What a social world without alienation would look like

A dream of democratic socialism by Amod Lele

Martin Hägglund develops a neo-Marxist politics that is deeply informed by qualitative individualism – quite appropriately, since qualitative individualist ideas inform Marx himself, especially in the theory of alienation. Hägglund wants to envision what a social world without alienation would look like.

Possibly the core distinction in Hägglund's thought is between a "realm of freedom" and a "realm of necessity" – and he identifies time as central to both of these.

Continue reading "A dream of democratic socialism"

Amod Lele | January 17, 2021

Seth Zuiho Segall said:

18 January 2021 at 12:23 am

Amod, you remind me of Richard Rorty in this post. Here is one of my favorite Rorty quotes—it comes from his essay on George Orwell in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity: “I do not think that we liberals can now imagine a future of ‘human dignity, freedom and peace.’ That is, we cannot tell ourselves a story about how to get from the actual present to such a future. We can picture various socioeconomic setups which would be preferable to the present one. But we have no clear sense of how to get from the actual world to these theoretically possible worlds, and thus no clear idea of what to work for…. This inability to imagine how to get from here to there is a matter neither of loss of moral resolve nor of theoretical superficiality, self-deception, or self-betrayal. It is not something we can remedy by a firmer resolve, or more transparent prose, or better philosophical accounts of man, truth, or history. It is just the way things happen to have fallen out. Sometimes things prove to be just as bad as they first looked.…This bad news remains the great intransigent fact of contemporary political speculation, the one that blocks all the liberal scenarios.” (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 1989, p. 181-182)

Idols of the Mind vs True Reality, by Bhakti Madhava Puri, Ph.D.

"One must therefore go back 300 years and reflect on how one could have proceeded differently at that time, and how the whole subsequent development would then be modified." - Schroedinger

The theme of the new book, "Idols of the Mind vs True Reality" by Bhakti Madhava Puri, Ph.D. is concerned with the clear exposition of the pivotal conceptions and misconceptions of Galileo's and others' ideas that produced the subsequent development of what would become modern mathematized science.

The confusions and almost complete ignorance that exist today regarding something so fundamental as consciousness is immediately cleared up when the obvious errors are seen in the ad hoc presumptions of the original founders of modern science who were blindsided by the metaphysical ontologies that held sway during their lives, but to which we no longer adhere, thanks to the development of philosophy beyond that period. We trace this progress out in a concise way in the book.

The modern mind, thanks to science education, is focused on the one-sided empirical approach to knowledge by sensuous perception, but this fails to account for the role of subjective cognition or conception - the role of consciousness in such perceptions. This artificial separation of the original unity-in-difference between conception and content has been rendered impossible to broach because of the historical metaphysical tradition of dualism firmly held by the fathers of modern science such as Galileo and Descartes.

The presumed impossible gap between subject and object is bridged once we realize that the object is what the subject knows it to be. This does not reduce the object to the subject as the abstract idealists (monists) naively are only too hasty to presume as an immediate identity (oneness). Mediation is involved; there are both difference and identity at play. It is merely lazy un-thinking that ignores the intricate dynamic in the mediating activity that is the heart and life of consciousness. The main purpose of the book is to restore the central importance of the conceptual moment that is integral to science and which makes it truly worthy of the name Science or scientific knowledge. 

Idols of the Mind vs. True Reality
https://www.amazon.com/Idols-Mind-vs-True-Reality/dp/1734908955
https://www.amazon.in/Idols-Mind-vs-True-Reality/dp/1734908955
 
Ontological Distinction between Mechanical, Chemical & Biological Systems

Namaste Adris.

If the subject knows the object to be something different than what it  actually is, this is called an illusion or an undertermination. It is not factual or true knowing or knowledge. The correspondence theory defines truth as being when concept and reality are congruent, i.e. when concept is adequate to reality. This congruence is not an immediate identity but a mediated, dynamic one resulting from syllogistic, or what Hegel calls conceptual thinking.

The absolute self-conscious concept that infinitely comprehends reality is the definition of God. Finite self-conscious subjects who have finite conceptions of objects will know them according to the degree of knowledge or evolution of consciousness they have achieved.

Humbly,

B Madhava Puri

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Online_Sadhu_Sanga/4827859.695075.1594644342206%40mail.yahoo.com