> But we are supposed to know how to construct or construe
> or define these things out of phenomena, are we not? At
> least, if we're being materialistic. I think.
Gordon, We can go a bit, but not a lot, further towards Kelley's positon on this. She lists a series of abstractions which vary rather wildly in kind: some are pseudo-abstractions, which is why I invoked Platonic Realism. They are pseudo-abstractions because they don't point to a set of relations (as does the state, for example), and thus can't be grouped under an important point Marx makes in the *Grundrisse* (I'm quoting from memory): That unlike the things related relations must be thought rather than perceived. Her "eros" as far as I'm concerned is a "thing," not a set of relations among a complex of things. Hence it belongs in the same category as The Holy Ghost, The Son of God, The Immaculate Conception, Skinchangers, etc. etc. etc. My original inquiry asked her to give me some reason to place it among such abstractions as "state," etc. She refuses to do so, so the conversation ends, since any explanations I could make up for placing "eros" and "state" in the same genus would in fact place it in the same category as "Providence" as discussed by Marx in *POP*: a paraphrase of the facts masquerading as an explanation.
At some point your "at least while we're being materialistic" comes in importantly. The best statement I know of for the point that needs to be made here is by Sebastiano Timpanaro in his book, *On Materialism* (understand, this is only one small part, but a crucial part, of materialism):
We cannot . . .deny or evade the element of passivity in experience:
the external situation which we do not create but which imposes
itself on us.
(*On Materialism*, p. 34)
The core rhetorical dodge of all idealisms is to reduce materialism to *only* this point, and then to label this point "positivism." It is with this in the back of my head that I remarked in an earlier post that reality cannot be dismissed with a label.
So I would amend slightly your, "But we are supposed to know how to construct or construe or define these things out of phenomena, are we not? At least, if we're being materialistic." Our construals or constructions are an attempt to *explain*, to make sense of, phenomena. And, among materialists, we demand that our explanations be more than merely paraphrases or summaries of the facts. You and I might have quite different theories of the state, but we both would want our theories to be an adequate explanation of a large number of external realities (empirical phenomena if you will), such as the war against crime, the election of local school boards, the draft, the requirements for enlistment in the armed forces . . . . . . . . . .The State is a complex set of relations which have to be thought rather perceived. This "invisibility" opens up such conceptions to comparisons with the various empty "abstractions" (actually, mental objects) of idealism.
I for one think that a pretty good theory (and hence definition) of the state can be found in a handfull of writers: Marx, Engels, Lenin, E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Rosa Luxemburg, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Christopher Hill, and a few others. I mention some authors who disagree to make another point about materialist arguments: they are *always* corrigible, that is they are always assumed to be only partly adequate to that which they explain.
All arguments of this sort should end with a ......................
Carrol
P.S.: Incidentally, materialism and idealism are not positions one "proves," but basic attitudes one departs from. For a member of either "camp" to prove her/his position to a member of the opposite "camp" is absurd, because the only proof of idealism I would accept is one starting out with the premise that all non-materialist arguments are illegitimate, and the only materialist arguments an idealist -- e.g. Kelley -- would accept are those starting out with an argument -- i.e. with a proposition capable of being expressed without external reference -- i.e. with the mind -- i.e. with the premise that all anti-idealist arguments are illegitimate. She would not, for example accept as the point of departure for argument the 8th and 11th Theses on Feuerbach as given premises. (With Thesis 11 interpreted as an epistemological and not a pragmatic or voluntarist proposition.) So what we try to prove is not that a given [idealist] argument is wrong but merely that it *is* an idealist argument. Lenin, for example, probably here and there in MEC drifted into the mode of "proving materialism," and to that extent the work partly deserves a characterization in *Radical America* as "philosophically embarassing." But for the most part he concentrates on merely demonstrating that positions that pretend to be either materialist or some sort of compromise are in fact idealist -- and to that extent it is the *Radical America* writer whose judgment is embarassing.