[PEN-L:7445] Re: Nominalism and the Biosphere: RE: Re: RE: Harvey, Leibniz & Marx

["Lisa & Ian Murray" <seamus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim,

However, I think that while capitalism and socialism have contradictions, we
>perpetuate a self  misunderstanding of ourselves as organic beings when we
>state we are in conflict with nature.  It is the thought that makes it so.
A
>genuine Pygmalion effect if you will.  The "fall" never happened......

I can't agree with the view that "the thought" "makes it so." Capitalism
and bureaucratic socialism both have dealt with their _internal_
contradictions by dumping costs on nonhuman nature, coming into conflict
with the latter. Because humanity/nature is a unified system, this
represents a contradiction within a totality.

I was trying to get across the idea that "man" contradicting nature is the
secularization of our fall in the Garden of Eden myth.  A pernicious
pathology of thought that helped catalyze capitalism into rapacious
overdrive.  Evolutionary theory thankfully dismantles this idiocy.

>I don't see why metaphors (etc.) need to be used to control nonhuman
nature. Can't they be used to guide us on how to live with nonhuman nature?

I was saying that modern science had the (un)conscious desire to be god.
The acceptance of the incompleteness of our theorizations of nature's
dynamics (Godel is pertinent here) leads to a much more humbling attitude.
Parts/wholes in systems theory force us to let go of the dream of control;
this has enormous implications for ecological engineering.

> Clearly we have a long way to go in learning how to name that
>which does not name itself; what previous generations have called
>Reality/Being.

I don't understand this.

This is the fundamental claim of nominalism; things don't name themselves,
we name them.  And that there are a plurality of strategies for naming the
dynamics of the world.  The strategies conflict, not the things named.
"Reality is just itself, and it is nonsense to ask whether it be true or
false." (Whitehead)

Capitalism misnames ecological reality (semi)deliberately in order to
justify it's exploitation of nature and human beings.  Ecological Reality
bites back with Cholera, cancer etc. the whole host of iatrogenic diseases
that are the externalities of production (Lewonton goes into this in Biology
as Ideology).

Capital must be confronted in many contexts; the WTO makes for good "target
practice", and it is the next immediate project of Capital we must challenge
when we have the chance this fall.

Nobody really knows what ecological democracy is...yet; we learn how to
create it while struggling against Capital....

Thanks for reading,

Ian