Ian Murray wrote:
>
> [LARGE SNIP]
>
> RE: Neurath's boat...
> [SNIP]
>
> But is there a possibility of a 'dry dock' in which we can be safe and completely
> rebuild our boat of beliefs? This is where we actually have to determine what some of
> the foundations are (the main timbers in the boat).
Metaphors are tricky if you run them into the ground. See some of the more clunky poetry of the 17th century. But anyhow, Marx very early had a comment that seems relevant:
The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for example).
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as _revolutionising practice_.
Theses on Feuerbach, VI
The relation of a boat to the sea is an external (non-dialectical) one. Our relation to society is an internal relation. There's no drydock anyplace. Society is not a boat and we are not sailors on that which is other than us.
Carrol