I am an idealist, in the same sense as Che’s ideas about a revolutionary’s love. I want desperately for us as humanity to make kind, informed, rational and appropriate decisions. I want to see the best in people… I also realize that’s not realistic a lot of the time. But hey, have to have hope to keep going, no?
Idealism should never undermine the reality of the situation, but it can and should be a guiding force. I am an idealist in the sense that I believe given the tools and direction we can be incredible. Realistically, right now the fight is tough, it sucks, but we can make a better world, or at least, we gotta try.
As for idealism in relation to material condition, decisions cannot and should not be made with ‘what if’ positions. Plan for the worst but those plans should be made malleable enough to adapt should real material conditions allow.
That’s not what idealism means in this context. Idealism means “ideas shape reality” whereas materialism is “reality shapes ideas.” Idealism is ignoring material conditions in order preserve an idea, instead of changing the idea to match the material conditions we face.
I’m not the OP, but I would like to speak on this matter and, perhaps get some relevant input.
That seems to be a roughly correct assessment of what idealism is if we replace the word ‘reality’ with ‘material part of reality’ (because non-material part of reality is still a part of reality). However, I see a couple of issues with the assessment of Marxism as supposedly being a materialist and anti-idealist school of thought:
I’m not sure what the argument is for how the ideas encountered in math depend on material part of reality. There is no such dependency as far as I can see as a person with a background in mathematics.
I am not aware of any Marxist positions that are in conflict with idealism. If there are such positions, I’m all ears.
1: Math is the literal representation of the the laws of matter. Math would not make sense if it didn’t follow the laws of matter that we have developed throughout all our history.
2: “The question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of spirit to nature is the paramount question of the whole of philosophy… The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature … comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.” (Marx, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 329.) The entire foundation of Marxism (dialectical materialism) is in conflict with the foundation of idealism.
Math is the literal representation of the the laws of matter
It is not, especially not in the sense of math as what mathematicians study, but, again, math as an academic discipline is also not that. Math as an academic discipline says nothing about matter. Physics and chemistry (as academic disciplines) do.
In an academic work of physics, you would encounter passages like ‘a body’s movement can be described this way’, or ‘spectral analysis indicates that this planet’s atmosphere has such-and-such gases’.
In an academic work of chemistry, you would encounter passages like ‘when mixed, these two substances enter a reaction the result of which are these substances’.
In an academic work of math, you would instead encounter passages like ‘the annulus of convergence of this Laurent series has such-and-such radii’, or ‘this surface has this Euler characteristic’, or ‘this shape is a wild embedding of a sphere into R^3’.
Unlike bodies of matter, planets and their atmospheres, substances, etc., none of the objects mentioned in the quotes in that last part are material.
Math would not make sense if it didn’t follow the laws of matter that we have developed throughout all our history
It’s the other way around, however. Math as what mathematicians study is not dependent on matter in any way (if you disagree, you can try exploring what properties matter would need to have to, for example, annihilate the idea of the field of rational numbers). Meanwhile, if a material system works in a way that corresponds to some non-self-contradictory system found in math, it is not going to produce any results that would somehow cause a contradiction in the math system, so long as the material system works in accordance with the correspondence to the math system. You are not going to, for example, start out with 2 apples, give one apple to your comrade and be left with 3 apples, so long as giving an apple corresponds to subtracting 1 from a natural number that starts out as the count of how many apples you have and so long as there are no other ways to change how many apples you have.
The entire foundation of Marxism (dialectical materialism) is in conflict with the foundation of idealism
I am yet to encounter any conflicts in this regard. I have been unable to find them on my own, and the people that I have talked to so far, including outside of this thread, have not managed to find any such issues. I hope to resolve this matter at some point, one way or another.
It is not, especially not in the sense of math as what mathematicians study, but, again, math as an academic discipline is also not that. Math as an academic discipline says nothing about matter. Physics and chemistry (as academic disciplines) do.
Maybe a better phrasing would be that math is another paradigm of matter, another way of visualizing matter. Still i stand by what i said, even if mathematician studies are seemingly abstract, it is only because we have developed math to a higher stage of development than other disciplines and thus have lost the forest for the trees.
It’s the other way around, however. Math as what mathematicians study is not dependent on matter in any way.
