The funny part being that they write it as if the ideas are preposterous. Putting religion at the very basis of the operation of the universe is one hell of a drug.
EDIT: Already made it a comment, but I feel it's important before people get that idea that these people are necessarily our enemies.
People write/read takes like this and come to radically different conclusions due to their different base axioms of human experience. For the target readership of catholicculture.org, they are ones that are trying to understand the universe, with the base assumption being the existence of a Christian god. Many an apologetic has attempted to synthesize the real observable world with a just, righteous god. Regardless of their flawed logics, they are at least interested in taking a holistic approach to the human experience rather than an individual, capitalist, exploitative experience. As someone who as a child dove into the catholic theological worldview, desperate for meaning in this clearly meaning deprived society, these people can be radicalized, and are capable of changing their basis of thought. It takes real effort and patience, but they are much more likely to be a devoted comrade to the human liberatory unification experience than a bourgeois hedonistic individualist, who only cares for themselves and the people closest to them, who would rather not ponder their experience let alone the collective human experience, but rather live their own lives in pursuit of illusory happiness in isolation.
I love how they write this as if "matter exists and is perceivable" is a hot take.
Cold take: in the end, the core of the average Christian stance on this world and the afterlife is early knockoff simulation theory, heaven is the real world and God is our simulation life exam grader.
I mean, it's closer to the idea that in some real sense the universe is part of god (Jesus, specifically, as an emenation of the divine Logos.)
This opens people up to the possibility of a functional materialism, sure, all reality is the product of the ideas of god, but from a practical perspective the world is the way you interact with that. Faith without works isn't just dead, the two are fundamentally not seperable.
You see this a lot in the exploration of the Option for the Poor etc.
Yeah, it's all neoplatonism (thank you Augustine)
Can you link this I can't find it.
Also, there are a fair few modern physicists that think mind is inherent in matter, so it's not that crazy.
Yup, if we ever definitively answered the question of what consciousness is made of, all existential philosophy would probably immediately collapse.
It's likely not something that is made of anything, but an experience that comes to being through the transformation of quantity to quality (if we're thinking dialectically). I personally subscribe to Daniel Dennett's line of reasoning that consciousness is a user illusion, and honestly I find that his theories of memetics and a theory of development of human knowledge has potential to be drawn again from a Marxist lens. If you're interested in the subject, look up From Bacteria to Bach and Back. He's a bit radlib and tends to hang around with the four horseman atheist intelligencia, but I find his book striking interesting tones that could lead to further discussion.
I mean, yes, it is an illusion, in the same sense a computer game or a play is an illusion and if i prod at it enough I can tear it apart at the seams and look at the moving parts and go HAH! There's no real world there after all, just a bunch of interacting systemts. Hell, you can do that with actual reality.
But that seems to be not particularly useful?
Well it doesn't necessarily change the conditions we find ourselves and the reality that dialectical materialism of the past helped us to explain and understand, hence why we're all here on chapo.chat as various marxist tendencies. But regardless, the drive for humanity to discover its own nature isn't something I think we should give up on, regardless of the futility and potentially troubling answers. If it weren't for this drive, religion would not have the hold it has on the majority of humanity. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you don't find useful about it
The term "illusion". It's a loaded category. Nobody says "cars don't exist!" because they aren't ontonlogically timeless unitary objects that are air gapped from interaction with the rest of the universe.
The same with consciousness or the self. We experience it, it exists at some level, even if the nature of that existence in unsatisfying or counter intuitive.
To quote the great work of philosophical truth Star Trek IV. "Nothing unreal exists"
Yeah, illusion is a loaded term which I wielded recklessly lol.
Its certainly a real experience, and there's absolutely no taking away from an individuals "individual" experience and life in the world. The world is real, it is no illusion, or else real is a ridiculous designation in the first place. What I really mean to say is that I don't believe the traditional continuous self with free will exists. I believe our conscious seamless moment by moment experience, and our thoughts, aren't dictated by this higher self that we consider "us", rather its a patchwork experience with background processes synthesizing memory and stimulus to form ideas and thoughts, that for some presently unknown reason is evolutionarily advantageous, whether it be in problem solving or otherwise. Which isn't at all to reduce the miracle of our existence and our experience. We can both be a sum of parts that alone are mechanical and lifeless, as well as a living whole conscious being.
