Against Method is necessary reading I'd argue to get a good idea of philosophy of science along with Popper and Kuhn (for the more recent philosophers at least).
You don't need to agree with the work to get value out of it.
Karl Popper's thought is very important, but has almost entirely been supplanted in Philosophy of Science; he laid a lot of the modern groundwork though.
Ironically, lots of modern scientists think they're Popperians, including the first bozo in the article you quote.
Yeah so I'd recommend Kuhn and Feyerabend. Feyerabend's a big proponent of methodological pluralism, which incidentally, is the only framework under which you're going to get a non-neglible portion of the population to read and accept the intellectual offshoot of Hegelianism that is Marxism.
Without wanting to get caught up in the nitty-gritty of what makes something an 'offshoot', Marx absolutely follows in the intellectual tradition of Hegel, unlike pretty much all other intellectual paradigms in the Western world.
He does not. Marxism takes from multiple sources and Marxism rejects in particular a lot of things in Hegelianism outright. Marx would've never wanted his philosophy to be referred to as "Hegelian."
This idea that Marxism is "Hegelian" comes from Georg Lukács.
Marx would've never wanted his philosophy to be referred to as "Hegelian."
Too darned bad, his adoption and modification of the dialectic (something that the Western analytic tradition entirely eschews) places firmly in the Hegelian lineage, as evidenced by him even being a member of the Young Hegelians for a time. Just because he disagrees radically with Hegel on several aspects, he still follows firmly in that dialectical methodological tradition. Is it 'Hegelian'? I don't know or care. Does it follow a causal historical linkage from his study of Hegel? Yes, so it's absolutely fair to say he's an offshoot of Hegel.
Western analytic philosophy and it's offshoots follow a dramatically different methodological tradition. Which is why Chomsky, who is brilliant in his own right, just blanks out at any discussion of Marxism.
It doesn't matter. Hegelianism got its dialectic from Greek philosophy, but that doesn't make it an "offshoot" of Greek philosophy and Chomsky is not brilliant at all.
Greek philosophy, but that doesn't make it an "offshoot" of Greek philosophy
Please google the definition of offshoot.
Chomsky is not brilliant at all.
I mean he revolutionized modern linguistics, even if turns out his models were wrong, so I'm going to defer to the linguists on this matter. Is he wrong about a ton of political stuff? Sure, but that's asking a different question.
Nah, Mao very clearly doesn't know anything about science or mathematics but that doesn't stop him from pretending he does, for reasons that are not clear to me.
Well, he doesn't now, but he also didn't then. Not in 'science' as it follows in the western historical tradition. Offshoots of Cartesianism or Newtonianism you might say.
Looks, I've integrated far, far too many dynamical systems on Cartesian meshes to take you seriously there. Classical mechanics (by you'll never guess who) undergirds a huge number of modern sciences.
Explaining myself? You're talking right past me. I say Marx is an offshoot of Hegelianism and you say "Marx isn't Hegelianism", addressing an entirely different question. I say many branches of current science still make explicit use of Newton's laws and formalism, and your response is not "oh in what ways?" its "no they don't" without further explanation like you're doing a bad homage to the Monty Python argument clinic sketch.
Looking at this from my side, it absolutely looks like you're trying to pick an argument that no one was trying to have for some reason, and will now contradict me on pretty much anything no matter how ridiculous that makes you sound. If that's not what you're trying to do, I'm all ears for a different explanation.
Fluid Dynamics is an offshoot of Classical Mechanics. Fluid Dynamics is not classical mechanics.
When I say Marxism is an offshoot of Hegel, and you respond "Marxism is not Hegelianism", you, are in my mind, addressing a different question, you're addressing a question of subsets (Marxism is a type of Hegelianism, which is not what I am saying), while I'm talking about a question of relations (Marxism is related to Hegelianism in a particular way). You could of course inquire into what I mean by "related in a particular way", but you insisting that Marxism is not a type of Hegelianism has nothing to do with that in my view, so you are not addressing my original claim as I intended it.
