You have merely panicked because you cannot respond to my demolition of Lenin's core argument in favour of his belief in objective reality.

And you mistake my intentions; I deliberately made this a controversial post to make comrades think.

[But, you would know this had you read the thread and not gone off at a tangent in your usual fashion, since I revealed my motives about half way through, and repeated them near the end.]

1) This is Lenin's only solid argument allowing him to establish the objectivity of the outside world.

2) But, his argument is too rich, for it implies Santa exists.

3) Manifestly Santa does not exist, and nor does Lenin believe he exists.

4) So, Lenin's inference from his images to objective reality fails.

5) Lenin has no other argument.

6) He is now in a worse position than Mach, Bogdanov and Avenarius, since he has made a 400 page fool of himself by attacking them, when he is still trapped in a solipsistic world, and one which he has accused their theories of implying.

7) Conclusion: Because he has not thought this through, he is an incompetent Philosopher.

Now, it is interesting to see that you think that now I have established that MEC is a 400 page waste of paper, that there in no content to this thread. Like it or not, that is an important result. It means that one of the key texts we use to defend our ideas is useless, and that we had better address this weakness pretty quick.

But, you prefer the head in the sand, safe approach -- again.

Are you not concerned to put up some sort of defence of Lenin?

Ooooh, scary!

wtf Che, this should be moved back to philosophy or theory.

Well in fairness Rosa, what do you picture when you picture Santa Claus? Do you picture some completely novel entity previous unknown to mankind? Something which bears no relation in any way whatsoever to external reality? No, you picture a man in a red suit wearing a hat. Similarly with unicorns; they themselves do not exist, but ponies exist, and it's not very hard to go from pony -> pony with horn on head. Indeed, we could even extend this to include the hobgoblin example; of course no one has ever seen a hobgoblin, but even when one imagines a hobgoblin one can only form an image consisting of the kind of colours, features, shapes and bodily tissue that exist, or at some point have existed, even in altered form, in the real world. If you form an image of anything in your head it will be based on your past experience of matter. I think this is what Lenin was saying; that our ability to form images in our mind is bound by our experiences with external reality.

I think what was meant in the original sentence will be more clear if we replace the term 'imagining' with 'perceiving':

"Our sensation, our consciousness is only a perception of the external world, and it is obvious that a perception cannot exist without the thing perceived, and that the latter exists independently of that which perceives it."

It is after all a translation.

Leo:



This does not help Lenin, for our perceptions might be misleading, or entirely subjective.

And, you too are trying to 'sanitise' Lenin.

As I noted of several other posters, this tactic would allow Genesis to be made compatible with Darwin -- just change a few words here and there, and bingo...

RS1916:

But, lenin cannot argue this way, for all he has are 'images'; he needs this inference to ground his 'images' in objective reality.

He was not arguing that we have images (of colours, shapes, objects, etc) because things exist in reality which cause them, but the fact that we have an image implies that of which it is the image exists.

So, if I have an image of red, it exists.

If I have an image of a door, it exists.

If I have an image of King Canute, he exists.

If I have an image of Santa, he exists...

His wording and context bear no other interpretation:

He did not say:

Nor did he say

He might believe this, as we might, but he has no proof of this. That is why he needed this inference to work -- which it does not.

So, since Santa does not exist, Lenin's inference is defective.

But he has no other argument that allows him to break out of his subjective prison, and so he is in the same predicament as Mach, Bogdanov, and Avenarius -- except they knew what they were talking about.

This thread is a ridiculous ploy for your book and you're acting like a fucking pompous asshole. Is your approach to any philosophical idea/book/sentence/word you deem incorrect as bitter and elitist as this post? Hopefully you'll remain invisible and unimportant because the last thing the communist movement needs is some self-important prick with their head up their own ass as a representative.

"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it “images.”"

