[1]
ABSTRACT

In his commentary Paul Jones recommended Dialectical Materialism as helpful for the study of the mind-reality and mind-brain relations. My present response examines this theory, as an example of an encompassing view with a positive anchor as defined in my Target Article [47-48]; it does this with the help of my zero-reference method [1,8]. The positive-anchor theories have two components: an analytic and a practical one, two instruments which serve different purposes and which can conflict with each other. In practice, the contradictory center which is common to the two is solidified by a decree of mind-independent truth for the theory. But rooting the two aspects from their common origin can achieve the same without such an arbitrary step; the cost involved in this change of method is a decrement of strong certainty.


[2]
INTRODUCTION

The thorough and precise commentary by Paul Jones is of value for a discussion of mind-independent reality. He advocates, for the study of mind-reality relationships (C1<17>), the use of dialectical materialism (DM), which he contrasts with what he calls 'vulgar materialism', a DM term introduced by F. Engels, which appears to cover what is more commonly known as 'naive realism' or 'naive materialism', or naive 'empiricism', as used by many scientists, in the past and still at present.


[3]
(A) FORMATION OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

The theory of DM has the advantage over some other positions of having been widely discussed and officially standardized. I will examine here the usefulness of the theory and method of zero-reference (or responsive reality formation, RRF; see my response 1,[7-8]) for the study of some tenets of DM, as presented by Jones and others. My proposition is that the RRF method should be able to show the common roots of various theories (TA1[50,51]). This is thus not a question of verification of its mind-independent truth (which in any case is not possible, according to K.R. Popper) nor of practical usefulness, nor conversely of falsification of the theory, but rather primarily one of rooting the theory from its source.

[4]
Dialectical materialism can serve as an example for the discussion of certain properties of belief systems with a positive (and supposedly mind-independent) anchor. To inform myself on DM, I have used the help mainly of an article by H.B. Acton, which also provides information on the historical background. I will confine myself here to the examination of DM as a proposal for an epistemology (that is, omitting the social implications, which historically were more important than its theory of knowledge).


[5]
JONES AND EXCLUSIVE OBJECTIVISM

Throughout his commentary, Jones presents an exclusively objectivist position (which in turn pre-supposes acceptance of the Cartesian subject-object split), for instance in requesting (C1<10>) to be 'shown why and how the observable structures form from the syncretic something preceding them'. The term 'observable structures' implies a postulate of mind-independence for them, which is also otherwise quite evident (and his question misses the main point of my RRF proposal: that we form structures within mind-nature experience). The term 'psychophysical problem' which Jones uses <1> for the question I deal with also is an objectivist one, as are his proposition <8> that there are 'objectively existing structures', and his interpretation <16> that my proposition is subjective idealism or even <12> solipsism.

[6]
The term 'syncretism' refers to the truth of doctrines; it was used in disputes which tried to harmonize various church doctrines in the Middle Ages, e.g., by Pico della Mirandola (see Kristheller), and thus it concerns the truth or falsehood, and reconciliation, of dogmas. RRF does not try to mediate between the teachings as presented by several doctrines, rather it wants to show the common origin of any possible mental structure (including doctrines) from an unstructured matrix. Furthermore the unstructured matrix, as I see it, 'is' not 'something', such as an object, but means the absence of any 'something', an empty area within which 'somethings' can emerge, or be formed.


[7]
ENGELS AND HIS CIRCLE

A clear example of exclusive objectivism is also Jones' comment <5> : ' this (mind-independent reality) is not a matter of belief, but rather the fact of human activity and the practice of scientific research ', which takes for granted a difference between beliefs and knowledge of facts (but cf. TA[16-17]). Here Jones' opinion appears to again reflect the writings of Friedrich Engels.

[8]
' Engels recognized (in ' Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen Deutschen Philosophie ', 1888) that the theory that in perception the immediate object of awareness is a ' reflection ' could lead to agnosticism or idealism, for a skeptic could question whether we can ever know of the existence of material things at all if all that we directly apprehend are reflections of them. This indeed is a line of thought that Berkeley developed in criticising Locke's theory that it is ideas, not physical things, that are directly apprehended. Engels' answer was that what must dispel any such doubts is ' practice, viz. experiment and industry '. His discussion is vague, but he appears to have thought that skeptical doubt about the existence of material things are rendered untenable by a consideration of what we do to and with things. A skeptic's or idealist's practice belies his theories. ...' (Acton, p.391). And: ' scientific discoverers are dialecticians without knowing it ' (Acton, p.392).

[9]
Marx had already distanced himself from ' philosophy ', ' he would have regarded ' Marxist philosophy ' as a contradiction in terms. He considered his work to be scientific, historical, and sociological, as opposed to 'philosophical' divagations on social affairs, which he rejected as class-biased ideology ' (McInnes, p. 173). The strength of Marxist belief, including the economic theory, derives from the authority of 'science', which is assumed to be a source of absolute knowledge, and which replaces not only religion, but also philosophical reflection (that is, it seems to me, Marxism is a form of scientism).

[10]
Thus Engels' reasoning was: DM theory must be true because it works in practice. This opinion, if it includes a ' credo atque dubito ' aspect (see TA[54]), fits better with the working truth of an RRF interpretation, than with the mind-independent truth and reality epistemology of DM. According to RRF, the structures of mind-and-nature are ad-hoc and as-if (TA[21,27,31,36-38]). They are believed in, and are kept if they work, and modified or discarded if they don't. In this respect they are like computer programs, which either work, or work in part, or don't work, but they are not true or false.

[11]
But for mind-independently true (Cartesian, persistent metaphysical) interpretations - such as dialectical materialism, this practice-based argument constitutes circular reasoning: the DM theory is true because (within limits) it works in practice (it does not work for subjective experience), and it is said always work (without restrictions) because it is true.

[12]
This difference concerning the limits is crucial: it is the difference between working mental structures (as they are used, for instance, in science) and fundamentalist belief. This means that: the limited experience, obtained in an open-minded trial, of usefulness of the method, is transformed, due to a need,and with the help of a lapsus of reasoning and thereafter by fiat, into a true (positive and closed) doctrine of supposedly unlimited (that is, of positive encompassing) validity and promoted as such. This at least has been so historically; is it still today ?

[13]
DM was and is used because, and inasmuch as, it works. A fundamental belief in its truth does not follow from any 'objective material' findings. And conversely, for DM as a scientific device the postulate of its
mind-independent truth is irrelevant.

[14]
But a fundamental belief may be used as unquestionable basis for thinking and action: it serves to fortify conviction, with the aim of providing a doubt-free metaphysical working core of belief, which is wanted in order to motivate and justify doubt-free action. This is quite similar to the theistic 'credo quia absurdum' (TA[47]), and has nothing to do with scientific endeavours; 'the word of science' here replaces 'the word of God' as the source of absolute knowledge, scientism replaces theism.

[15]
Engels and Lenin, however, and dialectical materialists in general, have tended to deny that they are metaphysicians: according to Engels metaphysics was supposed to be superseded by dialectical thinking (Acton p.391). A metaphysical opinion would have been considered 'idealism', which was by and large proscribed for adherents of DM (and I wonder whether Jones' opinion <20ff> about the 'ideal' aspect of things constitutes a deviation from DM).


[16]
(B) WHAT AND WHERE ARE CONCEPTS ?

' Duhring had criticized the Hegelian elements of Marx' thought. In particular he had argued that contradiction is a logical relationship and that it is absurd to suppose that it can be a relationship between things or events in the natural world. In 'Anti-Duhring' ('Herr Eugen Duhrings Umwalzung in der Wissenschaft', 1878) Engels endeavored to defend the dialectical theory against this objection. First, he said that the view that there could be no contradictions in nature rests upon the assumption of 'the former metaphysics' that things are 'static and lifeless'. Then he argued that when we consider things in movement and their effects upon one another, the dialectical view has to be adopted. 'Movement itself' he wrote, 'is a contradiction: even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body at one and the same moment of time being both in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continuous assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is. ... living matter at each moment is 'itself and at the same time something else'. ... (According to Engels) the square root of minus one is not only a contradiction but 'a real absurdity'.' (Acton p.392)

[17]
That (persistent) metaphysical concepts are static and lifeless is an important observation by Engels. The problem with his answer, I think, is that he himself saw movement as a contradiction because it is defined in terms of metaphysical (static and lifeless) concepts (nouns) such as 'time' or 'place', which are implied (though apparently not stated) to be mind-independent (absolute) and immutable. In order to get around this difficulty of static concepts, he then declared the 'contradictions in the world' to be fundamental, and this paradoxical assumption then became the basis of his philosophy (or as he would have presumably preferred it, of his science).

[18]
' Engels' claim that movement is in itself contradictory is based on a passage from Hegel's 'Science of Logic' in which it is argued that it is not sufficient, if something is to move, for it to be here-now and then, after that, there-then, for this would merely be for it to be at rest first in the one place and then in the other. For it to move, Hegel concluded, a body must be 'here and not here in the same now' and must 'be and yet not be in the same here' ... Hegel was discussing Zeno, who had argued that since movement is contradictory, what is real cannot move. Hegel in this passage accepted Zeno's arguments that movement is contradictory, but unlike Zeno concluded that since there is movement, movement 'is an existing contradiction'.' (Acton, p.392)

[19]
' Hegel's views on contradiction are difficult to understand and have been interpreted in various ways. If intended to argue that contradictory propositions could both be true and not true, that 'both p and not-p', then he was wrong and so was Engels in following him. For it can be proved that from any pair of contradictory propositions any conclusion we like can be deduced and hence that if contradictions are true, anything can be true. ... Either, then, Hegel's philosophy has no value or he must have meant by 'contradiction' something different from what formal logicians mean by it. It is likely enough that it is the second alternative that is correct. In attacking Duhring, Engels seems to have committed himself to the first alternative. He adopted a speculative, nonempirical thesis, for whereas movement is something that can be observed in natural things and events, contradiction is not observable in them. What Engels did in his argument about contradiction in the nature of things was to provide one of Zeno's paradoxes with a merely verbal, and indeed absurd 'solution'. ' (Acton, p.392).

[20]
The discussion with Duhring took place, on both sides (it would appear to me), within a framework of Cartesian mind-nature duality, and some of the resulting problems could have been avoided by a non-Cartesian stance. Also, the opinions of the various authors, including the one of Hegel which refers to Zeno, all imply an assumption of a primary mind-independent existence of conceptual structures, a commonly encountered error in epistemology (see TA[41-44]), which can lead to various unsolvable problems. For instance, Hegel appears to imply that the 'here-now', as well as the 'there-then', have mind-independent reality.

[21]
The answer which I have suggested (TA[41 and 44]) is that the problem disappears when mental structures are seen as secondary to experience, without having a primary mind-independent reality of their own. It is a pseudo-problem. Jones writes <14> that this is not a solution, only a denial of the problem (and thus that the problem persists - I would appreciate receiving evidence for this persistence). Jones further writes <14> that I have 'absolutized now and here', and that the RRF view 'gives little to the understanding of time'. The term absolutized is misleading: there is nothing absolute about this, 'now' and 'here' are words pointing to (and close to) the immediate ongoing experience, rather than being (extrapolated) absolutes. I maintain that 'time', as it is used in physics for instance, has to be understood as an extrapolation which starts from the flow of experience, and that mind-independent concepts of time or of space lead to unsolvable paradoxes (TA[41-42]).

[22]
' It appears that Engels' doctrine on this matter is now (i.e., in 1967, when Acton's article was published) being reinterpreted or abandoned. This process began with an article on Zeno's paradoxes by ... Casimir Ajdukiewicz ... in 1948, ...' (which forced dialectical materialists to grant that) 'contradiction does not mean 'logical contradiction' when applied to what exists in nature. This view is adopted by the Russian authors of ' The Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism: Manual ' (English translation, Moscow, no date, but later than 1960), who write: 'Contradictions due to incorrect thinking should not be confused with objective contradictions existing in objective things. Although the word 'contradiction' is the same in both cases, it means different things' (pp.99-100) ' (Acton, p.392).

[23]
Thus the official position had changed, but the term 'objective contradictions existing in objective things' was maintained, and it seems to me that this still reflects the acceptance of mind-independent reality based on scientism, which in turn implies acceptance of a fundamental Cartesian subject/object split. And in effect, the debate on 'contradiction', from 1878 on, seems to have (implicitly) revolved around the subject/object problem, without a solution: it became a dead-end question because the main (Cartesian subject/object) issue was not addressed, and instead DM was promoted in dogmatic fashion.

[24]
What matters is that: mental structures (such as concepts, theories, dogmas, etc.) can become inadequate with respect to what is needed, because the world - including people's needs - changes; these are the so-called objective contradictions. At that point, if we are lucky, we will start to have discussions about the problem, in order to come up with something better. Answers which contradict each other may stimulate the debate - if everybody agrees too readily, the question can go to sleep, either because there is no urge to find something new, or because people have succumbed to some 'true' dogma - one should take advantage of the difficulties in life. At any rate, the contradictions occur in mind-nature experience before any subject/object split, and to insist that they are either objective (as in the old DM) or both objective and in the mind (as in the amended version of DM of the 1960s) is not helpful.


[25]
(C) SUMMARY AND GENERALIZATION: THE TWO
MOTIVATIONS OF POSITIVE ENCOMPASSING VIEWS

The chief purpose of the present study of Dialectical Materialism is to understand it as an example which demonstrates certain common features of encompassing views with a positive anchor. It will clearly not be feasible to study the many views which are currently used in this field in similar detail, but the foregoing analysis suggests some common aspects. The epistemological propositions of positive encompassing views, of which DM is an example, in summary have two motivations:

[26]
(a) The theory works (within limits) for purposes of understanding (including science). It may be worth considering the possibility that primitive religions tried something very similar by allocating a 'specialized' supernatural person-like force as explaining (and being responsible for) each of the many important things in life. With the difference that in RRF the awareness of the root from the unstructured source remains available, this aspect is the same as would be formulated by RRF, and it is furthermore the same as for all working hypotheses and working metaphysics; in this case the theory is ad-hoc, and it can be used as-if it were mind-independently true.

And

[27]
(b) The theory is believed to be mind-independently true, without qualifications (or limits). This static metaphysical aspect (theistic, scientistic, or other) serves to stabilize thought and action; the claim of mind-independent truth is its main source of operating strength. Because human thinking and action are unstable (due to biological under-determination) their direction needs to be enforced by such stabilizers. The latter are created in response to this need, out of nothing but with some type of pseudo-experiential justification (see my response 1 [27-28]), and then decreed to be absolutely true.

[28]
The mind-independent truth aspect is not needed for the analytical, explorative, and instrumental aspect of science, and may actually obstruct the progress of understanding (although when science is used for practical ends, it too needs extra-analytical stabilizers, for instance concerning genetic engineering, nuclear explosions, and often for obtaining funds for research). To what extent the mind-independence of the structures can be dispensed with for the task of providing stability of thought and action will have to be seen; this is a long-term proposition.

[29]
(c) These two motivations become conflated. This statement is meant to be a description, and not to be destructive: such a combination of the instrumental experiential-analytic with the unconditional praxic tools is the rule for all positive encompassing belief systems, because one coherent system of thought is desired rather than two (or even more). For such reasons paradoxes, or absurdities - or if you prefer, contradictions - become central to any positive encompassing system of thought: a discrepancy between what is useful in explorative function and what is needed for action, especially for communal action. I suggest that: both aspects (tools for understanding and tools for action) can be shown to derive from the same unstructured origin, and awareness of this root might help to arrive at a less self-contradictory unified world view.


[30]
(D) THE MIND-REALITY AND MIND-BODY RELATIONS IN JONES' VIEW


This section concerns Jones' critique of my position. Jones writes <5> that 'there is no contradiction in admitting the objective existence of subjectivity as a specific part of reality.' ' The assertion that the mind cannot be an object to study because it is in the permanent movement and development (TA[6]) is not completely exact, since there are many developing objects other than the mind, and science well dares to study them. Of course the description of development is the weakest part of the science of today -- but the actual difficulties encountered here are never mentioned in the paper reviewed. ... the mind as an objective phenomenon studied by science may, in the same time, be a subjective experience -- and the study of the mind is to explain this effect.'

