PHENOMENALISM
One of a number of related theories of knowledge based
on the notion that the immediate objects of knowledge are sensations.
These theories often argue that all statements about physical objects are equivalent in meaning
to statements about various subjective sensations that people have. All these theories are
empiricist and idealist to one
degree or another.
A typical expression of phenomenalism is
that, in the words of John Stuart Mill, “objects are
the permanent possibilities of sensations”. This takes sensations as all that we really know,
and seems to imply that there may be no objective reality beyond sensation. It seems
to “define away” the objective reality that gives rise to our sensations. Similar views have
been held by Bertrand Russell and most other empiricists.
Russell held that all talk about physical objects, including their properties and locations,
should be translated into talk about human subjective experiences. From our opposed
materialist perspective we argue that our sensations and impressions of the world actually
arise from, and are based on (to one degree or another), objective reality rather than the
other way around, as the phenomenalists would have it.
Strangely, the views of Mill and Russell
might be considered among the “moderate” forms of phenomenalism. Locke
and Herbert Spencer also held similar views, recognizing
at least that objective reality did exist, though insisting that all we are actually directly
aware of is our own sensations. Kantian agnosticism
formalized this point of view that human knowledge cannot know anything directly about the
real objects that give rise to our sensations, each of which is supposedly an unknowable
“thing-in-itself” (ding-an-sich).
The more extreme forms of phenomenalism merge
into outright subjective idealism. Examples of this
are in the philosophies of Bishop Berkeley,
Ernst Mach, and the loose school of idealist thought known as
Empirio-Criticism.
From the point of view of dialectical
materialism all forms of phenomenalism are false since they divorce human knowledge from
objective reality and from human practice in relating to objective reality.
See also:
POSITIVISM, SENSATIONALISM,
SENSUALISM
PHENOMENOLOGY
[To be added...]
PHILANTHROPY
Typically this is the gift by the rich of a small portion of what they have stolen from the
working class. “Philanthropist: Someone who gives away what he should give back.” —Anon.
“The rich will do anything for the poor, except get off their backs.” —Often attributed to Karl Marx, but attributed to Leo Tolstoy by Holbrook Jackson in his book Romance and Reality (1912). This is certainly a sentiment that Marx would have agreed with.
PHILIPPINES — U.S. Imperialist Domination Of
See also: BELL TRADE ACT
PHILISTINE
[Often not capitalized.]
1. [In aesthetics:] A person who is guided by
the pursuit of material possessions (“materialism”, in the vulgar sense), and is oblivious
to or disdains aesthetic and cultural values. This is an attitude characteristic of bourgeois
art collectors, who view the purchase of a work of art as primarily an investment.
2. [More broadly:] A person who is uninformed
about a special area of knowledge (such as Marxist theory) but who nevertheless assumes they
are well versed in the subject and therefore spouts off about it.
“Do you remember the German definition of a philistine?
Was ist der Philister?
Ein hohler Darm,
Voll Furcht und Hoffnung,
Dass Gott erbarm.
[What is a philistine?
A hollow gut,
full of fear and of hope
in God’s mercy.]
This definition does not quite
apply to our affairs. God ... God takes a back seat with us. But the authorities ...
that’s a different matter. And if in this definition we substitute the word ‘authorities’
for the word ‘God’ we shall get an exact description of the ideological stock-in-trade,
the moral level and the civic courage of the Russian humane and liberal ‘friends of the
people.’ [Narodniks]” —Lenin, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are” (1894), LCW 1:262.
[The quoted verse is by Goethe.]
PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA [Also known as Philo Judaeus] (c. 20 BCE-40 CE)
The leading representative of Judaic religious philosophy at the beginning of the 1st century,
who sought to combine that religion with Platonism and
Stoicism. His mysticism greatly influenced Christian theology.
“PHILOSOPHERS’ SHIPS”
A reference to the exiling, on Lenin’s instructions, of a small number of reactionary intellectuals
(including a few idealist philosophers) who were hostile to the October Revolution and
revolutionary Russia. In the fall of 1922 two German boats carried 160 expelled reactionaries
to Germany. In 1923 a smaller number of additional bourgeois intellectuals were expelled by
train to Riga, Latvia, or by ship from Odessa to Constantinople. Among those expelled on these
several occasions were: Nikolai Berdyaev, Nikolai Lossky,
Sergei Bulgakov, and Ivan Ilyin.
PHILOSOPHICAL AGNOSTICISM
See: AGNOSTICISM
PHILOSOPHY — Marxist — Study Of
“We must propagate dialectical materialism among the five million
intellectuals inside and outside the Party and among cadres at all levels so that they
will grasp it and combat idealism, and we shall then be able to organize a powerful
corps of theoretical workers, which we urgently need. That again will be a very good
thing.
“We must draw up a plan for the
formation of such a corps with several million people taking up the study of dialectical
materialism and historical materialism, the theoretical basis of Marxism, and combating
all shades of idealism and mechanical materialism. At present there are many cadres
doing theoretical work, but there is still no corps of theoretical workers, much less a
powerful one. Without such a corps, the cause of the entire Party, the socialist
industrialization and socialist transformation of our country, the modernization of our
national defense and our research in atomic energy cannot move along or succeed. I
therefore recommend that you comrades read philosophy. Quite a few people are not
interested in philosophy and have not cultivated the habit of reading it. They can
begin by reading pamphlets or short articles and, after their interest is thus aroused,
tackle books running to a length of seventy thousand or eighty thousand and then even
several hundred thousand words. Marxism consists of several branches of learning:
Marxist philosophy, Marxist economics and Marxist socialism, that is, the theory of the
class struggle, but the foundation is Marxist philosophy. If this is not grasped, we
will not have a common language or any common method, and we may keep on arguing back
and forth without making things any clearer. Once dialectical materialism is grasped, a
lot of trouble will be saved and many mistakes avoided.” —Mao, “Speeches at the National
Conference of the Communist Party of China: Concluding Speech” (March 31, 1955), SW
5:157-8.
PHILOSOPHY — Scientific
[To be added... ]
See also:
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
“Modern materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of natural science, according to which nature also has its history in time, the celestial bodies, like the organic species that, under favorable conditions, people them, being born and perishing. And even if nature, as a whole, must still be said to move in recurrent cycles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions. In both cases modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and no longer needs any philosophy standing above the other sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous. That which still survives, independently, of all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its laws—formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of nature and history.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring, MECW 25:26.
PHYSIOCRATS
“The physiocratic school, Physiocrats—a trend in bourgeois classical political economy that emerged in France in the 1750s. The Physiocrats held Nature to be the only source of wealth, and agriculture the only sphere of the economy where value was created. Although they underestimated the role of industry and commerce, the Physiocrats rendered an important service by shifting the search for the origins surplus value from the sphere of circulation to that of production, thereby laying the basis for the analysis of capitalist production. Advocates of large-scale capitalist farming, they showed the moribund nature of the feudal economy and thus contributed to the ideological preparation of the bourgeois revolution in France.” —Note 430, MECW 26.
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