Re: What is dialectics?

Haines Brown wrote:
"Ron Peterson" <ron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Then you have to come up with some scientific model that corresponds
to DM. A metatheory is just going to be philosophical principles.

I'm scratching my head on this. First, to clear the ground, if a
metatheory is wedded to Cartesian dualism, which as we agree is to be
avoided, what then becomes the status of diamat?

I find no basis for Cartesian dualism and no reason to associate it
with any metatheory.

DM just needs to be restated as philosophical principles that make
sense, and probably state those philosophical principles on which the
scientific method depends.

Long ago the word "generalizing" kept popping up in connection with
discussions of what diamat is, but that clearly was unfortunate, and I
don't know that anyone today would be willing to defend it. So let's
avoid the old standard discussions.

So allow me to speculate freely. Suppose we are investigating a real
system, but let's assume it is an open system and therefore a
process. We know from observation that without specific boundary
conditions it will dissipate (increase in entropy, move to a more
probable state, become less ordered). This is a descriptive
generalization. However, we can explain it in terms of an inner
mechanism. We can calculate its degrees of freedom, which is a number
that represents a real but unobservable feature of the system,
expressing what the system is capable of becoming, not what it
actually is. Without any boundary conditions, the degrees of freedom
remain at least the same.

Suppose I now introduce a structure (usually called a membrane, wall,
boundary, mediation, etc.) that constrains the number of the system's
degrees of freedom, and as a result the outcome of change becomes less
probable than it would have been the case had there been no
constraint. We characterize such a process as being emergent. This
supports the existence of a law: constrain a dissipative process, and
the result is necessarily an emergent process. What is the status of
this law? It is an elaboration of the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
but unlike that Second Law, which is a descriptive generalization, it
refers to the inner mechanism of the change.

In the case of diamat I described this inner mechanism as the unity
and interdependence of two opposite processes such that the emergence
of one necessarily dissipates the other. Putting aside the of whether
this description is sound, what is its status? It is a description of
the inner mechanism at work in certain kinds of systems. It is
meta-something because it is one step removed from an analysis of
specific systems.

...

On the other hand, you appear to assume that metatheory is _just_
philosophical principles and therefore concerned only with mind. Do
you deny that some such principles may not also be constrained by the
world? I'm in water here over my head, but it seems that logic refers
to the mind, but there are other principles that emerge from both the
mind and the world. Perhaps contradiction, for example.

Philosophical principles are statements and statements are independent
of any mind.

Mathematical and logical statements have no connection with any
physical world. They are concerns of language assigning truth values to
statements.

Human knowledge can be thought to be made up of statements.
Categorizing ala Kant;
Mathematical and logical statements can be proved.
Scientific statements can't be proved, but can only shown not to hold
under some experimental conditions in which case they are rejected.
Philosophical statements can't be proved or shown not to hold. They
consist of things like definitions and other concepts like space, time,
and causality.
Observational statements are possibly true but are subject to the
biases of the observor.

I'm not sure I quite follow these premises. You seem to want to
categorize statements, which may be convenient, but what you offer
does not seem compelling:

1. Can all mathematical statements in fact be proven? I think of
Gödel here.

Only true mathematical statements can be proven. Sorry if I was sloppy
about that.

Otherwise, let's leave Gödel out of the thread, the topic has been
discussed to death in sci.math.

2. As for scientific statements, you sound Popperian, but who still
maintains that scientific statements can only be falsified?

I'm not a fan of Popper, but that idea is a good philosophical
principle which was probably around long before Popper.

3. Your use of examples in lieu of definition suggests that you wish
to limit philosophical statements to our mental categories. Are
ethical statements or a political philosophy limited to a mental
categories? If you are not a logical positivist or
phenomenologist, is ontology so limited?

I am not sure what you mean in regard to mental categories.

I am quite willing to let any concept be proposed if it results in a
better understanding of the universe (or local neighborhood).

4. Just to be picky, why are observational statements "possibly
true"? If any observation is constrained by the world, then any
observation has some truth value, so such statements are always
true in some fashion, although never "true" in the absolute sense
of being independent of the observer.

I should have left that category of statements out since it isn't
germane to the issues. Observations are colored by understanding of the
world at the time. There is a lack of repeatibility in observations so
there is no way to verify an actual observation.

Sorry to comment on your list, for I don't want to get side tracked by
questions such as these, especially since they don't seem self
evident. Why is it necessary to categorize our statements, and what
significance does such a categorization have? Your basic point
carries without our having to enter this thicket: I suggested that our
concepts are constrained by the world, and I'm willing to concede that
some are and some are not. My error was perhaps because I was thinking
only of scientific concepts.

I felt that it was necessary to bring up the various types of
statements to better characterise what DM is. (i.e. a set of
philosophical statements).

My claim is that a correct interpretation of DM consists of
philosophical statements that goes beyond the philosophical
statements comprising the scientific method.

Before I can understand this, I need to ask some elementary questions:

1. Just what is a "philosophical statement"?

That is a statement that can neither be proved, disproved, or shown not
to hold.

2. What defines a "scientific philosophical statement"?

I didn't use that phrase. There are philosophical principles concerned
with the use of the scientific method.

3. What is there about diamat that carries it beyond being a
scientific philosophical statement?

That's not what I would ask. A better question would be "What
principles of DM aren't accepted by the scientific community?".

Clearly DM doesn't fit in that category. DM is just part of an
epistomology.

Perhaps it doesn't fit into this definition of metatheory, but why
not? Why aren't the formalities of scientific theory epistemological?

The formalities are epistemological.

We haven't gotten very far in our last few exchanges. Clearly, diamat
characterizes how certain processes take place in the world.

I am sorry for being so picky, but DM doesn't say anything about the
world, it is concerned with how statements (scientific) are made about
the world.

One issue is that diamat possibly describes how we must think about
such processes because of the limits of the mind, or it can represent
itself as a description of how the world actually works, or it can be
both, since mental life arises from the same world it reflects back
upon to grasp in the only ways it can. ...

The mind has no limits to the best of my knowledge (OK speed and
memory, but that can be augmented).

Kant killed the idea that knowledge of the real world can be derived
from first principles, so let's avoid that.

Think of DM as a kind of philosophical sugar that makes scientific
models understandable in the same manner.

Finally, the issue of metatheory does not carry us very far. For
example, non-Marxist scientists have sometimes admitted that such
dialectical rules as the interchange of quantity and quality make a
lot of sense. The problem with such a descriptive formula is that you
can take it or leave it; you can decide that if fits a particular
situation or it does not. Because it lacks explanatory power, it does
not seem compelling, and that is why I'm interested in the inner
mechanism at work in diamat that makes it into an explanatory tool.

You're right that DM hasn't been written in a manner that makes much
sense.

--
Ron


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