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2 hours agoSports in America was ruined in 1931 at the latest if we are being honest. It will not get better without a new Spartakiad.
forcefemjdwon [she/her]
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Cake day: March 2nd, 2025
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Everyone should just be forced to read Hegel and be considered illiterate unless they can completely understand each and every sentence. How does that sound?
Yes, communists should strive to build a society where the average person is able to comprehend complex philosophical prose! Turn the esoteric exoteric!
That’s just what high literacy - which is expected of English majors, especially by their third and fourth year - requires.
According to ACT, Inc., this level of literacy translates to a 33–36 score on the Reading Comprehension section of the ACT (Reading).
In 2015, incoming freshmen from both universities had an average ACT Reading score of 22.4 out of a possible 36 points, above the national ACT Reading score of 21.4 for that same year.
A third of senior and junior English majors were found to be completely helpless! That is not acceptable!
Planning on it. But I’m currently reading the Phenomenology of Geist & Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and have dozens of other works I want to read, so I’m not sure where to fit in Spinoza. I figured around the time I properly get to Ilyenkov’s body of work.
Do you have any specific recommendations?
Attribute is a term that comes from Spinoza, who I’m not familiar with, so my understanding is based solely on what Ilyenkov himself is saying in this essay.
Ilyenkov is discussing the difference between matter as a whole and localized matter. Matter as a whole is a concept that exists infinitely across space and time. Specific instances of matter undergo dialectical development. Because matter is infinite, its attributes are eternal. Thus, while thinking matter developed from our solar system, thought as an attribute of matter as a whole is inherent. Attributes are not lost or gained.
At a given moment, there must be thinking matter somewhere in the universe. In a given location, there will, is, or has been thinking matter there.
That’s how I understood it at least
No, Ilyenkov is a dialectical materialist, not an idealist. He argues that thinking is an attribute of matter as a whole as a result of the infinities of time and space. This is addressed early on in this paper.
This, of course, does not mean that matter in each of its particles at each moment possesses the capacity to think and thinks in its actuality. This is valid in relation to matter as a whole, as a substance, infinite in time and space. Matter, with a necessity inherent in its nature, constantly engenders thinking creatures, constantly reproduces, now here now there, an organ of thinking—the thinking brain. And by virtue of the infinity of space, this organ thus exists in its actuality, in each finite moment of time somewhere in the fold of infinite space. Or, contrariwise, in each finite point of space (here by virtue of the infinity of time) thought is also realized sooner or later (if these words are applicable to infinite time) and each particle of matter by virtue of this, at some point in the fold of infinite time, forms an integral part of a thinking brain, that is, it thinks.
Taken as a whole, matter does not develop: not for a single moment can it lose a single attribute, nor can it acquire a single new attribute. This, naturally, not only does not contradict but, on the contrary, presupposes the thesis that in each single finite sphere of its existence (however large it may be) there is always an operating dialectical development. But that which is valid for each single “finite” part of matter, is not valid in relation to matter as a whole, to matter understood as substance.
“Just as there is no thought without matter, there is no matter without thought.”
“The end of thinking matter coincides, in time and according to circumstances, with the beginning of a new developmental cycle of matter.”
“The thinking spirit, at the cost of its own existence, returns to mother nature, dying of ‘thermal death,’ a new incandescent youth.”
“The death of the thinking spirit becomes, in this way, its immortality.”
“The starry sky, just like the entire surrounding nature, will be for the thinking being a mirror in which it will reflect its own infinite nature.”
Read Evald Ilyenkov’s Cosmology of Geist, “a Philosophical-Poetic Phantasmagoria based on the principles of dialectical materialism,” immediately.
Learning a lot about materialism.
Something for the Dialectics of Nature fans:
Dialectical biologists are frequently mentioned by Marxists, but I’ve never heard of this until now.
All of this happens because the author wills it according to his personal, eugenicist, politics. I’m not questioning in-universe strategy. I am questioning the politics of this subgenre of science fiction.
And eugenics does not require killing anyone if the desired biological traits can be altered post birth. The Portiids resolve the conflict by using the nanovirus to re-engineer humans to be more empathetic. This reflects the author’s liberal politics that key parts of human (individual and social) psychology are pre-determined by physical substrate rather than social relations. “Human nature,” whether “material” or metaphysical. We already have a way to expand human empathy without conceding to the arguments of 19th century liberal scientists — it’s called communism.
What did I miss? The resolution seemed egregiously eugenic, and that’s ignoring the fact that uplift fiction hinges itself on sentience being primarily a biological phenomenon.
Just read Children of Time. Uplift eugenicslop, unfortunately!
Because they’re Marxist degrowthers, not Marxist degrowthers. They want Marx to agree with degrowth instead of applying the Marxist method to ecology. Saitō is a figurehead for this sort of thing.
I’ve already read some of Hickel’s papers. They’re easy to understand, scientific, and productively advance the debate on degrowth. Would reading Less is More achieve something that reading more of his original research won’t? Because I don’t want to read an entire book for a worse understanding of something that can be gained through reading a few papers. Saitō already got me once.
Saitō Kōhei is right — Marx (and thus Marxists, until Saitō arrived) was completely wrong to assert “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of the development of the productive forces.”
How did Engels let this get published in 1848? Right, he was a Stalinist.
Saitō Kōhei is right — Marx (and thus Marxists, until Saitō arrived) was completely wrong to assert “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of the development of the productive forces.”
No, I feel the same way
That’s fine, the characters can write the story themselves.