> I do not disagree with the above; however the polysemous uses of internal
> has created a situation where you and I are typing/writing past one
> another. In the above statement I substitute interdependency for internal
> relations and find what your asserting completely intelligible. But that's
> because I have possibly sufficient familiarity with the issues of the
> debate over those terms as they'e been used in philosophy for the past 150+
> years. You might want to consider that others less familiar with the terms
> and debates would find the use of interdependency more helpful.
>
"Interdependency" is too vague. I'm using "internal relations" to mean a very specific kind of interdependence. For instance, the switches in a connected system of on/off switches are "interdependent" but they aren't "internally related". Being "on" or "off" is a contingent property of the switch. That its being "on" or "off" depends on its relations to the other switches doesn't make it's "identity," it's "being," dependent on its relations in the sense of "internal relations" I'm using. This isn't altered by substituting switches that can represent more than two "values."
You frequently point to the formalized treatment of part/whole relations ("mereology") as able to handle "internal relations" in the sense I'm using the term. Do you mean something other than the idea of "emergent properties" e.g. the treatment of a "whole," e.g. a bike, as possessing properties not derivable from its parts? This is not "internal relations" in my sense. It's "holism" in a sense I've several times explicitly disconnected from my own usage.
> The above is problematic as you don't sufficiently define universe. Some
> hold that there can be, at most only one universe and if that were the case
> then you would seem to be adopting a solipsist approach. If there are
> multitude of universes how could you possibly know that *you* are one unto
> yourself?
>
I was just stating the logical implication of internal relations, i.e. of conceiving the universe as a system of internal relations. The latter directly contradict the solipsistic conception of myself as the universe. Indeed, as Whitehead points out in Symbolism, "solipsism of the present moment" is only avoidable if you assume your relations to the "world" are internal. When you treat the concept as implying solipsism and as logically permitting "you now" to be in more than one universe you are misunderstanding it. Is there a possibility that the conclusion that you are now in multiple universes is a reductio ad absurdum?
>>
> Another ontological
> premise is that these possibilities are open to objective valuation as
> better or worse so that the purpose that guides self-determination can be
> based on rational valuation of alternative possibilities.
>
> ===========
>
> How to reconcile the use of objective, used in the context of an
> irreducible plurality of agents with differing manners of self-determining
> values seems very problematic to me. I can't help but think that the above
> leads to a slippery slope towards monism in an approach to *a* [or *the*]
> theory of value.
>
The agents don't "self-determine" values; that's what's meant by assuming values are "objective." They self-determine the content of their willing and acting on the basis, if they are rational, of knowledge of objective values - "love" and "beauty" according to the tradition to which Marx (and Whitehead) belong. Since each has a different "real potentiality" both from itself at other times and from others and since it is a characteristic of "beauty" as understood within this tradition that even though there are "laws of beauty" (Marx - this is one reason why, in contrast to Fourier's idea of it, "really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion" - this is another idea taken from Kant's aesthetics) it involves an irreducible element of free imagination (Kant again), the willing and acting of each, even when fully rationally self-determined, will differ to some degree from every other's.
Modern "science" doesn't treat values as objective and has no room for "self-determination" in the sense I mean.
> Since I think there's more than one theory of value[s], then the issue of
> *internal* a la Putnam, Lynch, Ellis and many others makes use of the two
> terms --objective & internal-- problematic because we can't [at least I
> can't] help but think of the complement --or is it the opposite-- of
> internal, which is external. This leads back to my concern over the
> internal-external dyad as it realtes to space-time dynamics; not just the
> cognitive processes of some beings within cultures and space-time. As I
> have asserted before and will maintain, developments in the sciences have
> rendered the use of the concept of internal relations *and it's limits*
> signficantly more robust than what Whitehead achieved; additionally those
> who make use of the term have nothing to fear from the ongoing projects of
> formalizing many of the ideas Whitehead was attmepting to get at within the
> subject-predicate form which he used to describe relations that were richer
> and more complex than what is expressible in the subject predicate form of
> everyday languages [as if mathematics and logic aren't used everyday
> too...] In that sense Whitehead is *not* the final word on the issues
> involved.
>
I'm certain Marx and Whitehead aren't the final word on anything. I don't think the assertions you make here are true, however. Where in orthodox modern science is a "more robust" treatment of the idea (in the sense spelled out above) than Whitehead's found? Orthodox biology - e.g. contemporary sociobiology - has no room for any of the central ontological concepts to which I'm pointing - i.e. no room for internal relations, self-determination or objective values. This means ironically, as I earlier pointed out, that it has no room for a logically coherent idea of "reason" and "science." Where in the orthodox versions of these sciences would I find it assumed that there is self-determination, that values are "objective" and that both self-determination and objective values play a role in determining what occurs.
