godel etc (was Re: [Marxism] RE Should opposition to imperialism's offensive be adefense of the Middle East status quo? Should our opposition be conservative for now?

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Unrelated to original thread...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Les Schaffer" <les.schaffer@xxxxxxxxx>

> item 1: i just spent the last six hours reading about the details of
> Godel's proof of incompleteness in mathematics, my brain hurts, BAD, from
> this effort,

I recently had a discussion on my org's youth internal list regarding Godel.

I argue that  incompleteness in mathematics and uncertainity in quantum
mechanics actually point to materialist dialectics. As dynamic, never-ending
systems, they exhibit the same continous struggle that dialectics call,
while firmly footed on a materialist grasp on reality.

Yeah, postmodernists eat your heart out!!!

I think they might be the scientific proof of the first thesis on feurbach:
"The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach
included - is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in
the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human
activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to
materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism - which,
of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects,
but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence,
in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the
only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in
its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance
of "revolutionary", of "practical-critical", activity."

And is actually an extension of the second:

"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is
not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the
truth - i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in
practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is
isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."

I can't prove it, but this is the taste all of it leaves on my mouth.

comments from all ye purveyors of vast knowledge in these matters?

sks


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