I could be wrong, and that Marxism is not related to Hegelianism in the particular way I had in mind, but you haven't said anything about that except not-uh.
Yes, but you did not, as you say "explain yourself" for this. In what way is it reductive? Is that bad thing in this case?
I'm happy to disengage if you'd like to invoke the disengagement rule, but you don't get to recapitulate your position as correct and then invoke the rule in the same post.
Yeah, Popper was a self declared critical rationalist.
To give an analogy to what I mean, we learn the histories of the nations, of people, despite their flaws in order to learn from them. Popper was a massive figure, noted to be one of the most popular philosophers of the time by some. He taught Soros (no i'm not a conspiracy theorist) who later founded the Open Society Foundation, the name which is directly taken from Popper's book The Open Society and Its Enemies. His philosophy has had an impact, much of it is somewhat present to some extent in graduate programs as he and Kuhn are I believe the most commonly taught (if there is any philosophy of science taught) towards folks in higher education. He has some legitimate criticisms, not many I have found satisfactory of ML, some is relevant to the more dogmatic Marxists, nothing new as far as I have seen. Having a different school of thought and method to approach is quite meaningful as its contradictions with dialectical materialist method itself can foster a deeper understanding if they are worked through.
To your first point, I'd agree that we need to read and understand the ideas of all thinkers. It allows us to pick from them what resonate within us and synthesize new ideas. Marx and Engels were influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach is one example. Another would be Lakatos who can be said to have synthesized Popper and Kuhn, as well as Feyeraband, who recognised the flaws in Popper's writings.
And while it is true Popper was influential, it was most notably in the capitalist sphere. The Western Anglo-centric STEM-leaning education that fostered the idea of rationalism in students at a much younger age before teaching them the idea of historicism or dialectics, or not teaching them at all.
Critical rationalism is a framework that a_blanqi_state said, was supplanted by others. Popper's anti-historicism and open society is undoubtedly a rationalist and idealist idea. Denoting social science and historicism due to their "backwardness" is a view inherently put forth to denounce historical materialism. But I would say it falls short even outside of Marxism. For once, it relies on Popper's negativism (he didn't want to be labelled logical postivist, but one could argue it is the same type of approach to scientific knowledge, just inverse), exactly the kind of work Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyeraband and contemporaries pulled apart.
I also think not many have tried to reclaim Marxism from Popper's critiques because of its line of attack being mainly an analytic school of thought. Analytic on the basis that it aims to confront continental ideas, as well as Kuhn's view of science, with such and such are tautologies and therefore bad, that scepticism is a tool that should be put to immediate use at all angles of human empirical knowledge. It very easily spirals back to foundational questions on what the hell do we know and I can't justify anything to be real. He also attempts to undermine "totalitarianism" as it is, from the outside, rather than reason out of it, from the inside, and thus the language used by him is not univocal for Marxists who didn't study analytic philosophy.
Caveat
Now the analytic/continental division is for holistic comparison that depends on lineage, influence, and style of argument. On small scale scrutiny it breaks down.
At some level, circular reasoning means a level of dogmatism, for sure. But I'd argue the focus should be less on hardcore linear thinking but rather can you draw meaning, modality, and attempt to find a relationship between the human enterprise vs what nature is.
There are still antirealists, rationalists, positivists around. But ever since Quine's Two Dogmas, I don't think Popper can reason out of human tendencies for pragmatism. And I'd say it's more pragmatic that we busy ourselves now on the meaning and development of things, rather than putting things into boxes and shooting them down on the basis of rationalism. "Idealogies", the "isms" tend to win because they approach meaning, rather than reason.
There is also Engel's criticism of "metaphysics" (as opposed to dialectics). Popper's ideas put him in the former group, and his ideas were ultimately bourgeois ones, as critiqued by the latter camp.
Regardless, if you throw away historicism as Marxism promotes it, the replacement is an ascientific, ahistorical piecemeal engineering that somehow can work through all past, present and potential "evils", with zero violence and bloodshed, paying no attention to the history of human societies. Idk, I don't buy it.
