Jurriaan are you addressing me, or your 'followers'?
And why the emotive and abusive response? What have I ever done to you?
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"But this is a petitio principii, Rosa just assumes what has to be proved. I defined a dialectical contradiction very clearly, as two opposite conditions which nevertheless presuppose each other and depend on each other for their existence, a situation which can exist because the opposition of the two conditions is in some way mediated, or contained in some way, by something else."
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In fact, I did not "assume" anything, I merely quoted Marx back at you. If you want to pick a fight with him, that's up to you.
Jurriaan:
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"Rosa then argues that if the two conditions mutually exclude each other, they cannot co-exist, but this is just an assertion with an appeal to tautological definition."
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I did not argue this, Marx did.
[And what is a 'tautological definition, for goodness sake?]
Jurriaan:
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"BTW Rosa's Phd dissertation must be total rubbish, you can tell that straightaway from the puberal mode of argumentation."
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Well, you are the one who does not seem to know the difference between an inconsistency and a contradiction, and you seem to think that formal contradictions are nonsensical -- so that accusatory finger of yours needs rotating through 180 degrees. Your grasp of logic does not appear to be all that secure.
Jurriaan:
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"The real logical or semantic question is, under what condition would it make sense (or to be reasonable) to speak of two opposite conditions which nevertheless presuppose each other?"
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But, this in no way helps us understand what you dialecticians are banging on about when you use the phrase "dialectical contradiction".
Jurriaan:
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"Reflective dialectical thought goes right back to Heraclitus and even earlier, and there are many different ways of describing dialectical contradictions and their further implications, I don’t deny that. But the basic idea is quite simple, and there is no particular mystery about it at all, our facilitary and front office staff have deal with this sort of thing all the time."
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Yes, and Heraclitus was a confused mystic, who, among other things, thought that he could determine what was true of all moving bodies and/or processes in the entire universe, for all of time, based on a badly executed thought experiment about stepping into a river!
[He screwed up because he confused count nouns with mass nouns.]
Such a priori dogmatics has dominated much of 'western' thought ever since, including that which Hegel inflicted on humanity (whom you are happy to ape).
Jurriaan:
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"This already shows that Rosa does not grasp formal logic, notwithstanding the brainless Wittgenstein bullshit, which is a ruse."
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Oh dear, you are really getting worked-up, aren't you?
Do you have low impulse control?
I'd get that seen to if I were you.
[Shows I hit a nerve, though, doesn't it?]
In reply to your flat denial, I can quote you as many logic textbooks as it takes that will tell you exactly what I have told you about the difference between a contradiction and an inconsistency (why, even Aristotle distinguished between the two).
Can you do the same?
I think not.
And this is not a Wittgensteinian point; as I noted, logicians since at least Aristotle's day have recognised it.
Nevertheless, I must say, I like the fine, dialectically-complex word you used in your searching, well-reasoned response to me.
What was it again? -- Oh yes: "Bullshit".
So incisive!
I can see I stand no chance...
But, may I remind you: you were the one who appealed to Wittgenstein in your last reply to me. What was all that about 'Wittgensteinian bullsh*t', then? Don't you even know your own mind?
Jurriaan (addressing me now -- I am honoured!):
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"Well, it’s very simple Rosa: just like in Catch-22, what you are dealing with is that in order to apply the rule, you have to negate the rule, and in order to not apply the rule, you have to apply the rule. This may seem unprincipled, but in the bureaucracy there is always a hierarchy of principles which renders such improvisation legitimate. This situation arises, often, because academics like Rosa, who styles himself a 'Wittgensteinian Trotskyite', are paid rich helpings of tax money to devise rule systems and conceptual hierarchies which cannot in fact be applied, because these so-called 'academics' have an extremely poor understanding of what is actually humanly, socially and practically involved in a work process or an administrative process. Their task is to describe what’s happening and rendering it meaningful to the ivory tower of management, Plato's philosopher kings, but this is obviously quite different from the operative staff who actually have to make things work, and therefore face dialectical contradictions all the time."
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I am not an academic, but a worker, and a trade union rep (unpaid), too. So, the above comment of yours is just hot air. But, you clearly needed to get it off your chest.