Is David Bohm not a serious physicist? What level of seriousness is required here?
Yes, people have created mathamatical models for it, including, as I've said, some of the most influential physicists of the 20th Century.
Also, basically every theory we take for granted now was considered unorthodox at some point.
I don't really follow. The theory postulates that mind is inherent in matter, and that what we experience as conciousness is at least partly a byproduct of that. Why does that make us extra special, seems like it makes us less special.
Why does this seem more reasonable to you than the conciousness you experience constantly is an illusion?
Is string theory serious? Because it's a competitor and postulates there are like 11 dimensions or something that we can't see. Seems pretty out there too.
Like, you have said multiple things about this theory that are directly contradictory to what the theory postulates.
Are you talking about descarte's mind body dualism? This theory is contradictory to that.
When it comes to consciousness, I don't think there's an orthodox opinion.
Also, it's not clear that conscious can be causally explained, because causality relates physical quantities and conscious may be in a different ontological category as things like particles or fields.
I guess the "evidence" is that it seems to be a fundamentally different thing just as far as our scientific relationship to it goes. Physical quantities can be measured, but the only "measurement" we can make of consciousness is to ask people to describe their subjective experience and correlate it to actual physical measurements like a scan of the brain.
Also, conscious experience is part of the process of measuring physical quantities, so it seems like it's actually more fundamental than physical measurements.
You can look inside the eye though. Can you look inside consciousness? You can look inside the brain, but that's not the same thing. It's possible that a complete physical description of the brain will not allow us to understanding consciousness.
Well that's just the thing. We don't have a scientific explanation of the subjective experience of vision, just the physiological function of the eye.
In order to call our understanding of consciousness scientific, we would at least be able to say which physical processes produce conscious experience and why. Like why does an eye produce a sensation of seeing? What is special about the function of an eye? It's just a physical object.
Physical descriptions of neurons are complete without consciousness though. As you said, we can simulate that stuff on a computer. It's just a physical electromagnetic process like any other. It runs on the same physics as your computer. So where does consciousness come in? It appears to be something which does not actually affect the function of that neural hardware in your brain, it just sort of follows your brain's every move.
If you made a physically perfect simulation of a human brain in a computer, it would be conscious.
Would it though? How would you even check? If consciousness is physics, then we should be able to measure something about it or at least verify its existence using methods that work for other physical phenomena, right? If all we can measure are it's physical correlates, then it isn't physics, it's something parallel to physics.
you just keep separating consciousness out from the physical processes of your brain without giving sufficient reason to do so. Consciousness is physics
Ok, I think that's a very valid point. Maybe the traditional way of thinking about physical ontology is just ass-backwards and creates a purely illusory problem.
Why should the limits of human intelligence determine whether something is a physical process? Why would we assume that some artificial or alien intelligence of arbitrary complexity would never be able to understand it? The question I would ask is whether it would be possible to take a physical description of the system, and create another system with the same physical description that does not have "consciousness". If there isn't evidence of this, or of a mechanism where it would be possible, I don't see why we should say that consciousness is anything outside of materialism.
David Bohm and Freeman Dyson to start. Its not the majority view, but it's a view that is taken seriously by a lot of very smart people.
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=33074
Can you still be a Marxist while being a (philosophical) idealist?
Idk I feel like the universe is far too mysterious and complex to just claim that it's fundamentally material. I think it's very possible that what we experience as a material reality is a subset of a larger "ideal" reality - the reality of which is probably something we haven't even conceived of.
I don't think that fundamentally contradicts any of the practical points of Marxism
Yeah definitely. I don't believe this fully - I doubt its even theoretically possible to prove - but I think that material reality being nested within consciousness fits the way I experience the world.
Obviously the material conditions which drive history are nested within material reality, so yeah there's definitely no major contradiction concerning the important stuff
Have we not just proven we’re always going to be idealists? [Until that itself transforms]
Yes. Try dual-aspect monism. I’m not sure if it is correct but I think it’s mostly correct. Read it for yourself?
