I charged you with being embedded within philosophy, you denied that, but admitted that you do engage with its practice, but only for the purpose of undoing it (sorry Im not replicating your exact words - look above for those). You cite Diamond (a professor of philosophy indeed an academic studying Wittgenstein, Frege and the philosophy of language, moral and political philosophy, and the relationship between philosophy and literature who has served as a Director of Graduate Studies in a Department of Philosophy since 1990), in support of your view.

But you dont explain - and you need to - how the mere intention to end philosophy or break with philosophy can be achieved by a practice entirely contained within the terms of reference of philosophy, as is the case with Wittgenstein, if your assertions are to have any force.

You dont explain that, anymore than you can explain how you have constructed a critique of a set of writings that you think are nonsense, a problem I have previously pointed out to you.

Ah, Gil drags herself/himself off the canvas after another pummelling from Rosa:

And I 'charge' you with stupidity, and with good cause. You plainly cannot read. Go back and try again -- only this time, take that fetching Wellington Boot off your head. It is clearly affecting your eyes.

Yes, yes, and I suppose you are dim-witted enough to believe that a doctor, say, who eradicates a disease is also infected with that disease.

[If the above reasoning is too quick for you, I'll type it slower next time.]

Now, we can keep this up for weeks if you like; we both know you always fold first.

No stamina, unlike us working class revolutionaries.

[Nice cut and paste job from Cora's site, by the way.

Met her once, 20 or so years ago...]

there are times Rosa when you appear to understand that what we are talking about is a politics that is needed by billions and there are times when you appear to be trapped in the need to win like an aspirant bully in a playground. Yes I will always stop before you, just as one claimant before Solomon would rather give up the child........I recognise the ability of conversation about philosophy to become politically useless and to descend into mere flaming and abuse. End of thread as far as I am concerned, since you have had nothing to say for the last couple of posts, except to follow some Beckettian motto - you cant go on, but you will go on.

Gil, getting personal now that his/her rationality has run out:

And yet you come back for more of the same pain from me regularly.

Moreover, even if I had nothing to say -- it would still be more than you.

[Remember, never pick a fight with a logician -- especially a working class one -- or you will always have to storm off in a huff like this.

Have a nice fume...]