Feel better now?
Anyway, you'd do well to concentrate on what I actually say, and resist the temptation to make baseless personal attacks on me from a position of total ignorance.
Hey, but what do I know? After all you are the expert logician here. Perhaps abusive and foul language, compounded by lies and invective constitute a new form of valid argument? 'Jurriaan's lemma', perhaps?
Jurriaan (again addressing his rapidly dwindling audience):
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"Here Rosa misses the point completely. The real point is that non-arbitrary human reasoning extends far beyond what we can capture in deductive and inductive inference, and that is just where dialectical reason only begins! But 'Rosa' has no grasp of it at all. Now how can we ever have any constructive discussion when Rosa doesn't even understand the most elementary problems of reason?"
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And where did I deny that "human reasoning extends far beyond what we can capture in deductive and inductive inference..."?
Nowhere, that's where.
Still can't resist the temptation to make stuff up, I see.
And, may I remind you, once again, that you are the one who can't tell the difference between an inconsistency and a contradiction, and you seem to think that formal contradictions are nonsensical -- so I do not think you have any reason to indulge in all that chest-beating -- impressive though it is!
[Phew, what a 'guy', girls...!]
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"This is just puberal, studenty pharisee crap once again. Of course you are going to be perpetually puzzled by the normality of 'dialectical contradictions' if you deny their existence tooth and nail! It would be like saying the sun doesn't exist, even although everybody thinks the sun does exist, on the ground that most people cannot adequately 'define' the sun in terms of formal logic. Well, big deal."
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Ah, what fine, dialectico-scatological words -- coupled with impressive, diversionary bluster!
We can all learn much from you. I'm certainly taking notes!
But, wait! Where did I ask for a definition, or even one in 'Formal Logic'?
I note, however, that you did not once quote me to that effect -- better then just to make it all up, eh?
Indeed, I can quite imagine a benighted Jesuit soul like you arguing with Galileo about the Copernican system, four hundred years ago:
Seventeenth-century-Jurriaan:
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"Of course you are going to be perpetually puzzled by the normality of a stationary earth, if you deny its existence tooth and nail! It would be like saying the sun doesn't exist, even although everybody thinks the sun does exist, on the ground that most people cannot adequately 'define' the sun in terms of formal logic. Well, big deal. And no, I won't look down your telescope, that is just puberal, studenty pharisee crap once again."
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And look what happened to those sad dinosaurs. I'd hate to think you are headed the same direction, even though it looks like you are dead set on emulating them.
Anyway, don't say I didn't warn you...
Jurriaan -- working 'himself' up into a right old lather (crash team on stand-by, please!):
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"Yeah, Rosa does need help, but he or she 'is not sure I am the person to help him or her”'. When all else fails, hang out the victim… The hypocrisy is that I already tried to help him/her, by explaining what a dialectical contradiction is and what the utility of dialectics is, in plain language, sacrificing the free time that I have. Then he/she says, 'I am not sure'. Well, big deal. On to the next one."
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But, you didn't explain what a 'dialectical contradiction' is, since you missed out a key Marxist component, which makes the whole 'concept' implode.
So, not only are you not the person who can help me, you are not even the person to help yourself! This is because you do not seem to understand your own 'theory'!
