Sorry,i dont have a motive at all and i am not a sophist.
Whats this? Some kind of a test in order to see if there is still a metaphysical chance in a dialectical world?

No value:

You are no logician, either, or you'd know you cannot prove a falsehood.

Hyacinth, I dont have links, but the relevant discussions are all over this philosophy forum over the last year or so - not hard to find.

Rosa, I wont answer your long post, except to clarify that I never said I make things up about you. What I said was that IF anything I said misrepresented your view I was sorry about that as nothing is served by misrepresenting other people....and then I went on to explain some of the features of your approach which make it necessary to speculate somewhat on the hidden (or undeveloped) perspectives which underpin your expressed views - entirely different thing. [By the way if any one is persuaded by Rosa's responses on any of the points summarised in my long post, I am happy to go back over it, but I just dont want to divert this thread into the ten or so parrallel discussions it would take to pursue all points which I only referred to and purposely did not elaborate in my original post. The point of my post was that those criticisms exist, not that to persuade anyone that they are correct.]

Most importantly, Rosa, you claim that your position is clearly confirmed by a quote of another author by Marx which he approves and which does not contain a citation of Hegel. That is rather a lot to hang on that indirect form of expression, just as you hang a lot on the interpretataion of the verb to coquette. However, I have asked you a clear question, requoted above. Yes or no - would such a quotation from Marx disprove your claim ?

Hyacinth:

Are you kidding?

Gil regularly makes stuff up like this, and when asked to, never supplies the proof.

Why do you think I treat her/him with sucg contempt?

You can find links to all the pages where I have wiped the floor with, er sorry, debated with Gil (and others) here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/RevLeft.htm

By the way, did you read my reply to Gil, above?

ok Rosa ill give it a try...
Here is some Tool lyrics on carrots:

-And the angel of the Lord came unto me, snatching me up from my place of slumber. And took me on high, and higher still until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself. And he brought me into a vast farmlands of our own midwest. And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil. One thousand, nay a million voices full of fear. And terror possesed me then. And I begged, "Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?" And the angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust." And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared, "Hear me now, I have seen the light! They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers!" Can I get an amen? Can I get a hallelujah? Thank you Jesus.-

Hyacinth, you see what I mean:

Gil:

As usual, when challenged, you skulk off, and refuse to substantiate your lies.

And, we can be sure you'll repeat them again, in a month or so -- see ya then...

If that were my only evidence, you might have a point, but it isn't, so you don't.

But, you'd know that if you read my Essays, before mouthing off about them.

You demand I answer your question, but refuse to answer mine. Typical.

No Point:

As I said, you know no logic...

Yea.thats true.i am a bad sophist.the essence of logic for you is to supply arguments that look logical.I am sure you could do better than me on proveing I am a carrot,since i dont think i am one.I had no intension to give such looking logical arguments...
If you see my post I say you can prove almost anything with arguments.
Of course as a good sophist you didnt see that...and just because some things get definetly insane as the wold moves...sophisms die..
That of course doesnt mean that someone cant still believe he is a carrot,or that you found a way to prove dm wrong.

No V:

I'd like to see you prove that you can prove anything with arguments. [Up to now, you have just assumed it -- or copied it uncritically off Lenin.]

Or even prove this, for example: Castro is a CIA agent...

wanting me to be a sophist who goes around and proves things of no practical value is like me wanting you to be a scientist that does the excactly oposite.so you go around talkin about the mistakes of Karl Marx but you dont give us a better reflection of the world we live in your great writings that you oftenly direct us to read as they were facts.
And you know...the way out of these stupid thinking which is called scholasticism is practice....real life which dont give a damn about it.

I accept dialectics as essential to Marxist theory, I don't need to defend them. You, OTOH, have no ideas to defend.

No V:

Then withdraw the rash claim that anything can be proved.

Where do I say Marx made 'mistakes'?

And I have no need to offer a 'better reflection' on the world, since I fully accept Historical Materialism, which you'd know if you read what I have to say before passing opinion on it.

