> > >Although it has long been fashionable for professional philosophers
> > >to deride Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and to poke holes in
> > >Lenin's arguments,
> >
> > Well, poking holes in arguments is what philosophers do, after all.
>
>Of course, but some of them have done so with the intent on disparaging
>Lenin
True, but the criticisms are valid or not, whatever their purpose and motivation.
>> > Really! Flew _is_ a real right-winger, a pretty serious theist too.
>
>I think you mean that Flew is a pretty serious atheist (unless
>he has undergone some dramatic conversion that I have
>not heard about).
Typo. sorry.
However, he is certainly very much a right-winger
>in his politics (although he reportedly did flirt with communism
>in his youth).
Lots of people of that generation did.
>
> > All that aside, I have always been puzzled by Lenin's fervent belief
> > that
> > "empiriocriticism" was a "reactionary" position associated with
> > theism and
> > bourgeois ideology, and incompatible with socialist or revolutionary
> >
> > politics
>Like Engels, Lenin subscribed to the "two camps" view of
>the history of philosophy. That is the history of philosophy
>is ultimately a struggle between idealism and materialism
>(between "gods" and "giants" as Plato phrased it) and that
>the general tendency has been for idealism to be associated
>with reactionary classes and strata, and for materialism to
>be associated with progressive classes.
Yeah, I know this, it's just an odd view.
>
>Lenin as we know thought that Mach & Avenarius' empirio-criticism
>was idealist in tendency depsite the fact that the empiriocritics
>regarded themselves as being "neutral monists."
Quite rightly: Mach's views are basically phenomenalsit ins tructure, though he calls the ultimate constituents "elements" rather than "ideas" or "sensations."
>Concerning whether Lenin overemphasized the political
>implications of philosophical doctrines in his evaluations
>of them, it is interesting to note that Rudolf Carnap in
>the Schilpp volume *The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap*
>claimed that his fellow logical empiricist Otto Neurath
>did much the same thing. Carnap claimed that Neurath
>was always very careful to avoid any theories that smacked
>of idealism on the grounds that this might lend support
>to supernaturalism, which he saw as being reactionary.
Also an odd view, since serious theists have to be realistic about God.
>
> > And the philosophical materialism has nothing, logically, by way of
> > connection with historical materialism. One might well be an
> > out-and-out
> > phenomenalist and still think that in social explanation the economy
> > was
> > primary, etc. Gramsci was clearly some sort of antirealist, a
> > conventionalist and social constructionist in the tradition of
> > Croce, but if
> > he wasn't a Marxist revolutionary, no one was.
>
>I think that is true. And indeed Gramsci advanced a consensus
>theiry of truth that was remarkably similar to that of C.S. Peirce,
>and given that Gramsci does seem to have been familiar
>with American pragmatism, perhaps he was influenced by Peirce.
Does he mention him anywhere? Where does hetalk about which prags?
jks
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