Math does not exist in a vacuum, this is a big difference between metaphysics and Marxism, things do not exist in a vacuum… Math studies have to converge to the currently developed laws of math or it is not math but nonsense.
“Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.” (Dialectical and Historical Materialism)
I am an idealist, in the same sense as Che’s ideas about a revolutionary’s love. I want desperately for us as humanity to make kind, informed, rational and appropriate decisions. I want to see the best in people… I also realize that’s not realistic a lot of the time. But hey, have to have hope to keep going, no?
Idealism should never undermine the reality of the situation, but it can and should be a guiding force. I am an idealist in the sense that I believe given the tools and direction we can be incredible. Realistically, right now the fight is tough, it sucks, but we can make a better world, or at least, we gotta try.
As for idealism in relation to material condition, decisions cannot and should not be made with ‘what if’ positions. Plan for the worst but those plans should be made malleable enough to adapt should real material conditions allow.
That’s not what idealism means in this context. Idealism means “ideas shape reality” whereas materialism is “reality shapes ideas.” Idealism is ignoring material conditions in order preserve an idea, instead of changing the idea to match the material conditions we face.
I’m not the OP, but I would like to speak on this matter and, perhaps get some relevant input.
That seems to be a roughly correct assessment of what idealism is if we replace the word ‘reality’ with ‘material part of reality’ (because non-material part of reality is still a part of reality). However, I see a couple of issues with the assessment of Marxism as supposedly being a materialist and anti-idealist school of thought:
I’m not sure what the argument is for how the ideas encountered in math depend on material part of reality. There is no such dependency as far as I can see as a person with a background in mathematics.
I am not aware of any Marxist positions that are in conflict with idealism. If there are such positions, I’m all ears.
1: Math is the literal representation of the the laws of matter. Math would not make sense if it didn’t follow the laws of matter that we have developed throughout all our history.
2: “The question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of spirit to nature is the paramount question of the whole of philosophy… The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature … comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.” (Marx, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 329.) The entire foundation of Marxism (dialectical materialism) is in conflict with the foundation of idealism.
It is not, especially not in the sense of math as what mathematicians study, but, again, math as an academic discipline is also not that. Math as an academic discipline says nothing about matter. Physics and chemistry (as academic disciplines) do.
In an academic work of physics, you would encounter passages like ‘a body’s movement can be described this way’, or ‘spectral analysis indicates that this planet’s atmosphere has such-and-such gases’.
In an academic work of chemistry, you would encounter passages like ‘when mixed, these two substances enter a reaction the result of which are these substances’.
In an academic work of math, you would instead encounter passages like ‘the annulus of convergence of this Laurent series has such-and-such radii’, or ‘this surface has this Euler characteristic’, or ‘this shape is a wild embedding of a sphere into R^3’.
Unlike bodies of matter, planets and their atmospheres, substances, etc., none of the objects mentioned in the quotes in that last part are material.
It’s the other way around, however. Math as what mathematicians study is not dependent on matter in any way (if you disagree, you can try exploring what properties matter would need to have to, for example, annihilate the idea of the field of rational numbers). Meanwhile, if a material system works in a way that corresponds to some non-self-contradictory system found in math, it is not going to produce any results that would somehow cause a contradiction in the math system, so long as the material system works in accordance with the correspondence to the math system. You are not going to, for example, start out with 2 apples, give one apple to your comrade and be left with 3 apples, so long as giving an apple corresponds to subtracting 1 from a natural number that starts out as the count of how many apples you have and so long as there are no other ways to change how many apples you have.
I am yet to encounter any conflicts in this regard. I have been unable to find them on my own, and the people that I have talked to so far, including outside of this thread, have not managed to find any such issues. I hope to resolve this matter at some point, one way or another.
Maybe a better phrasing would be that math is another paradigm of matter, another way of visualizing matter. Still i stand by what i said, even if mathematician studies are seemingly abstract, it is only because we have developed math to a higher stage of development than other disciplines and thus have lost the forest for the trees.
Math does not exist in a vacuum, this is a big difference between metaphysics and Marxism, things do not exist in a vacuum… Math studies have to converge to the currently developed laws of math or it is not math but nonsense.
“Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.” (Dialectical and Historical Materialism)