Materialism is everything, it’s how Marxists talk about the entire system. The objects inside the system, the ones that perceive it, are the idealists because they can only perceive partial truths in this system, and then must gravitate towards one of two emotional, libidinal poles that determine their drives because they are still stuck within the dialectical system. Yes, we all are. Together. Or it isn’t materialism. Our pole gives us more knowledge to show us more truth. Theirs covers a mind in shit. Who’s to say which one is better, fellow relativists and art-lovers?
People express themselves through their art. There’s a reason the bourgeois value the work of poor artists so highly! The bourgeois are only class conscious in the sense that they are self-aware. Their myths, about art being created through suffering? This is not a material truth at all! It is half. The other half of the truth is of course the anti-truth.
This is of course the system working to disguise itself through myth. I wish I could write this down mathematically but at this point I don’t think I have much interest in math or science in the traditional sense.
The rich are libidinally driven, through the vast influence and contradictions of financial-artistic system, to frustrate the poor by holding the truth for themselves, against the proletariat, to fool them, to divide them, to make them hate art, and themselves. This is their theft.
The poor don’t like this at all! The masses love art deeply, and want to be free. I am angry about it and trying to be as fair as possible.
Marxism is not just about economics anymore. Marxists should stop over-privileging themselves, in general, because this obviously leads to faults in a true systemic understanding of reality. Lots of Marxists point to large parts of reality and declare it isn’t materialist. It is quite funny
The question of a larger reality above ours, from a physicists perspective, is unknowable and somewhat misleading when some of the more out-there pop-physicists speculate.
Really, we will never know the exact nature of the cause of the universe's existence, to believe that we can somehow look past the genesis point of time's very existence is indeed idealist. However it also results from a misunderstanding of the nature of our own reality. Our perceptions are already proven by physics to be limited by our positions and relative velocity in spacetime, and at the level of particle physics, we are at the very boundary of test-ability; theorized particles of a smaller scale than those observed thus far would require more energy than all of that in our solar system.
There are certainly things unknown to the sciences of today, and there are certainly things that are unknowable. But what we do know is that the universe is material, consistent, and testable. To dispute this is to dispute materialism itself, without which we can have no Marxism.
I bumped this topic towards a socialist christian friend of mine for opinions and got this back:
If you're interested in dipping into this topic I recommend what is called Liberation Theology; it's a school of theology that seeks to reject the false god of money, materialism and wealth.
While they aren't perfectly complimentary to each other, both Liberation Theology and Dialectical Materialism have a lot of similarities in their attitudes towards indiviualism/collectivism, disdain of social class, and inference that God's benevolence is about breaking chains, not forging them.
There's a fantastic paper from 2018 by Dr. Peter McLaren on this called:
Karl Marx and Liberation Theology: Dialectical Materialism and Christian Spirituality in, against, and beyond Contemporary Capitalism
He'll posit that, yes, it probably possible but not exactly on a conservative Biblical hermeneutic — you need to dip into wider Christian philosophy. Cartesian, I think.
If you're more curious about it, I'm on a first name basis with a retired professor who specialised in Liberation Theology. He's the most left wing Christian I've ever met.
TL;DR: yes, through a specific brand of theology that is growing more and more popular. I'm not qualified to talk about it knowledgeably, but can point you to where you can find those that are ^^
In short -- Yes they think radicalising Christians by synthesising diamat and god's actions is extremely viable. You're at a distinct advantage with anyone that actually gets into real theological discussion because these are people that actually read and discuss things intellectually. This is very different to just radicalising work people or ignorant individuals that don't read. You can get into some very deep stuff with them.
If you want to radicalize a Christian don't immediately turn them to Marx. Introduce them to liberation theology. Even if they don't become a marxist itself it'll turn them into an ally.
I've often wondered if more effort with this approach could be a good counter to the current neo-fascist strategies. The american christianity that synthesized with capitalism ideologically (obviously not all christians, socialist christians are comrades no question) has lost a lot of sway in the past couple decades, and I feel that a large bulk of christian America is ready to hear something different with a message of real change and hope, real empathy and human prosperity, and we can't afford to lose them to the fascists as they condemn our movement and ideology as godless and evil.
