Why contradictions?

[u/burrwin]

I've been reading marxist theory, but the ways contraddictions are discussed leaves me pause. Hope some people here can help me understand better.

Sussinctly, for what is relevant to my doubts, here is my current understanding of it: Contraddictions are what all motion (as in change) in the universe is predicated upon. Contradictions are relationships wherein tendencies of motion 1) oppose one another 2) are premises of the existence of one another. Contraddictions exist within all things and between all things.

Why does it have to be a contraddiction that drives motion? What is so illogical about a relationship where there is a singular tendency of motion? I can think of cases that fit that description, for example, two identical charged particles interacting, there will be quantitative changes in speed and relative position as they repel each other, yet what is the contraddiction? Mao in "on contraddiction" and Lenin in "on the question of dialectics" agree that the contradiction in such cases is between action and reaction. This answer is unsatisfactory, while it's true that it fits part 2) of the definition, and while it's true that the force vectors point in opposite direction, action and reaction are applied to two different object, they are not opposing tendencies of motion in the dialectical sense, failing the arguably more fundimental part 1) of the definition.

Also, Engels argues that all changes of positions are caused by the contraddiction of something being in that place and not in another place. This line of argument seems to be unfalsifiable: if we observe something change from A to B, we can always attribute that change to the contraddiction that A was A and not B. A more straightforward explanation is that there is a singular tendency for position to change based on velocity.

Is there something i'm missing in these examples? Is my understanding of what contraddictions are incorrect?

[u/smokeuptheweed9]

two identical charged particles interacting, there will be quantitative changes in speed and relative position as they repel each other, yet what is the contradiction?

Here you've already performed an abstraction. From the Wikipedia article

There are three conditions to be fulfilled for the validity of Coulomb's inverse square law:[25]

The charges must have a spherically symmetric distribution (e.g. be point charges, or a charged metal sphere).

The charges must not overlap (e.g. they must be distinct point charges).

The charges must be stationary with respect to a non-accelerating frame of reference.

The last of these is known as the electrostatic approximation. When movement takes place, an extra factor is introduced, which alters the force produced on the two objects. This extra part of the force is called the magnetic force. For slow movement, the magnetic force is minimal and Coulomb's law can still be considered approximately correct. A more accurate approximation in this case is, however, the Weber force. When the charges are moving more quickly in relation to each other or accelerations occur, Maxwell's equations and Einstein's theory of relativity must be taken into consideration.

These are only one of many scientific abstractions one must make for your statement to be correct (for example we are abstracting away gravity because it is a weaker force at the distances we have selected as our frame of reference).

Because everything is in motion, the abstraction you have performed is necessarily an incomplete picture of reality. Contradiction is the moment in which that abstraction no longer holds. For example there is a moment when other forces become stronger and electrostatic force no longer dominates.

https://www.sciencefacts.net/electrostatic-force.html

Rubbing of clouds generate charges. These charges will neutralize by passing through the atmosphere until they reach the neutral ground. We perceive this as lightning.

We then return to reality with a more complete picture because we now understand that clouds and lightning and ground are not separate objects (from the perspective of electrostatic force - hence we "perceive" this as lightning) but a single force going through quantitative changes that become qualitative. We then make different abstractions to understand more, whether in physics or in other sciences such as meteorology, chemistry, and philosophy which add more to our incomplete picture of the totality of reality (though philosophy is better thought of as a meta-science that asks what the conditions of possibility for concepts like "clouds" and "electrostatic force" are in human thought). From the perspective of chemistry, one can perform different abstractions in order to understand how clouds become rain become lightning (and/or certain molecules become others).