Karl Popper was something of an unwarranted boogeyman to a certain cadre of easily startled western academic Marxians, and he is used as a crude bludgeon by more well-read anti-marxists
But when you read his (surprisingly limited) writings on Marx it's amazing to discover he never actually touched on the foundations of Marxism, (because frankly he never read Marx) instead he discounts Marxism by way of claiming its "predictions" in the early twentieth century failed and as a result this demonstrated some form of naive empiricism through induction (which again revealed his profound lack of knowledge of economics and of Marx's writings)
And how did Popper become convinced the "predictions" of capital M Marxism were wrong? Von fuckin Mises, I shit you not, the man pulled his entire set of economic assumptions from the father of Austrian economics, and in the meantime broke every one of his "critical rationalist" rules while calling out the marxists, absolute full circle in terms of philosophy, I've never seen anything like it in the history of academia, and it's largely unknown because no one bothers to read what these people actually wrote and funny enough Popper was pretty open and oblivious about the trap he fell into to by way of Mises
“Even his mistaken theories are proof of his keen sociological insight into the conditions of his own time, and of his invincible humanitarianism and sense of justice” Karl Popper 1966
But that's one of the joys of digging thru the history anti-marxism, how they all stole from each other, talked past each other, all of them huddled around the proverbial fireplace telling ghost stories about Marx and his specter
Thank you for that insight on Von Mises, that really helps me navigate this nauseating anti-Marx / Marxist purism debacle. Marx is arguably one of the most misunderstood writer; I have to engage with a lot of Western Marxist scientists in my research into philosophy in the natural sciences and I have to try very hard to ignore the dick measuring contest of who's the most pure Marxist.
Because of this, the thought of having to read the complete opposite of that, i.e. the additional Popper's drivel doesn't appeal to me at all. I need to go listen to Soviet music or something. But when I have more time to read outside of my studies I shall bravely engage.
And you're right about his limited understanding of Marx. I did read that he was Marxist at some point but before he fled to Britain, he flipped side upon witnessing his friends killed or arrested for their failed revolutionary activities lol. And then you read on that he was born into a wealthy family and praised for intellectualism, you know you're in for a treat. The world hasn't changed much in that regard.
Err, yeah, I won't stick with people that are decidedly anti-Marxist, thank you very much, especially those that influenced the anti-communist George Soros.
Yeah ok, to your point I have been doing my best to avoid reading Foucault. If I took my own advice I would, I honestly had difficulty reading Biopolitics some years ago and have stuck with secondary sources since.
People read philosophers who suck so they can get what's valuable from them. I found Heidegger really resonated with me, even though he joined the Nazi party later in life. You should read philosophy as an archeologist, sifting the dust away to find the pottery beneath.
Big Daddy Paul Feyerabend scorns this scientismic drivel.
Is his work any good?
Not sure if you're meming or joking or whatever, tbh.
Against Method is necessary reading I'd argue to get a good idea of philosophy of science along with Popper and Kuhn (for the more recent philosophers at least).
You don't need to agree with the work to get value out of it.
Don't Karl Popper and Kuhn kinda suck?
And Foucault as well?
I mean, Karl Popper was literally against Marxism.
Karl Popper's thought is very important, but has almost entirely been supplanted in Philosophy of Science; he laid a lot of the modern groundwork though.
Ironically, lots of modern scientists think they're Popperians, including the first bozo in the article you quote.
Kuhn and especially Feyerabend slap.
Many Marxists were against them.
Many Marxists are against everything. It's a contentious and sometimes obnoxious lot.
I am not.
Yeah so I'd recommend Kuhn and Feyerabend. Feyerabend's a big proponent of methodological pluralism, which incidentally, is the only framework under which you're going to get a non-neglible portion of the population to read and accept the intellectual offshoot of Hegelianism that is Marxism.
Marxism isn't an offshoot of Hegelianism.