I think you're onto something here and reading up on this Liberation Theology , in particular how socialists that were eventually murdered were making big inroads with it in LatAm were applying it.
The " Preferential Option for the Poor " rhetoric is strong, not coded in left/right, has a third-way feel to it, and has potential to make a radical christian movement in favour of the most downtrodden. Learning this stuff is worthwhile if only for the fact that it arms you with rhetoric that can be used with the actually-well-read Christians. There is good rhetoric within this that is non-triggering and smartly coded to radicalise people leftwards without actually setting off their American red under the bed alarm bells.
I'm an atheist lol, I'm saying that a large chunk of American Christians are seeing more and more that the society we live in is deeply inhuman and amoral. As their faith in the current system wavers, they will seek alternatives, most keeping their theological framework (losing faith sucked, it takes time and we don't have time). If they're going to remain Christian, they can choose Liberation Theology adjacent rationale or the Christian national/fascist route. Do you think in a hypothetical American revolution that everyone will suddenly drop religion? We need to work with people where they are, as long as their base views don't conflict with their participation as a ideological proletarian/revolutionary.
I've long held the belief no far left movement will be successful if it's militantly secular. America is a very religious country and not enough people would be willing to drop God for politics. Allowing a way for the religious to become allies and have a place in the movement will go a long ways to reach the levels of mass support needed for a successful revolution.
Which to me is so interesting how varied a humans base laws of conscious operation/reasoning can be and how drastically different the truth of a phrase can be interpreted as a result. Having long ago been a reactionary theist with such radically different base axioms to live by, I wonder what I would have made of dialectical materialist at the time.
I can give an answer to this, as a Catholic leftist (but not a philosopher of any degree). I think dialectical materialism is an interesting and sometimes very productive lens to look at historical and present material conditions through, since obviously there are always ways to perceive reality as a struggle between thesis and antithesis, though it's not necessarily an accurate (in my opinion) representation of all of reality. There are probably a lot of different takes that theists could have on it, though, so mine is worth next to nothing anyway.
Hey, thanks for the reply, its not often I get to discuss this sort of thing with a leftist from the theological perspective.
If you want to learn a physics perspective on dialectics and the nature of the universe, this was a pretty interesting read that argues well for a dialectical reality Theoretical Physics and Dialectics of Nature
If you're up for talking about it, what do you find to be lacking in its mapping onto reality?
People write/read takes like this and come to radically different conclusions due to their different base axioms of human experience. For the target readership of catholicculture.org, they are ones that are trying to understand the universe, with the base assumption being the existence of a Christian god. Many an apologetic has attempted to synthesize the real observable world with a just, righteous god. Regardless of their flawed logics, they are at least interested in taking a holistic approach to the human experience rather than an individual, capitalist, exploitative experience. As someone who as a child dove into the catholic theological worldview, desperate for meaning in this clearly meaning deprived society, these people can be radicalized, and are capable of changing their basis of thought. It takes real effort and patience, but they are much more likely to be a devoted comrade to the human liberatory unification experience than a bourgeois hedonistic individualist, who only cares for themselves and the people closest to them, who would rather not ponder their experience let alone the collective human experience, but rather live their own lives in pursuit of illusory happiness.
There're certain parts of philosophy that I find it hard to understand, like, in terms of what the question being asked actually means, I think just because of the way I think about things. When faced with a claim about the nature of the universe, I ask, what does it mean for this to be true? Can we imagine a universe where it is false? If so, what would look different about that universe? In a lot of cases, it seems like there's no real observable difference between, like different answers to the mind-body problem, for example, and at that point I just have trouble both following what people are talking about and understanding why it's even worth discussing. Somewhere along the line, I have to see a connection back to observable reality, or else it's all just words.
But yeah I would much rather deal with someone who is misguided with religion but is trying and is actually human, rather than deal with a chud. And I think when it comes to politics, conclusions are more important than premises or frameworks. When something is true, there are generally a lot of roads that lead to that truth, while falsehoods tend to only make sense if you look at them from a certain specific angle.
