[PEN-L:7449] RE: Re: Re: Nominalism and the Biosphere: RE: Re: RE: Harvey, Leibniz & Marx

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

Apologies to all for bad editing.

I think the myth of "man's" fall is older than capitalism, Jim.  Max Weber
and all that.  A redemptive Civic Utopian project is as old as Augustine at
least.

As for materialism as an ontology; well, philosophy of science has got as
many problems as neoclassical econ....

Pre-evolutionary world views all were neologisms at one time or another.
Learning the language(s) of evolutionary ecology and struggling with giving
them coherence is the practice.


Learning to crawl,

Ian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jim Devine
> Sent: Saturday, May 29, 1999 11:03 AM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:7447] Re: Re: Nominalism and the Biosphere: RE: Re: RE:
> Harvey, Leibniz & Marx
>
>
> (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!
>