Trivas, now reduced to rather sad declarations of faith in the holy dialectic:

On the contrary, as I noted above, I defend my ideas in unprecedented detail both here and at my site.

And, despite your touching declaration of faith, you are like those naive Christians who refuse to defend their ideas, but demand of us atheists that we prove 'god' does not exist.

Whatever your pathetic excuses, the bottom line is that you cannot defend this faith of yours, which works for you just like a religious opiate (which in turn explains why you resemble those naive Christians, and why you cling on to it so desperately).

Ideas? Er, what ideas? Verbage, perhaps.

I wasn't aware that billard balls are a complex social system containing forces in contradiction (opposition that cannot be resolved without revolution) with each other...

And I've always argued against using dialectics in every situation, argued against it being considered a 'world integral outlook'.

Trivas:

No, you are mistaken; I wasn't referring to your posts.

PRC:

According to Lenin, everything in the entire universe is self-moving. So, not only do billiard balls move themselves, given what Lenin says, but light bulbs must be able to change themselves.

Here is the argument:

First, consider a question that is well worth asking: Do objects move one another, themselves, or a bit of both?

Dialecticians have a revolutionary answer. But you might not like it.

Lenin put things this way:

This is a rather odd passage since it seems to suggest that things can move themselves. If so, much of modern mechanics will need to be re-written. On this view, presumably, when someone throws a ball, the action of throwing does not in fact move the ball. On the contrary, the ball moves itself, and it knows exactly where it is going and how to get there, traversing its path independently of gravity. Intelligent projectiles like this, it seems, need no guidance systems -- they happily 'self-develop' from A to B like unerring homing pigeons.

To make matters worse, Lenin did not assert this innovative piece of mechanics just the once:

Now, these comments come from a published essay (on Marx), so the loose phraseology associated with this new theory of motion cannot be put down to the fact that Lenin's earlier words appeared in unpublished notebooks.

Perhaps then this is the point of that old anti-dialectical joke:

Q: How many dialecticians does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None at all, the light bulb changes itself.

A touch unfair? Maybe so, but could this scientific regression on Lenin's part (where he seems to want to return to pre-Aristotelian theories of motion and change) be the result of a mere slip of the dialectical pen? Perhaps Lenin was using language non-literally or metaphorically. Indeed, this is what some bemused DM-fans try to claim when confronted with this example of pre-Galilean mechanics -- which is a get-out that is worryingly reminiscent of the way that theologians used to try to rescue the Book of Genesis when faced with the discoveries of modern science.

Is it possible then that Lenin did not really mean what he said? Or is there a suggestion in what he did say that he thought change in fact has more complex, external causes, too?

Well, as if to disappoint his fans, and provide no help at all for those who still think that dialectics has anything of worth to teach modern science, Lenin not only repeated this odd claim, he "demanded" that all DL-fans see things this way:

Here, not only are objects said to be capable of moving themselves, but Lenin even says that DL "requires" us to view motion in no other way.

[DL = Dialectical Logic.]

It looks, therefore, like Lenin was committed to the belief that not only can light bulbs change themselves, but also that books on dialectics write themselves -- and that DM-fans similarly fool themselves into believing far too much of what they found in Hegel.

Well, perhaps Lenin was merely referring to the development of certain systems, and not the movement of objects from place to place? If so, the impertinent 'counter-example' from earlier (i.e., the one about light bulbs) would neither be valid nor sensible.

But Lenin's words were pretty clear; he asserted that DL demands and/or requires that "objects" (not processes, nor yet systems, but objects) be taken in "development, in 'self-movement'", so he included both -- development and self-movement -- in this caveat. And, all this is quite apart from the fact that, as we have seen, Lenin counterposed this view of reality to that of mechanical materialists, who hold that objects move because of the action of external forces:

There would be no contrast here if objects did not move themselves in the DM-scheme-of-things, both developmentally and as they move from place to place. As we will see, this is indeed how Lenin has since been interpreted by his epigones: holding to the view that things self-develop and self-locomote.

