What on earth is the dialectic?

[Binkie]

Yes, but does it cause change, or just explain it? And if so, how?
I dunno, maybe this question is nonsensical to a dialectician/philosopher/scientist...

It just helps explain change/tranformation, as calculus does or as a movie camera does. Dialectical Materialism is just an antidote to a) Mechanical Materialism b) all forms of Idealism, including Hegelian Dialectical Idealism. It also supersedes Empiricism.

 

[118118]

It just helps explain change/tranformation, as calculus

Unless I've misunderstood and its only numbers, realists believe that calculus exists independently of the human mind. Could that be said about dialectics?
That it only explains change implies that it does not replace any laws of nature etc. Or if it does, how is change affected?
How does change happen to the dialectician - are there universal laws like in metaphysics. That conflict leads to change must happen for a reason iyswim

 

[northernhord]

the dialectic in Marx's terms is simple it is a talking history where processes can quite rightly be observed in human affairs

 

[mozzy]

Au contraire, consciousness is by definition immaterial. All attempts to argue otherwise, from the metaphysical materialism of Condillac and Holbach, through the dogmatism of Lenin and the reductionism of Foucault and Althusser, to the biological determinism of Richard Dawkins, are clearly and demonstrably rubbish. Once again, the idea/matter dichotomy is mutually definitive. Matter would not *exist* without ideas.

Agree!

 

[Fruitloop]

Why?

 

[mozzy]

Why?

Guess i am an idealist at heart. I like to support the underdogs!

 

[slaar]

Is it just me, or did phil run away when he started getting his ass kicked by someone who knew something about philosophy?

 

[Binkie]

Perhaps his views changed in the dialectical process of dialogue.

 

[118118]

I don't know what the dialectic is

But, anyway, I would like to know, if anyone can help:

whether any subject that I am unsure about, e.g. atoms are real and unreal - can I just say that the truth is a dialectic relationship between the two; that both ideas are true and not distinct, what is true is a movement of the two, or something?

What about if I limited this to theories of human relations - can I just say of any two theories that I like, they are both true - dialectically?

iyswim

Cheers

 

[Fruitloop]

Well you can, and people do, but it's an utter cop-out in my opinion.

 

[118118]

It's definitely part of the symbolic order - it represents a way of modeling the material world, not an aspect of the real.

I don't know if it is just because he is a phenomenologist but Marcuse would disgree with this he thinks that "being is inherently dialectical".

He quotes Hegel: "it is the motion of thing itself" "it is the real, i.e., that which posits itself, that which lives in itself"

 

[revol68]

nah the real is something that is outside articulation, the real can't be anything to us except a void, a gap.

Being is always within the symbolic order.

 

[118118]

Does this mean we cannot say about the real that: "the real is a substance - as it is characterized by not needing any other entity to be" (to move into existence)? If the real is a gap, it can not be said to be moving into existence, in which case we cannot say this it is!

 

[revol68]

well from my interpretation of Zizek, the real acts as a vanishing mediator, in that having given birth to the symbolic order, it vanishes into an abyss, unreachable from the symbolic order, like the pulling up of a ladder. Any attempt for us to articulate the symbolic order would see us destined to the same fate as Icarus.

 

[118118]

I feel as though, if you are letting something be seen here, it is that the real "is", even if it is not. Being is, so even not-being is being, if you follow.
lol

 

[118118]

Well, having re-read the these on Feuerbach

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach included - is that the thing [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness is conceived only in the form of the object or of comptemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction to materialsim, was developed by idealism - but only abstractly since, of course, idealsim does not know real sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensusous objects differentiatedfrom the thoght objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenstandliche] activity. Hence in the Essence of Christianity he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical form of appearance. Hence he does not grasp the significance of 'revolutionary' or 'practical-critical' activity

I think he is demonstrating that the dialectic is part of the real, but that the real is human activity. As e.g. when he says "The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach included - is that the thing [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness is conceived only in the form of the object or of comptemplation" it seems very unlikley that he is saying that it is he that only conecives of sensousness as object or comtepmlation. I suppose you could say that yes the contradictions are real (conception as object or comtemplation is part of the activity of whatever century philosophy) but that the dialectic's movement is just an idealization; but if acticity is real and Marx is invloved in activity, then the movement of copntradiction is part of reality anyway, and he does think that the theoretical attitude is not the most human/real - and maybe this would mean there is a contradiction in saying that the dialectic is part of the theoretical attitude?

And he disparges the theoretical activity. Seems less likely to do that if it is the dialectic.
So, the dialectic really inheres () in/is a part of, human activity?

 

[118118]

Forgot why I winked now

 

[118118]

Bumped, because I think this is a really interesting question. Not the best defense of negatives being part of what is real, but I think that if you read the text as I suggest it seems fairly obvious.

Dialectics as part of of the theoretical was a Colletti thing, apparently. I don't know, but i think he may have been a bit of a cnut.