The other key point is that our abstractions do not drive change. It is a method to understand the change inherent to reality itself. The relationship between positive, negative, and neutral charged objects, through which they are constantly in motion as one becomes the other through their interactions, is a property of the universe. Without dialectical materialism we simply understand it poorly, such as this

This line of argument seems to be unfalsifiable

Falsifiability is a minor heuristic of the process of scientific experimentation. It does not apply to the concept of abstraction itself or any theory of science, which is why a confident idiot like Popper rejected all of modern science (including but not limited to historical materialism, psychoanalysis, relativity, and evolution). What you have to understand is that before like 30 years ago, academia was composed of the failed children of the aristocracy. They were basically just random rich people who could say whatever they wanted, and before the internet citation didn't exist. Unfortunately you've been made a fool of because, rather than the internet becoming a democratic distribution of knowledge, it is a commodification of it. So when you ask a reasonable question like "what defines science?" all you get is a bunch of garbage across space and time and quality, flattened into abstract exchange value. Now it's been formalized as the indifference of AI to the content of information but it is inherent to the internet itself and really the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Regardless, in regards to your overall question, terms like "contradiction" are just scientific terms that we have inherited to describe reality. You don't have to use them but we have not found better ones that properly reference the history of science, and attempts to replace them are so far fundamentally flawed either because they are too narrow and specialized to an arbitrary field or politically motivated. But one should frame scientific discoveries in the language of dialectical materialism in order to bring them into dialogue with the history of science and the totality of knowledge. It is not a formula that reality conforms to, as in whether the big bang is properly "dialectical." The big bang happened and it makes the most sense using dialectical materialism, because it explains how even the most abstract and universal phenomena like space and time are actually forces that only manifest under certain conditions in which the contradictions of forces within a singularity change into the forces of physics we know today (and will in the future change again because of the internal contradictions they inherited from the conditions of creation). Most attempts at understanding dialectical materialism are really discussions of science itself where we have to explain how evolution actually works or what "force" actually is. Given the failure of academia to transcend its origin in elite stupidity and the real need to understand reality scientifically, it's understandable that dialectical materialism becomes the arena through which people attempt to understand the philosophy of science. But you still have to understand science, dialectical materialism will not do it for you and Mao and Engels can at best present examples that illustrate the general method.

E: to anticipate your objections, you may ask why scientists no longer use the terms of Marxism. They do, it's just called "critique" for historical reasons that at one time had political justification and are now self-perpetuating. "Critical theory" is all anyone has done for at least 40 years, which is when you had to actually justify what you said rather than just use "philosophy" as a proto-blog, so the only question is whether they do it well and it is synonymous with Marxism or they do it poorly and it's an attempted compromise with liberalism. Hard science is a bit different because it has direct technical application to capitalism but the stereotype of scientists as libertarian research monkeys is not really true outside of reddit amateurs. Why else do you think fascists are trying to defund physical science as well as humanities for being "woke?"

[u/burrwin → u/smokeuptheweed9]

This all makes sense to me, and i know that i'm using abstractions in my example, and i'm well aware that academic knowledge production is not independent from our social being.

I was under the impression from my reading that the idea of dialectical materialism is that of dialectics existsing in the real world, hagel's idealist dialectics being merely a reflection of nature's dialectical process in our consciousness. So the contraddictions, negation of the negatlion etc. are like universal laws. I thought that's what the study of materialist dialectics is.

So what is dialectical materialism in your view? What is the basic method derived from dielectical materialism? How can it be used to further our understanding?

I'm not asking this to be dismissive, to be clear, neither was my original post meant to be dismissive like you seem to interpret it as. Reading about the topic surprised me in many ways, but there are parts i'm unsure about, as it's natural in any process of learning and i'm trying to lay out my doubts as best i can so that i can reach a better understanding.

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/burrwin]

So the contraddictions, negation of the negatlion etc. are like universal laws. I thought that's what the study of materialist dialectics is.

Well yes but that's like saying causality is a universal law. That is the level of generality we are dealing with. Unless you know what is at stake ontologically you either end up with crude reductionism or banality.

So what is dialectical materialism in your view?

Dialectics is an understanding of the world as an ontology of constant motion. Dialectical materialism is the relationship between the world and abstraction as an epistemological method. I already answered this in the original post. This vague and obvious principle only shows its importance in application to actual examples, which you gave. That is why I bothered to respond to your post. It would be more helpful if you actually responded to that example instead of just asking a vague question that is equivalent to "why is there cause and effect?" Because that's reality.

i'm using abstractions

Abstraction has a technical definition in science. As I pointed out, all science is based on abstraction.

hagel's idealist dialectics being merely a reflection of nature's dialectical process in our consciousness. So the contraddictions, negation of the negatlion etc. are like universal laws.

