Ralph's questions

[J Laari <jlaari@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ralph,

here's some minor answers:

> 1.  Ideality: the way Jukka defines it reminds me of the concept
> of the "third world" put forth by Popper and I believe C.S.
> Peirce.  Am I wrong?

I'm not sure. I should remember better what Popper really said, but I
don't.

> 2.  Ideality: Jukka, you quote Ilyenkov.  Can I take it you are
> familiar with the whole soviet literature on ideality?

You can't. Unfortunately I'm not particularly familiar with soviet
literature.

> E.V. Ilyenkov's very interesting essay "The Concept of the Ideal"
> can be found in PHILOSOPHY IN THE USSR: PROBLEMS OF DIALECTICAL
> MATERIALISM (Progress, 1977), pp. 71-99. Jukka, is this the same
> essay you have over there in Finland?

I've wondered that too. I'll get that book next week, hopefully, so then
we'll know. Length of the essay seem to be ok.

When it comes to these soviet philosophers, it's good to remember that
not everyone of them were a protagonist of rough stalinism. There was
obviously strong contradictions between different philosophical groups.
USSR wasn't such a monolith as western publicity/propaganda wanted it to
be.

I've heard that one article by Ilyenkov was smuggled from USSR to DDR,
and that Ilyenkov himself wasn't aware of that - until its translation
appeared in Rosental, M.M. (red.): Geschichte der marxistischen
Dialektik: von der Entstehung des Marxismus bis zur Leninischen Etappe,
Berlin 1974. Article was "Logical and historical" if I'm not wholly
wrong. Perhaps our German friends know more about that story?

So what's the reason to smuggle the article, except that it contained
some heavy 'unorthodox' argument? Or perhaps the editors simply wanted
their book onto market before x-mas (and official soviet cencorship
would've delayed publication)?

Next items aren't specifically to me, I suppose. However, here's
something on them:

Items 5.-7. seem to be connected. You are aiming at conceptual
clarifications concerning these 'isms'? Once I tried to find some
general common meanings to these concepts, but it turned out that there
even isn't any generally accepted way to consider and categorize them
together. However, distinction between ontological and epistemological
questions (concerning our isms) might clarify something?

I'll begin with Laclau and Mouffe who have considered the question too.
Now here's what they have to say about it:

In "New Reflections" (somewhere between pp. 105-112) they remind that we
have to find out in what sense we discuss about materialism/idealism.
They give three different questions according to which ism-problem can
be thought:

(1) Is there a real object world outside of thinking (consciousness/ego)?
Distinction is between idealism and realism; former denies, latter
accepts that world.

(2) What is the nature of reality, conceptual or something else? L & M
skew this question into form: Is the real nature of state of things in
reality identical to the real nature of mind? Odd. However, they
continue that it's here where the question between materialism and
idealism in at stake. Idealism reduces reality into concept! They tell
that materialism have been very idealistic because reality have been
taken to be rational... (Pierre Macherey has written in a quite similar
way.) Materialists have supposed some basic law of motion of reality that
could be grasped conceptually. Well well...

(3) About last item I cannot tell much. I've never managed to grasp what
exactly they had in mind. They wrote something about moving away from
idealism, to give up of faith in 'form' (in classic Greek sense) that
could make sensual object understandable... Any sense? Me neither. Me
thinks *they* are in old metaphysics in a sense that it's supposed to
give straight answers to more or less empirical questions.

On the other hand, in plain epistemological sense it might be said that
realism accepts and idealism denies possibility of truth (or, perhaps, of
knowledge?) that doesn't depend on subject? (And to continue this kind
of speculation, rationalism reminds us of our capacity of reason when
empiricism insists on the importance of sense-data.) At least that's how
some writers define them.

And lastly, ontologically? I'm afraid I don't dare say anything about
that. How and what that-what-is really is? Werner Marx [how convenient]
have worked on that in his "Heidegger & Tradition" (there is English
translation). Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger. I recommend.

Yours, Jukka L


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