Without wanting to get caught up in the nitty-gritty of what makes something an 'offshoot', Marx absolutely follows in the intellectual tradition of Hegel, unlike pretty much all other intellectual paradigms in the Western world.
He does not. Marxism takes from multiple sources and Marxism rejects in particular a lot of things in Hegelianism outright. Marx would've never wanted his philosophy to be referred to as "Hegelian."
This idea that Marxism is "Hegelian" comes from Georg Lukács.
Too darned bad, his adoption and modification of the dialectic (something that the Western analytic tradition entirely eschews) places firmly in the Hegelian lineage, as evidenced by him even being a member of the Young Hegelians for a time. Just because he disagrees radically with Hegel on several aspects, he still follows firmly in that dialectical methodological tradition. Is it 'Hegelian'? I don't know or care. Does it follow a causal historical linkage from his study of Hegel? Yes, so it's absolutely fair to say he's an offshoot of Hegel.
Western analytic philosophy and it's offshoots follow a dramatically different methodological tradition. Which is why Chomsky, who is brilliant in his own right, just blanks out at any discussion of Marxism.
It doesn't matter. Hegelianism got its dialectic from Greek philosophy, but that doesn't make it an "offshoot" of Greek philosophy and Chomsky is not brilliant at all.
"Is it 'Hegelian'? I don't know or care."
There you go then.
Please google the definition of offshoot.
I mean he revolutionized modern linguistics, even if turns out his models were wrong, so I'm going to defer to the linguists on this matter. Is he wrong about a ton of political stuff? Sure, but that's asking a different question.
Chomsky popularized certain things in linguistics; his work was preceded by the likes of Lev Vygotsky.
If this is an ironic callback to Marxists generally hating everything, being needlessly contentious and obnoxious, it's a good bit.
Marxists aren't generally like this. Stop generalizing.
Look the notion precedes me. . Monty Python was satirizing this in the 80's.
Those are Maoist groups.
Yeah some of them are by the look of it.
Yeah, some of them.
Humorously enough, also offshoots of Hegel, by way of Marx.
You can tell this because "On Contradiction" reads like gibberish.
On Contradiction is great now stop pestering me.
Nah, Mao very clearly doesn't know anything about science or mathematics but that doesn't stop him from pretending he does, for reasons that are not clear to me.
He does.
Well, he doesn't now, but he also didn't then. Not in 'science' as it follows in the western historical tradition. Offshoots of Cartesianism or Newtonianism you might say.
They are not.
Looks, I've integrated far, far too many dynamical systems on Cartesian meshes to take you seriously there. Classical mechanics (by you'll never guess who) undergirds a huge number of modern sciences.
It doesn't
'fraid so
'fraid not
Well, we've certainly gone a long ways toward correcting my misconception that Marxists are a contentious and needlessly contrarian lot.
You're not explaining yourself and are generalizing an entire political minority.
Explaining myself? You're talking right past me. I say Marx is an offshoot of Hegelianism and you say "Marx isn't Hegelianism", addressing an entirely different question. I say many branches of current science still make explicit use of Newton's laws and formalism, and your response is not "oh in what ways?" its "no they don't" without further explanation like you're doing a bad homage to the Monty Python argument clinic sketch.
Looking at this from my side, it absolutely looks like you're trying to pick an argument that no one was trying to have for some reason, and will now contradict me on pretty much anything no matter how ridiculous that makes you sound. If that's not what you're trying to do, I'm all ears for a different explanation.
"I say Marx is an offshoot of Hegelianism"
It isn't.
"addressing an entirely different question."
Obviously, I wasn't.
"it absolutely looks like you're trying to pick an argument that no one was trying to have for some reason,"
All I did was reply.
You are doing a bad homage to the argument sketch.
Fluid Dynamics is an offshoot of Classical Mechanics. Fluid Dynamics is not classical mechanics.