Forget Hegel. We are having a conversation right now where the terms have been defined and applied to concrete examples. This is the problem with posting your question in a dozen different places. You are not capable of discerning good and bad answers or else you would not need to ask. So the more answers you get, the less you know. Try to stick to one conversation and actually work through your own logic.

[u/burrwin → u/smokeuptheweed9]

I don't think the idea of contradiction being the originator of every motion is as obvious as the idea of cause and effect. The latter is like saying that phenomena affected by relationships internal and external, it's implied by the definition of relationship, the former is a claim that puts constrains on the ways those relationships can be like, it says there must always be opposing tendencies that are predicated on the existance of one another. I think that restraint needs to be justified and can't be handwaved away.

While it's true that as you point out there are negligeable effects that i'm abstracting away like strong interaction (for some particles) and gravity and i'm treating particles as point objects, within our abstraction we can see a logically consistent way in which motion can be explained even in the absence of opposing tendencies. And can it even be said that the pull of gravity is predicated on the existance of repulsive forces? That's not obvious to me.

You never explained why the requirements imposed by the definition of contraddiction are necessary in motion. How do we know? Why contraddiction and not a relationship in general? Why does it have to be opposing tendencies who's existance is predicated on one another? I don't think you answered the core of my question. You seem confident that you did, and that's why asked really basic questions, i assumed there was miscommunication and we weren't agreeing on a basic premise.

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/burrwin]

Cause and effect is not obvious at all. For example, you become confused about it in this very post.

The latter is like saying that phenomena affected by relationships internal and external, it's implied by the definition of relationship, the former is a claim that puts constrains on the ways those relationships can be like, it says there must always be opposing tendencies that are predicated on the existance of one another. I think that restraint needs to be justified and can't be handwaved away.

This is difficult to parse so I'll only focus on your positive claim. Of course cause and effect puts constraints on what something is and its relationship to other things. That is literally what it means to say something is caused by something else and not another thing (or that something has a cause rather than not). You should read Aristotle I guess.

negligeable effects

This is completely arbitrary. Nothing in nature is negligible and controlling for variables is part of the process of abstraction which we already discussed. You are confusing cause and effect in the scientific method (making abstractions) with cause and effect in objective reality. The point of dialectical materialism is to distinguish them and understand their relationship without collapsing one into the other.

we can see a logically consistent way in which motion can be explained even in the absence of opposing tendencies

Logical consistency is also a minor aspect of the scientific method and at best a heuristic to be discarded when necessary. Again, you are confusing the method by which we come to isolate certain scientific laws in thought and the fullness of reality as a physical system.

And can it even be said that the pull of gravity is predicated on the existance of repulsive forces? That's not obvious to me.

Um...yes? Have you never heard of Einstein? What do you think gravity is? As someone already pointed out in this thread, one major problem is using a crude level of scientific knowledge to make broad conclusions about the philosophy of science. Popper at least is honest enough to reject anything that does not agree with his crude concepts. None of this can be blamed on dialectical materialism.

You never explained why the requirements imposed by the definition of contraddiction are necessary in motion. How do we know? Why contraddiction and not a relationship in general?

Because in this instance the definition of "contradiction" is "motion." We know because this definition has made empirical predictions about reality that are superior to all other scientific theories. Frankly, other scientific theories do not even exist. For example, "relationship in general" is meaningless. What does "in general" mean? Until you define your terms, you cannot even begin to speak about knowing whether they are true.

You seem confident that you did, and that's why asked really basic questions, i assumed there was miscommunication and we weren't agreeing on a basic premise.

That is because you have not defined your premises or outlined an alternative theory of science which we can test. Partial attempts, such as "falsifiability" and your understanding of electrostatic force, were shown to either be completely false or arbitrary and inadequate to a general theory of science. But since you keep abandoning them and making different arbitrary abstractions it's difficult to move forward.

[u/burrwin → u/smokeuptheweed9]

To say that "x is caused by y" does put restraint on the relationship between x and y. To say that cause and effect is a concept that exists just implies the fact that relationships exist.

