Re: [Marxism] What is wrong with positivism?

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> i did some searching around to see how the term is used, and came
> across "The Concept of Emergence in Complexity Science: Finding
> Coherence between Theory and Practice":
> 
> http://www.ini.unizh.ch/~markus/articles/Emergence_def.pdf

The critical term here is "complexity science". That is not the
context for the definition of emergence that I offered, nor is it the
one I prefer. Unfortunately there seems little relation of the two.

I had defined "emergence" as an decease in entropy. Such a decrease
can imply various things, and in particular, the appearance of novel
properties and behaviors that could not have been predicted from our
knowledge of the initial state of the system.

This so-called "negentropy" is also associated with increased free
energy, or a capacity to do work. This I would use to define
"progress" in human history, which is obviously another subject.

But returning to the issue, as best I can make out entropy is
unrelated to complexity. Complexity has more to do with the
mathematical representation of systems and is associated with info
theory. Interesting stuff, but probably irrelevant to the kind of
statements in my previous two paragraphs.

I didn't have the time to figure out how the article got tied up with
the issue of vitalism, but it is quite relevant to the thread. There
were a number of thinkers prior to the First World War who reacted
against positivism, presumably because it represented an unequivocally
deterministic causality that seemed alien to life as we know it. There
is James' fringes, there is Bergson's Ãlan vitale, and there is
Engels matter is in motion, Nietzsche, etc. Not all these were forms
of vitalism, but all seem to be a reaction against positivism's deadly
grip.

I don't think anyone today takes vitalism very seriously. Although it
can be construed as narrowly or broadly as one might like, I prefer to
see it narrowly as a reaction against positivism. As such I believe it
has certain identifying traits: There is something other than matter
that is essential to some entities and accounts for their
self-organized behavior and semi-autonomy from environmental
determinations (this is not an attempt to summarize a standard
definition, if there is one).

Given this definition, there turns out to be some connection with
emergence, for both vitalism and emergence posit levels that are
somewhat independent of the circumstances that gave rise to
them. However realistic emergence may be as a description, it does
us little good until it is explained (and it obviously can't be
explained through an appeal to Hempel's covering-law explanation), and
here vitalism, in the absence of any explanation for emergence, fails
us.

So emergence is usually explained in terms of entropy change and in
particular in terms of the kind of system that supports an entropy
decrease in one subsystem thanks to the entropy increase in another. I
have no reason to think that complexity theory offers an alternative
explanation because as far as I know it is not causal. However, all
these points are controversial.  

One nice thing about emergence in thermodynamic terms (entropy
decrease) is that entropy change seems to be the only general
characterization of processes available to us. One might, for example,
suggest that the unity and interdependence of opposites formula of
dialectical materialism simply refers to a "thermodynamic
engine". That is, the "opposites" are not things, but processes that
are opposite with respect to their change of entropy. The emergence
that takes place within the kind of system that works as a
thermodynamic engine is purchased through a comparable dissipation of
the environmental conditions that had made that emergence possible in
the first place. In other words, a thermodynamic engine is a
contradiction represented in terms of entropy change. 

I enter into all this because it hints at an approach that is entirely
contrary to positivism. In particular, thinking of things in terms of
the causal relation of processes carries with it a probabilistic
causality and also implies the reality of unobservables, both of which
contradicts positivism at its most fundamental level.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM

         
        

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism