Can anyone who is more well read tell me if there is any philosophy work that revises the theory of dialectical materialism in light of modern scientific advances? I just finished Elementary Principles of Philosophy (FLP edition) which was extremely enlightening but some of the scientific examples are dated and it got me thinking. Physics (and all sciences for that matter) has advanced quite a bit in the past fifty years and I'd love to read a principled critique/investigation/discussion on how our current understanding of nature modifies our understanding of materialism. Also if there are any critiques of idealism in the understanding of modern science
It doesn't. My understanding of quantum mechanics is extremely superficial. It seems cool and interesting, as a thought exercise, but at the end of the day I am living a very Newtonian life.
I don't understand this question, but here's an answer anyway: Not science but sciences, or better disciplines, as far as I am concerned. There is no unified science. Whether they like it or not all disciplines are based on some metaphysical assumptions and they certainly cannot do without some epistemology. For all disciplines, including philosophy, these are pre-scientific, pre-disciplinary, pre-philosophical. In other words, all knowledges are based on a set of axioms that cannot be proven (which does not mean at all that these disciplines are not useful/productive).
I don't know. I love Spinoza though. I didn't make any claims about the freedom of will, although it is of course a big and fun thing to talk about in philosophy. I think I am more or less a Latourian in this regard. Non-living things have some agency that affect living things' agency. Which is very dialectical of me if you ask. There's neither free nor unfree agency. It doesn't have to be a binary. It shouldn't.
I completely agree with this assessment. To my very limited knowledge, they cannot be squared as is. Which doesn't mean either is useless, of course. Or that they cannot be synthesized. One is about "big" things, another--"small,"--still part of the same reality.
Yeah I was really just taking issue with the previous reasoning that one could use the epistemological difference of quantum mechanics as a model to justify a need for dialectics beyond Marxism. I like Deleuze as much as the hexbear user, I just object to this particular segue into discussing its role.
I agree with this entirely, I see the failure of discourse largely as an ideological failure to recognize the axioms of one's own beliefs. Almost no one is clear-eyed, in other words.
Brief note on physics, you can prove mathematically that relativity and quantum field theory are incompatible models because you can't construct a renormalizable quantum field theory in a curved space time.
That's really good to know!
I don't see it that way either. The question in the thread was about more recent scientific discoveries possibly modifying the dialectical view. So I suppose I tried to answer it as impartially as I could, and I assumed the biggest challenge to the theorists living, as it were, in the Newtonian age, Marx and Hegel included, was quantum mechanics. There is also cybernetics, but that's a whole different issue. I love Bateson. But personally don't think one has to commit to one paradigm at the expense of all others, as long as those still work and explain things.
Ok yeah, this is the point I don't get. What do you mean by this? In what way does QM pose a challenge to philosophers?