[31]
The inadequacy of ('vulgar') objectivism is instead, Jones writes <6>, ' found in the illegal identification of the mechanism of an objective phenomenon with the phenomenon itself, the manifestation of the general rule with that of the rule proper. Distinct levels of reality are thus merged together ... (for instance:) computationalists try to deduce consciousness as a consequence of the connections in the neural 'wetware'
... '

[32]
He talks here about 'objective phenomena' and 'distinct levels of reality' as if they were mind-independent entities, in line with his objectivist point of view. I could not have said it that way because it appears to me that this is impossible. In my opinion the problem with artificial intelligence studies is instead that they tend to ignore subjective experience.

[33]
Referring again to my proposal, Jones continues <8> that I suggest that ' instead of considering the objectively existing structures ... one is to consider an unstructured process, which is arbitrarily identified with subjectivity [6] '.

[34]
Jones omits my qualification [6] that the mind, always being at the root of the structuring process, cannot become a closed gestalt. This is the main point which distinguishes it from his ' mind-independent things '. Objective science can study changing objects, for instance with the help of mathematical formulae (which themselves remain static tools), but not non-entities. The remark about the ' unstructured process ' is an objectivist misunderstanding. The term ' Reality Formation ' (see my response 1,[7-8]) may make this easier to understand. I say that: there is no such thing as objectively (mind-independently) existing structures, and that the process of reality formation is one of structuring (that is, forming structures, including mathematical ones) from within an unstructured source, it is not an unstructured process. Further, the process itself is not 'arbitrarily identified with subjectivity', but: subjective experience is always an essential aspect of the forming process, because subject and object are not primarily separated. I do not mean to be nitpicking: these are decisive differences in meaning, which relate to the main message in my paper.

[35]
Jones asks <12> why I talk about consciousness as a summary expression for the phenomena of experience: the reason is that we can only describe the phenomena of consciousness, attempts to go further back to some 'objective data', etc. are expressions of erroneous assumptions or expectations. He further states <13> 'the mind's ability to think of objectively existing things well agrees with the objectivity of the mind as a level of reflection' - which does not follow: that I can think of objects does not prove that my experience is an object. I can talk about my experience, and then my words can be treated as objective 'data', or one carry out a scan which quantifies certain brain functions, comparing an inactive with an active state, and the differential results are treated as data, or one can measure aspects of my behavior and the measurements are data, but my experience is not a datum. My or someone else's experience is always an integral aspect of the activity of examination of the data which he understands as 'given' to him.

[36]
Jones <13> takes my statement [37] that we use various concepts in an as-if fashion to mean that everything is 'no more than illusion'. I did not say nor imply that. What I said is that: all beliefs in mental structures can only be temporary and are subject to revision at all times. ' Illusion ' implies a status of falsehood, while temporary use means temporary acceptance as reliable (' real ' is a strong statement of an opinion of reliability) with the proviso that the validity of the concepts is always subject to testing.


[37]
THE PROPOSED SOLUTION OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

Jones proposes <17> that 'the solution (much more consistent though yet incomplete) of the mind-body and related problems given by dialectical materialism seems to completely escape the minds of modern researchers in this field.' According to Jones <18> DM provides 'a very simple and comprehensive solution' to the mind-body and related problems.

[38]
This solution has two components: <19> a mind-independent world, and <20> ' the arrangement of material things is not completely defined by the things themselves, being a link between different levels of existence. Every thing is characterized by its place in the whole of the world -- this is its ideal aspect '. <21> ' Every real thing unites both material and ideal aspects, and the very distinction between the material and the ideal may only refer to a definite level of hierarchy thus being relative. So, the world is hierarchically organized, the formations of the higher levels can be implemented in different combinations of lower-level elements, which constitute the material base while the way of implementation represents the ideality of the thing.' The combination of these principles can avoid 'vulgar materialism' <22> and is the basis for science. Consciousness forms at a higher (i.e., social) level of hierarchy <23> with its own materiality and ideality. '... the organic properties can only be a premise of consciousness, the way of its implementation, but not its actual contents.' <24> There is an objective difference between conscious and unconscious existence, with intermediate levels.