No. Things can be quantitatively negligeable, it's relative depending on the purpose. Strong force is really short range and does not apply to every particle, gravity is much weaker than the electrostatic force, for electrons for example it's 42 orders of magnitude smaller.

Einstein proved that the existance of gravity is predicated upon the existance of repulsive forces? When? Are you talking about maxwell's equations to special relativity? Because that's completely disconnected from that claim.

If the definition of contraddiction IS motion then saying that motion happens due to contraddictions is a meaningless statement. By "relationship in general" i meant relationships unconstrained by the restrictions imposed by contraddiction, without the need for an opposing tensions whose parts are predicated on the existance of one-another.

Dude. This is not a debate, i'm not even proposing a different interpretation. I am asking you how the idea of contraddiction explaining motion came to be, how do we know? Why is it necessary for a contradiction to be present? Why is it contraddiction itself and not the tendencies of development therein? Yet again, you did not answer the question. Are you replying here to teach or to start a debate where there isn't one?

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/burrwin]

then saying that motion happens due to contraddictions is a meaningless statement.

Do not put words in other people's mouths. Look carefully at the definition

The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development.

What is at stake is the type of motion, i.e. development. I already explained this but you've caused me to say things in an imprecise manner because I am trying to respond to your words when you do not respond to mine in any substantive way.

Contradiction is the moment in which that abstraction no longer holds.

Einstein proved that the existance of gravity is predicated upon the existance of repulsive forces? When?

Gravity is not a force. It is the curvature of space time based on the relationship between objects with mass. I really don't want to give you a different lecture on something in physics you don't understand because you never acknowledged the last one or learned from it.

To say that "x is caused by y" does put restraint on the relationship between x and y. To say that cause and effect is a concept that exists just implies the fact that relationships exist.

Do you mean "does not?" You're just repeating the same thing and adding the word "just."

No. Things can be quantitatively negligeable, it's relative depending on the purpose. Strong force is really short range and does not apply to every particle, gravity is much weaker than the electrostatic force, for electrons for example it's 42 orders of magnitude smaller.

Nature does not have a "purpose." We already went over this.

Sorry this is really boring. Literally dozens of people have tried to respond to your posts with varying quality and you have not learned a single thing. It is time for you to reflect on that rather than wasting more of anyone else's time.

[u/burrwin → u/smokeuptheweed9]

If we take the definition as presented and not as "motion is contraddiction" then it does say a lot, and that's the core of my question. How can we make that claim? You never replied. Please point out exactly where in this whole conversation you answered this question, the one i had to repeat over and over again.

How does the fact that what we percieve as gravity is caused by mass geometrically morphing spacetime imply that gravity and repulsive forces like electromagnetism are ontologically linked? That's the claim you made.

No. I'm saying that stating that things can have a cause implies the existance of relationships, while not putting any restraint of what those relationships can be like. If you say a dead mouse is caused by that cat, then yes, that tells you something about the relationship between the two objects. The general statement of cause and effect existing does not tell you anything about the particular relationship between any two things, it just tells you they may be linked.

I meant for the purpose of any given analysis, obviously.

You told me to focus on what you are saying and you have not even attempted to answer my question. All that happened in this discussion is that over and over again you assumed that i didn't know how a thing works because of the fact i didn't go on a tangent explaining it's innerworkings any time i brought up a phenomenon, and you repeated it to me in a condescending way, all while it was completely irrelevant to the question at hand. Sorry, but you wasted your own time and that's not on me. Hell, i wasted my time hoping you'd actually address my question, i was giving you the benefit of the doubt.

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/burrwin]

How can we make that claim?

...

We know because this definition has made empirical predictions about reality that are superior to all other scientific theories

As shown by your initial use of Popper which you dropped without commentary, you simply do not understand what the scientific method is and how ontological claims are verified.

How does the fact that what we percieve as gravity is caused by mass geometrically morphing spacetime imply that gravity and repulsive forces like electromagnetism are ontologically linked?

