>
> >As Dr. Johnson memorably demonstrated when Boswell commented that,
> >though Berkeley's theory of the non-existence of matter was clearly not
> >true, it could not be refuted. "I refute it *thus,*" said Dr. J.,
> >kicking "a large stone, till he rebounded from it."
>
> The first person I heard that story from was the chairman (no
> gender-neutral titles, please!) of the Party of the Right back during my
> reactionary freshman days. Not that that means anything, of course.
And with all due admiration for Dr. Johnson, that is probably where the argument should stay. Berkeley says sense perception doesn't prove the existence of the external world. Johnson says see, my sense perception proves the existence of the external world. And we are find ourselves trapped on idealist territory, whether we agree with Berkeley or with Johnson.
This was precisely the trap Marx was trying to escape from as he scribbled to himself one spring day in 1845:
II
The question whether objective [*ghegenstandliche] truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory [or, one might add, of perception] but is a *practical* question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness [*Diesseitigkeit*] of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely *scholastic* question.
VIII
Social life is essentially *practical*. All mysteries which mislead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
========
I paraphrase these Theses (along with XI) as "wherever and whenever we find ourselves, we are always already caught up in an ensemble of social relations." To attempt to "prove" those social relations (which in turn presuppose a world, though a dimly known one) is simply incoherent.
Of course maillists do present a rather special property. There is no reason to think any of us exist execpt as electronic patterns on a screen, which rather removes us from the practice which must establish our escape from mysticism.
Carrol