Realism and truth; starting with Marx's phd thesis

Perhaps Marx is trying to use this discussion of the ancient Greek debate on atomism to critique modern atomism, of the sort that became an assumption of modern empiricism and liberalism. The problem is this: How do we account for the fact that things can change or affect changes in other things? We can suppose that this presupposes some internal structure or arrangement of parts. For example, a piece of metal becomes hot because some of the particles that make it up are moving around faster. Now, if we always explain the causal powers or natures of things in terms of the attributes of the parts, what happens if we assume there are ultimate simples in the world, which was the ancient concept of an atom. well, how do they change? they have no internal parts that can change in relation to each other. so you get an infinite regress...the atoms aren't really ultimate, they have parts...but then how do you explain their changes? and so on. This is a classic objection to forms of atomism. Aristotle's answer was that we have to assume that things have natures or first principles, which are not necessarily accountable by reference to the arrangement of their parts. They have a reality in themselves.

Think of this as it applies to society. Is there such a thing as society or is it the case that, as Margaret Thatcher once said, society doesn't exist, only the individuals exist. A social formation in Marx's eyes has a reality, it has certain "laws of motion", it isn't reducible to just a heap of human atoms.

I don't really understand the quotations in the first post. I don't see what some philosopher says about "atoms" has any worth though. The bits in your first post look like meaningless drivel to me...

You what?

For example, what does this mean?

"timeless thing," what? An atom is an atom. How is it a "timeless thing"?

I think lem's looking for the fundamental building block, the simplest thing that constitutes the world, the real that isn't abstracted, the essential, like once people thought atoms were like that then we discover atoms themselves are only products of a deeper process and now we are into crazy QM shit with quarks and the like.

Could be wrong of course, fuck only knows why he'd want to look at Marx's shitty PHD though.

I dunno, if I want someone to cure some disease I have, I reckon I'd go with the scientists. Those nihilists, don't you know, they believe in *nothing*? And they might cut off my Johnson.

Joseph don't be silly philosophy is just some pretentious folk sitting around in coffee shops, science is men in white coats doing real pratical things!

Why? Who cares, he was full of shit about loads of stuff.

Yes sorry I forgot all the ground-breaking and vitally important work going on in philosophy departments around the world, especially in the fields of logic and epistemological and ontological assumptions. In fact I'm putting my hopes in a solution to climate change largely on them.

ok, try doing science without logic then, which might lead to reasoning like this. the fact the philosophical underpinnings of science can usually be left unstated doesn't mean they aren't there, and in fact abandoment of them is what creates space for all the psuedo-scientific irrational crap like homoeopathy, HIV denial, intelligent design etc.

i've been studying scientific realism this term [no marx tho]. so lets have it - any structural realists? naive realists? entity realists? anything still lamer?

i probably believe in structural or naive realism depending on how serious the pessimistic meta-induction is. in as much as a i don't think entity realism works out.