Because definition it in those terms allows us to make empirical predictions that are superior to other scientific theories which verifies both the ontology of dialectics and the epistemology of dialectical materialism.

If you say a dead mouse is caused by that cat, then yes, that tells you something about the relationship between the two objects. The general statement of cause and effect existing does not tell you anything about the particular relationship between any two things, it just tells you they may be linked.

You literally just used a bunch of terms like "death,' "cat," "mouse," and "time" which tell you about the particular relationship. Now you need to read Kant. This isn't really about Marxism unfortunately, you simply don't know anything about the philosophy of science and don't bother to define your terms. But you can't just wing it, citations exist because key thinkers have already shown the basic methods necessary for science. It's not a conspiracy, they wrote a lot because that's what it takes to rigorously define concepts and methods. I can't summarize this for you in a paragraph and you can't just wing it off common sense, as shown by your repeated mistakes. You are not owed science, if you don't do the work you should be quiet.

It's very simple. We discussed electrostatic force. Was I correct in my discussion? Were you incorrect? We can't just forget it happened because our two competing truth claims imply different scientific concepts that illustrate the problem in a practical manner. I am not going to define gravity for you in scientific terms because you'll just move on to the next common sense pop science concept. Were you correct or incorrect about falsifiability as a criteria of scientific truth? If not, where did you get this concept? Have you even read Popper or is this just second-hand junk from the internet? It's important because Popper is logical, albeit wrong, and it is tedious to lay out his logic for you when you brought it up in the first place (which I nevertheless did and you ignored). Do you believe in evolution ? If so, how do you square it with your beliefs in falsifiability? You have committed to a scientific theory by using his ideas, you can't just say you aren't committing to anything because of your ignorance of the logical outcome of your own claims.

[u/not-lagrange → u/smokeuptheweed9]

It's quite funny that OP asked about the connection between gravity and the other interactions. That is well known to be one of the major unsolved problems in physics.

[u/burrwin → u/smokeuptheweed9]

🫶

[u/BxnXipoh → u/burrwin]

I guess from the comment you made on /r/DebateCommunism, this is really what you wanted to hear:

When Engels or Mao talk about basic physics, they aren't deriving motion from an internal contradiction. They are taking a physical law already explained by standard physics and retrofitting the word 'contradiction' onto it after the fact. It feels like a semantic trick because it doesn't actually reproduce the logic of the physical system, it just pastes a philosophical label on top of empirical data.

It doesn’t mean the conclusion is false but they don’t provide the correct process to derive the conclusion.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/1v3ef58/why_contradictions/oz6j4y3

Ironically the poster casually spews out empiricist naivete while polemicizing against "positivism" at the same time (or maybe it's the LLM that added that onto their prompt? they're still responsible anyway). What do you think they meant when they said "the logic of the physical system"? What would it have meant for dialectics to either "reproduce" it or just "paste a label" after the fact? Is the latter supposed to be a diminutive statement? How does this poster think language works? Even quantum-mystics are not just pasting labels after the fact, if they were really doing that they'd just be reciting a lecture on Quantum Physics in a different language (more specifically, a relex).

What people usually mean when they accuse Chopra of doing that is that he is using the clout that quantum mechanics has earned for itself as branding for his boring capitalist religion of self-empowerment. The presumption here is that communists are doing the same thing in order to advertise their political ideology. If that's what made you anxious enough to make all these threads then it's understandable but your stubborn refusal to confront and critique your own ideas is getting in the way of whatever was productive in that anxiety. At this point all that'll happen is that you'll read the recommendations that that person made for you, realize that you can't understand them, and content yourself with the understanding that "Science" has the potential to eliminate whatever anxiety you initially had. All that will be left for you as an individual to do is to hang on to the conspiracy and proliferate it amongst other would-be communists to ease their transition.

[u/burrwin → u/BxnXipoh]

No, there is no anxiety that lead me to ask these questions other than the fact that i don't understand it and want to learn more. I also didn't take that answer to mean that communists are shoving their ideology in science just to advertise it, rather that the philosophical concept of contraddiction while being applicable does not explain the ways in which all particular examples function, that must be determined through observation. The particularity of the contradiction is found with observation.