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Other philosophy communities have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. [ x ]

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Questions on Marxist Epistemology (hexbear.net)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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so i've wondered for a long time about how leftists use the terms 'materialism' and 'idealism', and how it relates to those terms usage in broader philosophical discussions on epistemology.

i may be incorrect in my interpretations, but it seems to me that leftist uses of the term (even its usage in some of marx's writings, from what little i've read) are such that 'materialist' means 'understands that the material conditions of a society drive its development via dialectical processes' and that 'idealist' means 'focuses on artificial/socially constructed ethical or legal principles (such as 'freedom' and 'democracy' and 'rule of law' and 'free speech') rather than material conditions of society like quality of life, literacy, etc.'.

the broader philosophical definitions of these terms are slightly different, however.

epistemologically, a 'materialist' is someone who believes that we can (and do) directly apprehend the mind-independent external world. this is contrary to epistemological idealism, which argues that we can only ever know the contents of our own mind. we can use these contents to infer things about 'true reality' but can never truly verify them.

ontologically, materialism argues that all of reality can be described in terms of physics, or that all facts of the universe are causally dependent on or reducible to physical processes. this is again opposed to Idealism, which argues that existence is in some way irreducibly and fundamentally mental.

so my first question for you beautiful posters is, are my perceptions of these definitions and usages overall correct or incorrect? How exactly does Marx (or Engels or any other marxist philosopher) use these terms, and do they intend an epistemological, ontological, or other interpretation? am i missing something fundamental about the philosophical definitions or about the colloquial/leftist usage? What's the deal with that 'philosophy is pointless, the goal is to change the world' quote, is understanding reality not a benefit for efficiently manipulating it?

My next point, is that it seems to me like Marx and Engel's Dialectical Materialism, or at least the political program and methods of Socialism/Communism, are not necessarily at all incompatible with either philosophical Idealism or Materialism, in terms of epistemology or ontology. Neither is necessarily incompatible with basic empiricism, but is rather a difference in interpretation of what our empirical knowledge is. Whether reality is fundamentally mental or matter, it consists of opposing energies and dialectical processes that play out in our experience with the extrinsic appearance of physical matter. Whether the world is in the mind or 'really out there', our experiences of it are the same.

A bit ago i stumbled across this article that seemed to be making a similar point, a point i've never really seen made by anyone else before. I haven't read past the abstract yet, and It seems like someone random person's college dissertation or thesis or something so I'm probably not well read enough to interpret this without context, so i was wondering if anyone had seen any similar discourse? What would Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao say about this line of thought? is it a heresy against socialism, a useless detour into pointless philosophical questions that serve no practical purpose for the revolution, or is it something potentially useful in framing Marxism's relationship to epistemology and ontology?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

well the thing is that i don't think I am a solipsist just because i'm an anti-realist? i believe that other people exist in some sense or form independently of my individual experience of them, i just don't think mind is reducible to physical processes in a way that doesn't lose meaning, and i don't think i can directly access that existence.

i would answer the questions as follows:

humans are different in some senses to other organisms, yes
some of these differences include differences in cognition, among other things
i think humans posses the capability to perform certain kinds of cognition we call reason, but i'm not sure if this is entirely unique to humans or if we are just the best at it so far. does reason necesitate abstraction? or is it just any problem solving cognition? birds use tools, mourn their dead, and speak in regional dialects, for example - is this reason?
I don't think there is a mind-independent world in the traditional sense. the world might be independent of my mind, but i can't say if it is independent of all mind or any mind. i wouldn't claim to know enough about 'mind' outside of my own limited experience, for all i know every quark and electron has its own 'spark of consciousness' in some sense. 'reason' is like a procedural, even cultural story-telling process used for the purpose of rendering the patterns of our experiences parse-able. this kind of cultural exchange might be limited to humans, but i think the existence of regional bird call dialects and the fact that certain kinds of birds can seem to remember individuals across generations is evidence against that uniqueness.
humans do indeed possess tools and demonstrate behaviors that are at least unique in their extent if not necessarily their fundamental nature to other animals. beavers build dams but we build bigger, bird speak language but ours is probably more complex, monkeys hunt with wooden spears but humans build guns, etc. i think a lot of the alleged separation of human and other animal is artificial, arbitrary cultural baggage, but there are significant and real differences. You might as well ask if there is something about black-eyed tree frogs that sets them apart from every other animal - of course there is, in their DNA, phenotype, and behaviors at least if nothing else. but is it a fundamentally different kind of thing or just another variation of animal life?
since i'm pretty sure feral human children don't develop language i would say that there probably is no context-independent knowledge. i don't know if there is context-independent anything. you might have a machine that can detect electrons, but without anyone to talk about it with its just one isolated mind's experience, it can't be independently verified even in the usual indirect sense of 'asking someone else if they are seeing this shit'. is a human even a human without a society? i honestly don't know. How can an 'independent' human exist, without a world to exist in, without parents to be born from, without an environment to interact with? i don't know if this is even a meaningful or sensible question. Do feral children possess knowledge? perhaps, but in a form thats completely different to how we usually think about it. Does a wild lonely lion possess knowledge? yeah, maybe in some sense at least, but i don't know if its 'rational' knowledge or simply recalled experience. Is instinct a kind of knowledge?
if there is an external reality, i think we can only deal with it indirectly, and i think that this means that we have to be careful about our epistemological commitments to certain metaphysical implications in certain theories.
sense-experience is probably the least-deniable evidence of anything's existence humans can ever have access to. Rational thought only helps us to analyze and tell coherent stories about our sense-experiences, but it is still useful as long as it conforms to those sense-experiences which are particularly replicable and regular. like, its reasonable to dismiss a singular anomalous occurrence if you can't replicate it - it could be a dream, or a hallucination, or a temporary portal to another universe, or a misinterpretation of something - but if you can't replicate it or derive some kind of predictive or useful verifiable information from it, it probably is not relevant to your usual life.
since i remain agnostic on the existence of any reality outside of experience or mind, i cannot say how many ways there may or may not be to access it. i think that so far all we have is our sense experiences, including experiences of other people and cultural stories and collections of experiential reports/empirical accounts.

i do think that humans have a basis for intentionally shaping the development of human societies, the same way beavers have a basis for intentionally building dams, or birds have a basis for intentionally building nests, or monkeys have a basis for mourning their dead. we can do all that we are capable of, and we are apparently capable of shaping societies intentionally - the historical record shows this if nothing else, it is empirically verified that we can do it. so why artificially limit ourselves with arbitrary social constructs, when we could construct these social constructs in a way that can benefit us instead of leaving us victim to whoever happens to already be in charge? if we can do something, and it will be beneficial, we should. do bird ever ask if they are allowed to fly, if flight violates the principles of rationality, gravity, and the natural order? no - the bird, and any other animal including humans, on the specied level, develops and expresses any capacities it may have as fully as it is allowed to by its circumstances.