Malthus and Darwin

Doyle Saylor djsaylor at ix.netcom.com
Tue Aug 18 10:04:38 PDT 1998


Hello everyone, Paul Henry Rosenberg writes Monday Aug. 17, 98 in reply to some observations by Louis Proyect: "...Of course, it's much easier to invoke a straw-man argument, and NEVER expose ourselves to new ideas. If that fails, we can invoke an EITHER/OR mental filter, and treat the offending new idea as a fascist attack on THE CORRECT LINE.

I mean, it's such a chore to actually READ a whole book! And then THINK about it! Marx forbid if we actually had to EXPAND our thinking! Where's Stalin when we really need him????"

Doyle It is an old rationalist conceit that "faith" or belief is seperable from the mind. This was a result of secularist power moving away from the European church. An agreement to make sharp boundaries between areas of control. Louis Proyect is not a Stalinist, so Paul's observation is really not accurate in a rationalist sense of trying to understand ideas. But aside from that, the real weakness of rationalism is the "faith" in logic serving as an alternative to plain old human mental capacities. It is not clear at all that anyone doesn't have parallel "God" like truths in their minds in the sense that Paul makes his remarks to Louis. Or since Paul uses Marx as a substitute for God, some kind of unchanging quality of thought which is like a truth. And Paul seems ill prepared to really think about the subject he raises by his remarks on Louis.

Doyle I really think Paul ought to try moving his criticism up another level of seriousness than it currently rests at. regards, Doyle Saylor



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