[39]
Jones' points relate closely to Engels' arguments, as discussed earlier, and his proposal raises some questions, for instance about the 'place' of the hierarchy (where is it ?); since he says that the hierarchical order (the 'ideal aspect' of things) is a quality of the material things, and that the things are mind-independent, it would appear to follow that in his opinion 'ideas' (which determine the hierarchy) are also mind-independent. This would also seem to be implied in his point that 'the world is hierarchically organized'.

[40]
Jones appears to suggest that the ideal aspect of things somehow overcomes the impossibility of objective subjectivity, but as I read it, he tries, following Engels, to do that by leaving 'hierarchy' and 'ideas' in an uncertain position, with a hint, or more, that they are objective. Furthermore, the meaning of 'implementation' is not clear to me; who implements, what, and how ? The proposed solution, so far as I can determine, does not noticeably differ from those which are tried by 'vulgar' materialism and other views with a positive anchor: it is as unworkable as theirs. This impossibility is not only a-priori, as the past centuries of philosophical efforts, and in particular the recent decades of interdisciplinary efforts, have shown.

[41]
The approach which he recommends for the scientific study of comsciousness implies a postulate of mind-independence for ideas and subjective experience. This is impossible: subjective experience is the center of the mind, of reality, and of the world (TA[1,6,7]) and cannot become mind-independent. Denying this leads into the blind alley of exclusive objectivism.


[42]
(E) OTHER POINTS CONCERNING JONES' COMMENTARY

Jones further states <16,27> that my proposal 'annihilates science'. This is a misunderstanding of my position, which describes how science works, rather than annihilating it. I realize, however, that for an exclusively objectivist scientist it may appear that way, as he assumes that science provides mind-independent truth about mind-independent reality. For RRF, what is annihilated is only the static metaphysical notion of fundamental and persistent mind-independent reality, which in my opinion is not needed, neither by science, nor by thinking in general. One needs instead ad-hoc, as-if, or temporary, working metaphysical tools (TA[27-36]).

[43]
Jones writes <15> that my 'desire to avoid contradictions leads to stagnation, since comprehending contradictions is one of the basic mechanisms of scientific development'. He refers to TA[51] where I discuss the ability of zero-referencing to bridge various views. This question of stagnation is an important point. However, his comment involves a terminological misunderstanding. I want to avoid contradictions between theories (because they are confusing), not practical or theoretical problems. Since in RRF the 'contradictions' can neither be only in the subject nor only in the object but concern experience before the Cartesian split, the question becomes one of awareness (a) of what needs to be done, and (b) of how adequate the available mental tools are to the tasks at hand. Dealing with inadequacies does not mean stagnation, while neglecting them does.

[44]
Engels had accepted materialism on the basis of its (ad hoc, or as-if) usefulness, but then, instead of insisting on continual testing, he jumped to the conclusion that it was undoubtedly true, and thereafter, because subjective experience had to be accomodated, that nature somehow talks to itself. Here again, the topic is the impossible notion of mind-independent reality and truth, which should be avoided.


REFERENCES

(Since I am not a professional philosopher, I take the liberty of relying more on the Encyclopedia of Philosophy than might otherwise be appropriate. In my case this is, I suggest, a reasonable procedure which assures adequate coverage of certain philosophical topics.)

Acton, H.B., (1967-72) 'Dialectical Materialism', in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Mcamillan, Vol 2, pp.389-397.

Kristheller, P.O., (1967-72) 'Pico Della Mirandola, Count Giovanni', in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol
6, pp.3o8-309.

McInnes, N. (1967-72) 'Marxist Philosophy', in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol 5, pp.173-176.

--------------------------------------------------------

[ Author: Herbert F.J. Muller
< e-mail: mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca > ]