On Mon, 1 Nov 1999 18:11:50 +1100 "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au>
writes:
>this cracks me up.
Glad that we can amuse you, Angela. The one thing that we wouldn't want haapen is for you to become bored by this debate. -:)
> carrol musing about decorum. yoshie contorting
>into
>the formulation: there is a "kernel of truth" in all "truly"
>scientific
>endeavours because she can't manage to say that ideology is also true,
>like
>marx did.
BTW where did Marx say that ideology is true?
> jim f. insisting that marxism is a science and, in the same
>breath, defining science as the control and prediction of natural
>phenomena
>when forced to move beyond the tautology of 'science isn't ideology
>because
>it's science'.
Are not man and society a part of nature or do you support the idealist thesis that they constitute a separate realm of reality that is not susceptible to scientific inquiry? Marx after all thought that with his materialist conception of history, he had laid the basis for a science of history. Is it your opinion that Marx was in error on these points? This BTW intersects with the discussion of Freud a little while back concerning whether Freud was in error in thinking of psychoanalysis as a scientific psychology. Many latterday Freudians take the view that psychoanalysis is not a science but that it constitutes some sort of a hermaneutic discipline that is intellectually valid in its own right. Some of these would probably say the same thing for Marxism as well.
The assertion that man and society are not really a part of nature and hence not susceptible to scientific means of inquiry is one that is not unique to pomo but has been characteristic of most idealist theorizing concerning the human sciences since the time of Dilthey. However, it is the pomos that manage to combine this with the denial of the science/ideology distinction (which was as I pointed out derived from a reading of Nietzsche).
>
>less amusingly: catherine being accused of false consciousnesss for
>not
>agreeing with yoshie's take on foucault. but this of course is
>already
>implicit in the guff about ideology as a set of ideas one says 'yes'
>or
>'no' to -- hardly a marxist position on ideology, just plain idealist
>insecurity being passed off as scientific certainty.
Perish the thought that Catherine or anybody else here would ever be a victim of false consciosness (of course if one accepts the pomo denial of the truth/ideology distinction then how can one speak of false conscousness?).
Let us take one major form of ideology, namely religion. Is religion merely a "set of ideas one says 'yes' or 'no' to"? The answer in one sense has to be no because for many people religion constitutes a complete way of life and not merely a set of ideas. And yet many religions particularly those of the West do in fact articulate complex sets of ideas concerning the nature of the world and man's place in it in order to provide their beliefs and practices with intellectual justifications. Can one evaluate these ideas in order to determine whether or not they are sound? The answer is most certainly yes. And a good many people have in fact upon examination and reflection come to the conclusion that these ideas are not tenable, that they do not in fact correspond to the way the world is actually constituted. Thus we get critiques of religion. Is it sufficient to merely assess the soundness or lack thereof of theological ideas? From a Marxian standpoint, no, because an adequate critique of religion must go beyond merely assessing the intellectual soundness of religious ideas to begin exploring the roles that religion plays in the lives of believers in order to determine why people feel the need to create another supernatural realm to supplement the natural world. Marxists being naturalists and materialists do not believe in the existence of a supernatural realm but they realize that they must explain why people nevertheless feel the need to posit such a realm. The young Marx looked to Feuerbach who found the roots of religious consciousness in alienation which for Marx had definite material roots. The older Marx was inclined to treat religion as an ideology which other forms of ideology could be understood as functioning to stablize the social relations of production within a particular mode of production. Some religions its turns out are sooted for only stabilizing the relations of production for a particular mode of production so when that mode of production passes from the scence so does that religion. Other religions like Christianity have proved to be more flexible so that they may persist despite changes in the mode of production because of their ability to adapt themselves to changes in a society's social relations.
>
>yep, ian, it is "king of the hill-I want the last word bullshit". and
>a
>particularly crude version of it as well.
That is of course a not so elegant way for shortcircuiting the debate over pomo.
>
>ps, ted's comments on the absolute integrity of foucault's epistemes
>was
>about the only accurate comment on foucault i've seen thus far.
Angela (or Ted) what would an episteme that was lacking in "absolute integrity" be like? And how would be able to distinguish one kind from the other?
Jim Farmelant
>
>Angela
>_________
>
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