The mind's ability to create an image of Santa, or any mythological being/object is in fact a result of external stimuli interpreted through sense organs. Lenin was just reciting the old materialist argument that all images in our minds are composed of memories(either whole or components) of our body's interpretation of an objective external reality.
When read in context it's very clear what he meant, but you're right in that it wasn't the best sentence for him to communicate that idea. Maybe poor editing or translation.

TemperTemper918273:

I do not have a book; and if you think you can come here and simply abuse me, you are sadly mistaken.

You can accuse me of being wrong, confused, ideologically adrift...; no problem. But any more straight abuse like this will be deleted.

And, I note, once more, a comrade (perhaps a 'Leninist') who cannot respond to my refutation of Lenin's only argument in the entire book that tries to break out of the subjectivist pit he had dug for himself.

We know this, and Lenin certainly believed this, but he has no way of proving it (and neither have you) -- except by means of this 'argument'.

But this 'argument' is far too strong; it implies the existence of that which an image is the image.

So, once more, an image of a unicorn implies at least one unicorn exists.

Now, I have made this point very carefuly and clearly several times, so I can only imagine that you either did not read this thread too carefully, or you do not understand the issues involved.

The translation cannot affect the fact that this is Lenin's only 'proof', and it does not work (no argument will work here).

In fact, far better Philosophers than Lenin have come unstuck in this area.

If you begin with 'images', as Lenin does, there is no way out of this epistemological hole. So, re-translating Lenin will not rescue him -- no argument exists that can transform subjective images into objective realities.

This is all so unfortunate; there are far better ways of defending materialism than this.

Go back in the thread and read some of your own abuse. Everyone who has attempted to defend the comment has been dismissed as a Lenin worshiper in a of slumber of ignorance.
I've read some of your essays on the need to get past DM and I agree with large sections of them, but approaching it like this doesn't help anyone. There are much more useful ways of presenting your argument than childish iconoclasm and accusing any opponents as fools with a personality fetish.

You're being a vulgar reductionist and intentionally misrepresenting what is being said. The image of a unicorn is essentially a combination of two existing component images(horn and horse) so it's not shocking that the human mind by way of imagination could combine the two into a unicorn.
That was what Lenin was saying. In order for a human to create an image in his/her head there must be some image or images that exist which consist of either the whole or parts of the image in the person's head.

Granted, that's not exactly what he says, but any reasonable interpretation(not one looking to "demolish" everything he says by nitpicking individual sentences). Lenin is not saying that the imaginary is real, and hopefully you know that.

Temp:

My words of censure directed at those individuals you mention followed upon their abuse of me. I did not begin by attacking them. [In the case of Citizen Z, his personal attacks on me began nearly two years ago.]

I do not use the sort of language you used on me. Now, I said you can call me ignorant, confused or plain stupid, but any more posts with the kind of language you used will be deleted. There is no excuse for that.

And there is a reason for my cussidness (which I explain on the opening page); but I have done nothing to deserve the extreme abuse you dished out.

Others here tried that line of defence and it won't work; for a start it is reductionist itself.

Secondly I quoted his exact words; you are the one who is ignoring them, or seeking to have them sanitised (perhaps by re-translating them), not me

But, more importantly, Lenin cannot establish the objectivity of even the parts of his images, or the images of part of objects without this argument. It grounds what he takes to be his images of objects and/or their parts in objective reality.

If Lenin has an image of, say, blue, he cannot show that any blue object, or source of blueness, exists in the outside world without this argument. For all he knows colour could be a subjective experience created by his own mind. And this could be the case with his other images.

Sure he can say it isn't, he can beleive it isn't, and he can take others to task for saying the opposite (as you can too). But none of these constitute proof.

This is the only argument in the entire book that supports the view that this is not the case, and that his images are objective. There is no other. Without it, he has no way of knowing his images are not subjective. [You are welcome to try to show otherwise.]

So, if he has an image of blue, according to this argument, blue objects must exist.

He is not arguing the other way round (for, if he did, it would not have helped him).