>
> Marx assumes that a human individual is an individual potentially having a
> will proper and a universal will, i.e. a will whose content is fully open
> to
> rational self determination on the basis of knowledge of the objective
> values (Marx belongs to a tradition in thought that takes these to be
> "love"
> and "beauty") which provide the foundation for ranking possibilities.
>
> ============
>
> Ok, but again rational is left undefined. Does it mean incapable of logical
> error with regards to one's capacities for inductive, deductive and
> abductive approaches to generating assertions of descriptions and
> explanations about relations with other entities and agents? And if some
> people are not monists with regards to values, is not the concept of
> objective problematic? And is the concept of objective in the context above
> the same or different to the way, say, a physicist, or biologist uses the
> term objective?
>
I'm using "rational" in the sense of e.g. Marx, Whitehead and Husserl to mean, first, a "self-consciousness" able to ground, i.e. find adequate reasons for, its beliefs and actions in self-consciousness and, second, beliefs and actions grounded in this way. A rational self-consciousness can make mistakes; what distinguishes it is its ability to correct them. The fact that people believe or don't believe something doesn't make it true or false. Values are reasonably taken as "objective" and as consisting of "love" and "beauty" in the senses of Marx if reasonable grounds are discoverable in self-consciousness for doing this. Goethe's Faust, for instance, is, among other things, an attempt to show that there are such grounds particularly in so far as "love" is concerned.
>>
> (Anyone claiming that people are naturally resentful, naturally envious,
> naturally selfish, naturally exploitive etc. is denying that they
> potentially have a "will proper".) The possibilities open to me now depend
> on (are "internally related" to) past decisions and actions so that
> self-determination in the past can create a current set of possibilities, a
> "real potentiality," that includes the ideal.
>
> ================
>
> Which ideal?
>
The "ideal" elaborated by Marx, i.e. a life full of love and beauty lived in a "realm of freedom."
>>
> The will is only potentially proper and universal, however. Persons
> require
> particular relations in order to realize this potentiality, i.e. become
> fully rationally self-conscious.
>
> ============
>
> Again, those terms are left undefined.
>
The "will proper" and the "universal will" are Hegel's terms. I've given Hegel's definitions several times in earlier posts. The concepts are sublated by Marx. Ditto for the other terms which make history an internally related process of stages of "bildung" through which a set of ideal internal social relations are created which allow the realization of "freedom" as "rationality" in the above sense, i.e. allow the "in itself" of humanity to become "for itself."
>
> What would we be diminishing in terms of narrative and explanation if we
> simply used *social* in the stead of internal so as to not confuse the
> manner in which Whitehead used internal in the cases of his attempt to
> explicate physics and biology and his theories of space-time that he
> broached using the term?
The answer here is the same as with "interdependency." The "logic of the situation" approach to explanation makes behaviour depend on "social" relations but treats these as external - individuals are always and everywhere "rational." "Social" is too vague; it isn't specific enough to designate the particular kind of interdependence meant. In addition to his attempt to reconstruct the foundations of natural science in terms of the concept, Whitehead also pointed insightfully to its implications (as well as to the implications of the related concepts of "rationality," "self-determination" and "objective values") for social theory (e.g. in the first part of Adventures of Ideas and in The Function of Reason). Among other things this includes astute criticisms of the ontological foundations of "classical political economy," criticisms very like Marx's. His treatment of social relations as internal relations contains material that deserves sublation (mixed up with some that doesn't).
>
>
> The passage implicitly calls attention to the irrationality of apocalyptic
> thinking. Such thinking goes together with the obsessional Ricardian vice
> and the sadistic puritanism to produce the conclusion that immense present
> pain and suffering are justifiable because in "the [for Keynes unknowable]
> long run" there will be enormous positive benefits that will far outweigh
> them, a belief Keynes claims can't be rationally justified and attributes
> to
> a psychological need to deny that "in the long run we are all dead."
>
> =================
>
> I'm not sure apocalyptic thinking is an entailment of the Ricardian vice.
> It's certainly not if we take a deductive-inductive-abductive approach to
> analyzing the juxtaposition of apocalyptic thinking among, say, some US
> religious denominations and those of computer scientists and
> mathematicians, no?
>
> Who among those sharing the Ricardian vice are saying the present human
> condition is not a tragedy and the current situation of zoon politkon is
> just peachy?
>
It isn't logically entailed by it. It "goes together with" in the sense of being part of a psychological complex that includes sadistic puritanism and the misidentification of "reason" with formal logic. David Noble provides relevant material in The Religion of Technology. This includes an account of the paranoid, apocalyptic thinking of Edward Teller and his associates on the H-bomb project and of Teller's direct disciples and descendants at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (Religion of Technology, pp. 111-4). There's also relevant material in the chapter on artificial intelligence (Chap. 9).
The reasons for thinking the present human condition is a tragedy differ. The reasons pointed to in Marxist apocalyptic thinking differ from those of the apocalyptic religious fundamentalists at NASA (see Chap. 9 in Noble).
Ted