Re: Re: Re: Marx's materialism

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 08:05 PM 04/02/2000 -0400, you wrote:
> I would add that to discuss Marx's materialism, one would have to take into
> account the twentieth century contributions to the understanding of 'matter'
> and 'energy'
>
> Second, it not an unusual position in twentieth century social science to
> admit the dialectic between matter and idea.

I think that there are two matter vs. idea dialectics that are often
confused. IMHO, Marx's more important dialectic of this sort has little or
nothing to do with "matter in motion." Rather, it's the materialism of the
THESES ON FEUERBACH and the GERMAN IDEOLOGY. This is the dialectic between
consciousness and practice. Ted was talking about this.

> There are those who occassionally go overboard (strict structuralists,
> sociobiologists, etc.)
> but Carrol is right, very few deny the relationship. The task is to get the
> mix right. How much are human behaviours determined by the physical
> structure of the brain, (and even here it is common to the plasticity of the
> brain of infants in response to experience.) and how much is behaviour the
> result of experience and choice. The best recent book I have read on the
> subject is Terrence Deacon's The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of the
> brain and language.

I think dialectical methodology helps here (as in Lewontin & Levins'
DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST) but it's not really what Marx focused on.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine/JDevine.html