[lbo-talk] *Materialism and Empirio-Criticism*

[andie nachgeborenen]

Hilary Putnam used to use it as his philosophy of
science textbook at Harvard back in the days when he
was in PL. Actually, it is not a piece of hackery.
It's a more than respectable job by a very talented
amatuer of genius. It's dead right about the central
point, that Mach and Avernarius have not transcended
phenonomenalism (Berkeleyian idealism), despite a good
dealk of wishful thinking. Many of its arguments in
favor of scientific realism are just fine. The debate
has become more sophisticated, but after many years of
enagging in it myself, I'm not sure there has been
real progress. Some of the arguments are losers,
that's generally true in philosophy. Lenin was
mistaken about the connection between idealism and
religion, thinking that idealsim leads to religion --
maybe because Berkeley was a bishop -- but that is not
a big point. 

Marvin Farber was no chump, hack, or Stalinist goon.
He was a fine philosopher -- a Husserlian
phenomenologist by profession. And a Marxist when it
was neither popular nor profitable. Incidentally,
Sidney Hook, who counts as a philosopher, introduced
Lenin's M&EC and Marxism to American philosophy in a
pair of important articles in the J.Phil in the late
1920s. I am sure that Michael P. can provide links.

jks

--- Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net> wrote:
>    Only philosopher I know that defended that piece
> of hackery, was Marvin 
> Farber.
>    See, Farber, Marvin. The Search for an
> Alternative: Philosophical 
> Perspectives of Subjectivism and Marxism.
> Philadelphia: University of 
> Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Chapter 1: Subjectivism,
> Phenomenology, Marxism, 
> and the Role of Alternatives, pp. 1-26, + notes, pp.
> 240-241.
>   
> http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/farber3.html
> 
> -- 
> Michael Pugliese
> 
> 
> 
> ___________________________________
>
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