When I say Marxism is an offshoot of Hegel, and you respond "Marxism is not Hegelianism", you, are in my mind, addressing a different question, you're addressing a question of subsets (Marxism is a type of Hegelianism, which is not what I am saying), while I'm talking about a question of relations (Marxism is related to Hegelianism in a particular way). You could of course inquire into what I mean by "related in a particular way", but you insisting that Marxism is not a type of Hegelianism has nothing to do with that in my view, so you are not addressing my original claim as I intended it.
I could be wrong, and that Marxism is not related to Hegelianism in the particular way I had in mind, but you haven't said anything about that except not-uh.
You keep arguing with me even though I told you to stop pestering me.
I already said that calling Marxism a Hegelian off-shoot or whatever is reductive.
Good day.
Yes, but you did not, as you say "explain yourself" for this. In what way is it reductive? Is that bad thing in this case?
I'm happy to disengage if you'd like to invoke the disengagement rule, but you don't get to recapitulate your position as correct and then invoke the rule in the same post.
If you're asking why reductiveness is ever a bad thing, then you're being disingenuous, I feel.
You've been harassing me over and over again even when I told you to stop.
Good day.
"also offshoots of Hegel, by way of Marx."
I already went over this now drop it.
You were also wrong about it lol, you're not the classroom teacher. You're just another kid in the lunch hall
Stop throwing insults.
"Please google the definition of offshoot."
Please Google the definitino of reductive.
You're not arguing about anything real. You're using "hegelianism" in a different way from a_blanqui_slate and then getting mad at a_b_s for it
But I'm not mad...
Yeah, Popper was a self declared critical rationalist.
To give an analogy to what I mean, we learn the histories of the nations, of people, despite their flaws in order to learn from them. Popper was a massive figure, noted to be one of the most popular philosophers of the time by some. He taught Soros (no i'm not a conspiracy theorist) who later founded the Open Society Foundation, the name which is directly taken from Popper's book The Open Society and Its Enemies. His philosophy has had an impact, much of it is somewhat present to some extent in graduate programs as he and Kuhn are I believe the most commonly taught (if there is any philosophy of science taught) towards folks in higher education. He has some legitimate criticisms, not many I have found satisfactory of ML, some is relevant to the more dogmatic Marxists, nothing new as far as I have seen. Having a different school of thought and method to approach is quite meaningful as its contradictions with dialectical materialist method itself can foster a deeper understanding if they are worked through.
To your first point, I'd agree that we need to read and understand the ideas of all thinkers. It allows us to pick from them what resonate within us and synthesize new ideas. Marx and Engels were influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach is one example. Another would be Lakatos who can be said to have synthesized Popper and Kuhn, as well as Feyeraband, who recognised the flaws in Popper's writings.
And while it is true Popper was influential, it was most notably in the capitalist sphere. The Western Anglo-centric STEM-leaning education that fostered the idea of rationalism in students at a much younger age before teaching them the idea of historicism or dialectics, or not teaching them at all.
Critical rationalism is a framework that a_blanqi_state said, was supplanted by others. Popper's anti-historicism and open society is undoubtedly a rationalist and idealist idea. Denoting social science and historicism due to their "backwardness" is a view inherently put forth to denounce historical materialism. But I would say it falls short even outside of Marxism. For once, it relies on Popper's negativism (he didn't want to be labelled logical postivist, but one could argue it is the same type of approach to scientific knowledge, just inverse), exactly the kind of work Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyeraband and contemporaries pulled apart.
I also think not many have tried to reclaim Marxism from Popper's critiques because of its line of attack being mainly an analytic school of thought. Analytic on the basis that it aims to confront continental ideas, as well as Kuhn's view of science, with such and such are tautologies and therefore bad, that scepticism is a tool that should be put to immediate use at all angles of human empirical knowledge. It very easily spirals back to foundational questions on what the hell do we know and I can't justify anything to be real. He also attempts to undermine "totalitarianism" as it is, from the outside, rather than reason out of it, from the inside, and thus the language used by him is not univocal for Marxists who didn't study analytic philosophy.
