Dialectical Materialism

[butchersapron]

that is one, very clear, example of a contradiction, but there are other possibilities!

In terms of formal logic.

 

[butchersapron]

Yea, it's the starting point of ludicrous, self-contradictory lunacy is what it is. Look at me substitute "A" for "butchersapron". "Butchersapron is not butchersapron". Is that true? Are you not yourself?

I'm pretty clearly not.

 

[belboid]

Eh? It isn't meant to be true. The point would be that the contradiction between Butchersapron and Not Butchersapron would create something new - Super Butchersapron. And none of us would want that.

 

[TruXta]

Then who the fuck are you and what you have you done to butchersapron you UTTER bastard?!

 

[butchersapron]

Eh? It isn't meant to be true. The point would be that the contradiction between Butchersapron and Not Butchersapron would create something new - Super Butchersapron. And none of us would want that.

You can't stop history.

 

[TruXta]

I'll do my very best, thank you very much.

Anyway, back to this strange logic you're operating with here. How on earth do you get a consistent theory if you no longer subscribe to the principle of identity and its corollaries? I know it's doable in maths and formal logic, but where's the philosophical purchase? Seems to me that if you hold to a notion of "A = ¬A" you can't really do much that would count as normal economic, social or political analysis. How do you count the number of homeless if the set of homeless people also includes those who are not homeless?

 

[belboid]

eh? Sorry, you've misunderstood/I've explained badly. A does not equal ¬A. They are contradicory.

Actually, I've just seen where we went astray now - you were using 'valid' in its appropriate manner, which took me by surprise! (reminds me of the time I didn't realise someone was calling Blackwood one time I was playing bridge. Oh how my shins suffered for that)

It would be a valid syllogism, but we couldn't predict the outcome, just as we couldn't in formal logic.

 

[TruXta]

Listen, if you deny the validity of the law of excluded middle, which you did up in post 54, you also deny the law of identity, since the former is a corollary of the latter. Simples.

Also I don't speak Bridge.

 

[butchersapron]

I deny it.

 

[pk]

It was British subjects that effectively came up with Marxist ideals long before old Karl, in all seriousness!

We Brits can take credit in part for having conceived a rudimentary system of what came to be known as Marxism, certainly in terms of the "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" principle out of sheer necessity, before Karl Marx was even born.

Any of you politicos care to take a guess at what I am referring to? I'll bet you'll never get it... but it's true!

 

[TruXta]

I deny it.

Fair enough. Let me know when you return to the land of sanity.

 

[TruXta]

It was British subjects that effectively came up with Marxist ideals long before old Karl, in all seriousness!

We Brits can take credit in part for having conceived a rudimentary system of what came to be known as Marxism, certainly in terms of the "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" principle out of sheer necessity, before Karl Marx was even born.

Any of you politicos care to take a guess at what I am referring to? I'll bet you'll never get it... but it's true!

Burke?

 

[pk]

Burke?

Good guess... but he was Irish...

In fairness to Marx, i doubt he'd have been aware of the pre-Marx marxist community... which functioned very well and still does to this day, albeit in a rather controlled manner.

Had an interesting chat with a historian about it recently, and there are plenty of peeps here I though might have their interest piqued by such a factoid...

 

[butchersapron]

That's why he wrote a massive book about them.

 

[TruXta]

Defoe?

 

[TruXta]

That's why he wrote a massive book about them.

Or didn't. You know, what with a book not being a book and all that.

 

[pk]

That's why he wrote a massive book about them.

Not willing to take a guess then?

You'll be surprised at the answer...

 

[butchersapron]

Or coming into existence - ta.

 

[Streathamite]

Good guess... but he was Irish...

In fairness to Marx, i doubt he'd have been aware of the pre-Marx marxist community... which functioned very well and still does to this day, albeit in a rather controlled manner.

Had an interesting chat with a historian about it recently, and there are plenty of peeps here I though might have their interest piqued by such a factoid...

Bentham? or Adam Smith?

 

[TruXta]

Smith was Scottish.

 

[TruXta]

Or coming into existence - ta.

Or not.

 

[Streathamite]

Smith was Scottish.

Scotland has been part of 'great britain' since 1707?

 

[TruXta]

pk said he/they was/were irish?

 

[butchersapron]

Or not.

Now we get history - see?

 

[TruXta]

No I don't see. If you in all earnestness suggests that a car is not a car I think you should be stripped of your licence if you've got one, or be denied one if you don't and want one.

 

[TruXta]

Remind me again, how do you count when 1 is not 1?

 

[butchersapron]

Of course the assemblage of components is a car. It's also potentiality something else.

 

[belboid]

Listen, if you deny the validity of the law of excluded middle, which you did up in post 54, you also deny the law of identity, since the former is a corollary of the latter. Simples.

ohh, bugger...the law of excluded middle..that rings bells as being a bit of a bugbrear but I'm trying to remember why it isn't!

Whilst the law is certainly important for establishing identity in formal logic (one cannot say The King of Spain without it, unless one were to invent a new symbol especially for 'The'), this formality is merely an attempted reflection of the world, an abstraction. As such, its attempts to categorise 'things in themselves' is pretty much bound to have some dodgy boundaries (eg, what is a 'worker'?).

And whilst the law is important, and reflects the way in which we will usually see the world work, it isn't actually necessary. Breewer has reconstructed matematical logic without any reference to the Law, and quantum theory shows how it is necessary for some truth values to be 'undetermined.'

 

[butchersapron]

Remind me again, how do you count when 1 is not 1?

You make a provisional agreement that 2 comes next.

 

[Streathamite]

pk said he/they was/were irish?

nooo - Burke was irish!