It is no use him arguing that blue exists in reality therefore we have images of it (as you are attempting to do), for a follower of Mach, Bogdanov, or Berkeley would just retort: "How do you know?" And Lenin has no answer to that, other than this argument. Without it, he is sunk.

Sure, he deployed all manner of irrelevant rhetorical devices to attack subjectivists, but the one argument that allowed him to base his images in objective reality was this one.

But it is too strong, and implies the existence of things Lenin would have denied. Hence it is a useless argument, and I am right to point this out.

You can claim this, but but the wording of these passages is the exact opposite of what you say:

It wasn't:

Or even:

So he was arguing from images of anything (part, component, whole object) to the existence of whatever it is that it is the image of.

Not the other way round:

Once more, he might believe this, and even thump the table to underline that fact; but he has no proof without this argument.

However, your argument traps all Lenin's images in his head. How is he going to show they are objective, on your view? [There is no way; and that is why he deployed this argument.]

Now, I have been over this many times here. If you have any textual evidence from MEC (or from anything else Lenin wrote) that supports your interpretation, let's see it.

Without it, your response is just wishful thinking, or, like one or two others here, just an attempt to sanitise Lenin, and remove the embarrassment of having to admit his argument implies Santa Claus exists.

So, as I have noted, your reply still traps Lenin in the subjectivist hole he has dug for himself.

In the final analysis: well, Lenin DID celebrate X-mas in 1923, so perhaps he did believe in Santa Claus!

So.... if I'm to summarize this thread, Rosa's problem is that Lenin apparently postulated in some obscure philiophical text that, of all things, sentio ergo est; the mere notion of a thing makes the thing real. i.e., if I can think it, it must exist. Rosa judges that to be a bad basis for a materialistic philosphy.

Well, she's right, of course. And Lenin was a rather lousy philisopher (he was also a rather lousy politician but that's another discussion), but one wonders as to the relevency of this issue today.

Is someone proposing that we utilize Lenin's theoretics? Or that we should employ his particular "intepretation" of objectivity? 'Cause if not, who cares if he happened to take an overbroad view of materialism?

Yeah, Lenin obviously couldn't take his own thinking to its logical conclusion. Good thing Rosa is here to do that for us.

We know Lenin didn't believe in Santa.. so he certainly didn't think in a way that would have lead him to do so. What Lenin is describing has already been defined earlier in this thread, i.e. that consciousness is a reflection of reality, and that anything we can conjure up can only be a reflection of what really exists (for example, unicorns don't exist, but horses and horns do).

Well I had a look at your essay, Rosa, and there was one point you didn't address.

Could there be a charitable reading of the Russian original terms for Lenin's "image", "thing imagined", and "exists independently"? Possibly one dealing with a sense of the term "image" for example, in Russian, that is not quite captured in English. "Thing" after all is one of the most loaded, nuanced terms one could attempt to translate. I've tried translating philosophy before and gave up very, very quickly.

I expect your answer to be an unqualified no. For your essay, perhaps you'd like to explain away this possibility for the sake of completeness.

LSD, you are right about his philosophy, but I cannot, as you might expect, agree with you about his politics.

But, unfortunatley, as you can see from the reception I have experienced here, far too many comrades think this book of Lenin's is almost the last word on the subject (especially if it is beefed-up with his later, more Hegelian thoughts).

So, it is important for me to deflate these ideas.

CDL-as-was:

Well, you seem incapable of defending Lenin...

You are right, Lenin certainly believed the reflection theory, but his only argument in support was the one I quoted, and since it does not work, that puts Lenin in the same invidious position as Mach, Avenarius and Berkeley: he is a subjective idealist/fideist.

MarxSchmarx:

I suspect you might be right, and an article I cite in that essay (by Goldstick) actually argues along precisely these lines. [As I also note, in a later re-write of this Essay, I will add a long critique of this paper -- I had to break-off in order to help prepare for my trip to Oxford.]

Unfortunatley, no re-write of Lenin (or new translation) can get him out of this hole.

If you begin with images, then you are stuck with them for good, as should seem obvious.