Caveat
Now the analytic/continental division is for holistic comparison that depends on lineage, influence, and style of argument. On small scale scrutiny it breaks down.
At some level, circular reasoning means a level of dogmatism, for sure. But I'd argue the focus should be less on hardcore linear thinking but rather can you draw meaning, modality, and attempt to find a relationship between the human enterprise vs what nature is.
There are still antirealists, rationalists, positivists around. But ever since Quine's Two Dogmas, I don't think Popper can reason out of human tendencies for pragmatism. And I'd say it's more pragmatic that we busy ourselves now on the meaning and development of things, rather than putting things into boxes and shooting them down on the basis of rationalism. "Idealogies", the "isms" tend to win because they approach meaning, rather than reason.
There is also Engel's criticism of "metaphysics" (as opposed to dialectics). Popper's ideas put him in the former group, and his ideas were ultimately bourgeois ones, as critiqued by the latter camp.
Regardless, if you throw away historicism as Marxism promotes it, the replacement is an ascientific, ahistorical piecemeal engineering that somehow can work through all past, present and potential "evils", with zero violence and bloodshed, paying no attention to the history of human societies. Idk, I don't buy it.
Karl Popper was something of an unwarranted boogeyman to a certain cadre of easily startled western academic Marxians, and he is used as a crude bludgeon by more well-read anti-marxists
But when you read his (surprisingly limited) writings on Marx it's amazing to discover he never actually touched on the foundations of Marxism, (because frankly he never read Marx) instead he discounts Marxism by way of claiming its "predictions" in the early twentieth century failed and as a result this demonstrated some form of naive empiricism through induction (which again revealed his profound lack of knowledge of economics and of Marx's writings)
And how did Popper become convinced the "predictions" of capital M Marxism were wrong? Von fuckin Mises, I shit you not, the man pulled his entire set of economic assumptions from the father of Austrian economics, and in the meantime broke every one of his "critical rationalist" rules while calling out the marxists, absolute full circle in terms of philosophy, I've never seen anything like it in the history of academia, and it's largely unknown because no one bothers to read what these people actually wrote and funny enough Popper was pretty open and oblivious about the trap he fell into to by way of Mises
But that's one of the joys of digging thru the history anti-marxism, how they all stole from each other, talked past each other, all of them huddled around the proverbial fireplace telling ghost stories about Marx and his specter
Thank you for that insight on Von Mises, that really helps me navigate this nauseating anti-Marx / Marxist purism debacle. Marx is arguably one of the most misunderstood writer; I have to engage with a lot of Western Marxist scientists in my research into philosophy in the natural sciences and I have to try very hard to ignore the dick measuring contest of who's the most pure Marxist.
Because of this, the thought of having to read the complete opposite of that, i.e. the additional Popper's drivel doesn't appeal to me at all. I need to go listen to Soviet music or something. But when I have more time to read outside of my studies I shall bravely engage.
And you're right about his limited understanding of Marx. I did read that he was Marxist at some point but before he fled to Britain, he flipped side upon witnessing his friends killed or arrested for their failed revolutionary activities lol. And then you read on that he was born into a wealthy family and praised for intellectualism, you know you're in for a treat. The world hasn't changed much in that regard.
Err, yeah, I won't stick with people that are decidedly anti-Marxist, thank you very much, especially those that influenced the anti-communist George Soros.
Yeah ok, to your point I have been doing my best to avoid reading Foucault. If I took my own advice I would, I honestly had difficulty reading Biopolitics some years ago and have stuck with secondary sources since.
Thank you.
People read philosophers who suck so they can get what's valuable from them. I found Heidegger really resonated with me, even though he joined the Nazi party later in life. You should read philosophy as an archeologist, sifting the dust away to find the pottery beneath.
Heidegger was a fascist...
And you do black and white thinking.
I also said that in my comment, so either your reading comprehension is a little shaky or you just learned that fact.
Enough with the insults. If you said that in your comments, then we shouldn't be having an issue.
Leave me alone.