And Lenin was not alone in wanting to return modern science to this ancient 'theory' of change and motion, i.e., one that views nature as a living, self-developing organism, or as a Whole that contains nothing but organisms of this sort --, which, like animals, propel themselves about the place. On this view, nature is en-souled, enchanted, and all things are alive or are governed by some form of intelligence/will.

Other DM-worthies have made similar claims. Here is Bukharin:

Not to be outdone, Plekhanov joined this backward-facing stampede, too:

Countless secondary DM-figures say more or less the same sort of thing. [Details at my site, in Essay Eight Eight Part One, Note 3.

For example, here are Woods and Grant:

Unfortunately, Lenin and his co-dialecticians failed to take any real note of the origin of these ancient ideas: Hermetic Philosophy is based on the belief that the universe is alive; indeed it is a cosmic egg -- later transmogrified by Hegel into a Cosmic Ego.

Since eggs appear to develop all of their own, and because Hegel's immaterial and immanent cosmic Ego self-develops, it clearly seemed 'natural' for Lenin and his epigones to think this of nature, too.

Nevertheless, not even eggs develop of their own; in fact, it is hard to think of a single thing in the entire universe (of which we have any knowledge) that develops of its own, or which moves itself. Not even Capitalism does. Switch off the Sun and watch American Imperialism fold a whole lot quicker than Enron.

And yet, if Lenin were correct, no object in the universe could possibly interact with any other (since that would amount to external causation, and objects would not be self-motivated). Self-motivated beings must, it seems, be causally isolated from their surroundings, or they would not be self-motivated. This in turn must mean that, despite appearances to the contrary, nothing in reality interacts with anything else. That would, of course, make a mockery of the other DM-claim that everything in reality is interconnected.

So, based on the bird-brained doctrines of ancient mystics, and no evidence at all, we find Lenin once again propounding cosmic ideas that do not make sense even in DM-terms -- and ones that not even chickens observe.

References at my site, at the end of Essay Eight Part One (link above).

PRC:

I am glad to hear it, for you are part of the way toward recovery.

But, this is ultimately an indefensible position; dialectics applies everywhere, or nowhere at all.

Why that is so we can leave for another thread.

LOL, I'll have to remember that one.

I've always thought Engels was wrong to apply dialectics to nature, I never understood that one myself (and as stated above, I've always argued against this interpretation). However I still think that applied to social life it yields a lot of useful insights and explanatory power.

PRC:

Well, if you read the dialectical classics, and take them at their word, it turns out that dialectics cannot explain change, either in the social world or in nature.

One or two comrades have tried to neutralise my demolition of this theory by saying that when dialecticians tell us that change is the result of 'internal' (and/or 'external') contradictions, and a struggle between opposites, and that everything sooner or later turns into its opposite, they do not mean this literally (!).

But that is rather like those who try to 'sanitise' the Book of Genesis by telling us that it is all metaphorcal, or allegorical...

Apart from that, it leaves such comrades with no theory of change.

At least Engels, Lenin, and the rest of the classicists had theory of change (one they got from Hegel) -- which does not work; but they at least thought about the issues involved.

Comrades here, who argue in the way I indicated, have no theory of change whatsoever, and have not given change any sort of thought at all.

All they have done is panic in the face of my demolition of the classic dialectical theory of change, and moved to a fall-back position that leaves them with no account of why things change the way they do, and into what they do.

[Or they smuggle into dialectics, concepts from ordinary language to bale this theory out; which means, naturally, that it is ordinary language that can explain change, not dialectics, as I maintain.]

Once more, you can find my demolition here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/...Explain-Change

Indeed, I read your reply. I was just (perhaps unjustifiably) trying to be generous and give him the benefit of doubt. And thanks for the links, though I have my doubts I’ll find anything like a point-by-point response to the arguments in your essays.

I must say, you have far more patience than I in that you’ve actually taken the time to refute dialectical nonsense. I was rather surprised to find that there are still people who take this sort of stuff seriously; I thought the Hegelian disease (as that apt quite from Max Eastman in your signature calls it) was confined to a few Continental philosophy departments, and some English departments. Imagine my shock to discover otherwise.