Jurriaan -- now in full waffle mode:
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"This again is a dumb slur from the nihilist enemy of reason which Rosa is. Einstein as a physicist was not at all an 'idealist', other than having political and human ideals. Einstein is referring to the fact that our ability to actually test theories is far more limited than our creative ability to theorize and draw logical inferences, in part because our ability to construct valid empirical tests is practically limited, whereas our ability to speculate theoretically in abstracto is much less limited, so that the effect is, that the amount of scientific theory we have, is typically disproportionately larger than the amount of valid scientific evidence to back it up. He suggests that there exists a series of basic ('axiomatic') assumptions, discovered through creative inquiry, which, 'if' they are true, would explain the scientific evidence we have, and if we do not have those assumptions, then we cannot explain the scientific evidence. This may seem to weaken the possibilities for scientific knowledge, but in fact armed with these assumptions we are able to explain very much, since we can show convincingly that predictions made using these assumptions will in most cases yield confirmation of the assumptions, or are at least consistent with what we would expect. The point is that these 'axiomatic' assumptions cannot themselves derive simply from the data, though they are informed by them – the central problem of dialectical theory – nor are they amenable to a complete proof by the data. But that is just to say that Einstein, as a scientific realist, rejected a simplistic empiricist account of the relationship between theory and data, according to which Hempelian 'covering laws are strictly generalisations from clusters of sense data. The theory, which contains many logical inferences, and the data gathered, are for Einstein 'semi-autonomous' from each other: they inform each other but are not reducible to each other. He implies thereby that the task of science is to bring the theories we have, and the data we produce, closer together in a rational way, and he expresses his optimism that creative inquiry can enable us to do this – possibly, with the belief that, since we are ourselves part of the universe, we are able to improve our understanding of it. This contrasts with the skepticist mysticism of the Popperian view according to which reality is too complex and variegated, and our abilities too limited, for us to know very much for certain about it at all, so that most people are deluded, and all we can do is demolish illusions, even although there are always far more illusions than we can demolish. Einstein suggests that in reality people are not so deluded as Karl Popper implies and that the “proof is in the pudding” ('The skeptic will say: "It may well be true that this system of equations is reasonable from a logical standpoint. But this does not prove that it corresponds to nature." You are right, dear skeptic. Experience alone can decide on truth.') – if we are able to transform nature consistent with our explicated theory of it, this is an experiential proof of sorts that we can really know essential aspects of nature, even if the proof is not an absolute and final one."
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Thanks for that, but it in no way shows Einstein wasn't an idealist. Anyway, since I do not want to distract attention from the hole you have dug for yourself (in so far as you can't explain the obscure phrase "dialectical contradiction" to eagerly waiting humanity), I will give you this one for now. We can debate it another time.
Jurriaan -- the veins in 'his' neck bulging alarmingly:
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"The bourgeois intellectuals wax with an air of profundity about all the things we cannot know about 'financial risk' and so on, completely ignoring what billions of ordinary folks are proving by their actions every day! Which just tells us that their so-called “innocence” (ignorance really) is just feigned, growing out of their own loves and hates. In the same way, 'Rosa' hates 'dialectical materialism' and tries to create an elaborate defence of that hate. But the real scientific questions are thereby missed altogether. I have never denied that 'dialectical materialism' is a philosophy of Marxist-Leninist bureaucratism, and I have strongly argued against its totalitarian applications. My views on this issue are on public record. But it is another thing to deny the existence of the dialectical characteristics of reality. I am not prepared to do that, in good part because I experience them every day as a normal occurrence, and to deny that would be to deny part of reality. Of course I realise that academic theorists, seeking to be profound, concoct all kinds of nonsense about dialectics, but this does not deter me at all from acknowledging the dialectical characteristics which reality can have. It is just that, rather than focusing on the nonsense, I studied writers like Charles Taylor and Mario Bunge, in other words people who tried to make some constructive sense of the notion."
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Translated this reads: "Sorry, I can't explain what a 'dialectical contradiction' is, so I will just kick up a cloud of dust to hide that fact...".
As I said in my reply to Rakesh: at least have the courage to admit this openly!
It will at least mean we can stand that crash team down.
PS. If anyone wants to know why dialecticians are almost all invariably like Jurriaan here (emotive, irrational and abusive) when their precious 'theory' is attacked, I have provided a detailed explanation here:
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm
PPS: Jurriaan, I have added a link at my site to your reply to me since I am building up a database there of all the abusive and obnoxious dialecticians (scores of them, in fact; the vast majority of whom are as unpleasant and abusive as you are -- all without provocation, too) with whom I have debated this 'theory' over the last four years on the internet.
Since my essays will long outlast you, I have guaranteed that your rather unpleasant personality disorder will never be forgotten. Here it is:
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/RevLeft.htm
Thanks, Jurriaan, for supplying me with yet more data!
Any more bile in there? Let it out, then -- it all adds to my data!
Have a nice fume...
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