Trivas:

Well, since you know nothing, I can ignore that pretentious 'AFAIK'.

That's like saying: "Look everyone is scabbing, so what's the problem?"

Some are, some aren't.

Too bad for you that I am in the former category.

Rawthentic:

Depends on which branch of formal logic you are speaking about.

In Fregean logic, it's whatever is designated by a proper name or other singular designating expression (such as a definite description, like "The President of the USA...").

http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/frege.htm

Easy: on Friday, step into the Mississippi, and then do the same on Saturday.

You might say that the river has changed, but no, it's still the Mississippi.

What might have changed is the water in it, and the banks (slightly), along with one or two other things (e.g., the animals and plants in and alongside it), but it is still the same river (it hasn't changed into the Nile or the Vistula).

Heraclitus was a rather confused mystric, who, among other things, mixed up the criteria we have for the identity of items in the world picked out by count nouns and by mass nouns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_noun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun

As Bertrand Russell said, the worse a man's logic, the more 'interesting' is his metaphysics. [I paraphrase.]

I’ve heard that one before, but do you by any chance know where it was from (the man wrote so much it’s difficult to keep track of)?

Yes, it's from his History of Western Philosophy.

The actual quote is:

Russell, B. (1961), History Of Western Philosophy (George Allen & Unwin).

He was, in fact discussing Hegel when he wrote this. But, I bet you could guess that!

So what's wrong with being interesting? At least it's a charge which cannot be leveled at analytic philosophy.

Russell was being ironic. If you read the chapter from which this was lifted, he meant by this word 'ridiculous'.

And, you might not find analytic philosophy interesting, but many do, including me. At least one can trust its results more, since they are not based on crap reasoning, as is the case wih 'Continental Philosophy'.

The paucity of content in your replies merely highlights the paucity of your arguments. Why not just admit your understanding of historical materialism is nil?

Trivas:

I admit it; you are right. I have clearly learnt far too much from you, the undisputed master here. How could I have been so naive as to think I could compete with your level of vacuity?

Even if it were, it would be stratospheric next to yours.

So an object is just a single entity? Or is it a collection of things, states, appearances, etc?

When I say 'Rosa', am I referring to just a name? Or is it a single thing?
So, what is a river? Is there not a relationship between the parts and the whole? The whole needs all of its part to be a whole, or else, it would cease to be.

Isn't the opposing force of a river, gravity? Doesn't this show that material things have opposites that contradict yet need each other?

Indeed, analytic philosophy has single handedly destroyed enthusiasm for philosophy in the United states. Continentals were wiped out during mcarthy and replaced with horrid analytic departments.

Rawthentic:

Well, that is up to science to find out; logic is merely the study of inference, not of what exists. So, as far as Fregean logic is concerned, whatever it is that a name names, so long as it functions as a name in a proposition, it stands for an object.

In English, a Proper Name like 'Rosa' generally names an individual, so when you use it you are not referring to my name, but to me. If you want to refer to my name you'd say something like "'Rosa' is Rosa's name."

But, that is a convention of the English language, and logic cannot legislate here.

Well, again, in all the languages of which I am aware, a river is a flowing body of water that has locally been assigned to the category 'river', and which has a certain identifiable geographical location and course. So, when you step into it, you are stepping into a changing object, but which object has certain criteria of identity associated with the use of the general term "river".

In that case, an explorer, for example, might think that he or she has located two different rivers, but later find out that it is the same river. According to Heraclitus, that could never happen.

You have hit upon a complex topic, here, called 'Mereology'. The relation between parts and wholes is highly involved, and we'd be rash to make sweeping statements here.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

But, as complex as it is, that does not affect our use of the word "river", nor does it affect how we identify or distinguish them.

Since only human beings using language can contradict one another, I do not see why you need to introduce that word here.

Only someone who thought nature was human -- that is, who anthropomorphised nature -- would want to argue that a river could contradict anything.

Scientists can tell us all we need to know about rivers without ever having to use such language, and without ever having to personify the material world.

Joe Hill:

Just like weed killer destroys weeds, that is excellent news, JHG!

Meanwhile in other countries (notoriously France), any old rubbish can be spouted, just so long as it sounds 'profound'.

An apposite quotation from Larry Laudan (aimed at French Philosophers) springs to mind:

Laudan, L. (1977), Progress And Its Problems (University of California Press).

The French need to spread some weed killer, too.

Let me give you a clue: HM is the application of dialectics to the history of human societies.

Trivas:

Ah, good! That puts you at odds with Marx, then.

Eh? Ever since the mass firings philosophy has lost students year after year. More like spraying weed killer and poisoning the garden.

JHG:

But that is not down to analytic philosophy. So, what's your point?

It just seems to me like we need DM to understand certain things. For example, since everything is matter in motion (right?) then everything has its opposite and internal contradictions.

Like trivas said, is not HM grounded in DM?

Rawthentic:

Why do you persist in wanting to anthropomorphise reality?

People contradict (= "gainsay") one another, things do not.

And if we needed a theory of change, DM would not be it.

Here is why:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=250

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=249

[The quotations relevant to the first link can be found a third of the way down the second.]

Traditionally, since Engels's day, it has been, but that does not mean that it should be, especfially since dialectics prevents HM from working. [See the above links.]

My point is that people like departments that are mixed, they have higher retention rates. Camus, Sartre, Foucault, Zizek, Frankfurt School, they're not just silly nonsense, they often have important contributions and students like reading about those contributions.

JHG:

Sure, they have important contibutions to make toward filling books and articles with useless verbiage, but what has that got to do with the aforementioned sackings?