[PEN-L:7447] Re: Re: Nominalism and the Biosphere: RE: Re: RE: Harvey, Leibniz & Marx

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(this one was hard to read. I had to reedit it using > as quotation marks
to make it readable. matter bracketed by >>> <<< refers to what Ian said
before; within >><< to what I say; within >< to what he replied. It would
be nice if people adopted this or some similar convention.)

Ian Murray had written: >>>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 wrote: >>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.<<

Ian now writes: >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 capitalism as being catalyzed by a pernicious pathology of
thought. Rather, as a materialist, I see capitalism as catalyzing a
pernicous pathology of thought, i.e., the endless effort to exploit and
conquer nonhuman nature.

Evolutionary theory dismantles the theory on the level of theory. The
problem is on the level of practice. Only if evolutionary theory can
mobilize people to change their practice will the endless expansionism of
capitalism end.

>>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.<

Okay, that makes sense. My view is that formal theories can only capture
the abstract dimensions of empirical reality (including nonhuman nature).
That formal theories cannot capture the concrete dimensions, i.e., the
heterogeneity, implies a certain humility toward the subject being studied.
But it seems to me that this is no reason to give up the task of improving
on our abstract theories.

Further, it seems to me that theories that allow us to have greater control
of certain aspects of nonhuman nature can be modified to allow us to find
ways of living with nonhuman nature in a mutually-beneficial way. In terms
of a recent movie, the Force can be used for Good. We need not "go with the
'dark' side."

>>> 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)<

okay. But wouldn't you say that external reality puts some limits on what
we name its components? For example, we need two different terms for "up"
and "down." We couldn't use the same word for both.

>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).<

In what way has ecological reality been misnamed? It also seems to me that
the misnaming is the smallest part of ecological crime. What really counts
is action against nonhuman nature.

>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.<

Okay.

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

Okay.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
Bombing DESTROYS human rights. Ground Troops make things worse! US/NATO out
of Serbia now!