ICM
International Communist Movement.
IDEALISM
[In philosophy:] The view that the “spiritual”, or mental, or non-material reality is
primary, and that material reality (if it exists at all) is secondary. One of the two
great trends in the history of philosophy, the other being its opposite,
materialism.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel
about idealism.
IDENTITY THEORY (In the Philosophy of Mind)
The view that mental states and processes are identical to the corresponding
neural states and processes in the brain that give rise to them. This is a common and
prominent type of naive materialism. Of course
there are indeed physical structures and processes in the brain which give rise to
mental phenomena such as thoughts, memories, feelings, etc. But while we are well
aware of these thoughts, memories, and feelings themselves we ordinarily have no
direct knowledge of the precise neural networks, structures and processes which give
rise to them. If our thoughts, memories and feelings were actually identical to
some physical neural structures and processes, then to be aware of one would be the
same as being aware of the other! In reality our awareness of mental phenomena is
only a high order internal indication or characterization of what are actually very
complex brain states and processes.
An analogy: For the image of an
automobile to appear on a TV screen, an enormously complex series of material
processes must occur in the video camera, the transmission equipment, and the TV
receiver set. It would be just as foolish to identify that image with all the
material structures and processes that allow it to be shown as it is to identify
my memory of that image with the complex brain processes which allow me to have
that memory. Our description of the specific TV image as “an automobile” is only a
high-level characterization of one aspect of the functioning of the TV equipment at
that moment, just as my memory of that image is only a high level characterization of
one aspect of the functioning of my brain at that moment.
IDEOLOGIST
One who defends or promotes a specific ideology. Those who promote and defend the
ideologies characteristic of the bourgeoisie are bourgeois ideologists; those who
promote and defend the ideology characteristic of the revolutionary proletariat are
proletarian or revolutionary ideologists.
IDEOLOGY
The totality of political, legal, philosophical, religious, ethical and aesthetic views
of an age, a class, a group, or an individual, considered as a whole. As opposed to vague
and isolated ideas and feelings on these topics, ideology is usually considered to be
more or less coherent, developed and systematized.
IMPERIALISM or CAPITALIST IMPERIALISM
Monopoly capitalism; the highest and final phase of capitalism according to Lenin. Its
main features are... [Add more here...]
INDETERMINISM
The view that some (or all) phenomena do not have causes. The opposite of
determinism.
See also:
FREE WILL
INDIVIDUALISM
1. The theory that the rights or interests of the individual are supreme, and are higher
than any possible collective rights or interests of groups of people.
2. The bourgeois ethical theory that morality is (or should be) based on individual interests,
as in the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
See:
COLLECTIVISM
INDUCTION (Logic)
The process of reasoning from specific cases to general conclusions. Of course this is
sometimes valid, and sometimes invalid. Bourgeois philosophers have struggled (unsuccessfully)
to force the valid cases into being considered some kind of deductive
reasoning.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel about the
bourgeois philosopher Nelson Goodman for a discussion of what he called the “new riddle of
induction”.
INDUSTRIAL CYCLE
The most common term used by Marx for the economic ups and downs in capitalist society over a
period typically of 5 to 10 years. [More to be added... ]
See also:
ECONOMIC CYCLES.
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD (IWW)
[To be added... ]
INFLATION
The general rise in prices of goods and services. Inflation is most often caused by the
expansion of the money supply in an economy faster than the rate of expansion of the economy
itself (i.e., faster than the rate of growth of production). Thus if the government runs large
budget deficits and pays for them not by borrowing from other countries or from the rich
within its own country, but simply by printing up more money, inflation will inevitably
develop.
Most modern capitalist countries actually
purposely plan for a low rate of inflation (rather than stable prices) because they believe
this will spur economic growth. Inflation does have the effect of gradually wiping out debts,
so it can in fact have this result to the extent that growth is limited by already excessive
debt.
See also:
DEFLATION,
HYPERINFLATION,
REFLATION,
STAGFLATION.
INSOLVENT (Adj.)
Having liabilities greater than the current reasonable market value of all assets. In other
words, a company or bank is insovent if it does not have enough money either on hand, or else
which it can raise in short order by selling assets, to cover its liabilities to both
shareholders and those to whom it owes money (including depositors in the case of banks).
See also:
ZOMBIES.
INSTRUMENTALISM
1. A term used to denigrate interest-based, utility-based and similar
naturalistic theories of ethics by their (usually Kantian)
opponents.
2. [In the philosophy of John Dewey:] The view that concepts and theories are merely
“instruments” or tools for dealing with a situation, which cannot genuinely reflect the
underlying reality, and cannot really be considered true or false. Hence, a subjective idealist
doctrine fully in tune with the pragmatist spirit.
In recent years the RCPUSA
and those who have been around it have used the term in something like this second sense, though
often expressed more vaguely or crudely, as in Bob Avakian’s
comment: “By ‘instrumentalism’ here I mean torturing reality in the attempt to make a distorted
version of reality an instrument of certain aims.” [“Bringing Forward Another Way”, Fall 2006,
online at:
http://revcom.us/avakian/anotherway/index.htm] Mike Ely, among others, has pointed
out that Avakian himself “both condemns and practices instrumentalism”, and uses the method of
“manipulating people by fudging the truth” such as by putting forward apocalyptic predictions
of imminent revolution in the U.S., imminent Christian fascism, and the like, which surely
Avakian must have known were not actually true.
INTEREST (Monetary)
[Intro material to be added...]
“Interest is therefore nothing but a part of the profit (which, in its turn, is itself nothing but surplus-value, unpaid labor), which the industrial capitalist pays to the owner of the borrowed capital with which he 'works', either exclusively or partially. Interest is a part of profit—of surplus-value—which, established as a special category, is separated from the total profit under its own name, a separation which is by no means based on its origin, but only on the manner in which it is paid out or appropriated. Instead of being appropriated by the industrial capitalist himself—although he is the person who at first holds the whole surplus-value in his hands no matter how it may be distributed between himself and other people under the names of rent, industrial profit and interest—this part of the profit is deducted by the industrial capitalist from his own revenue and paid to the owner of capital.” —Marx, TSV 3:470-1 [Addenda].
INTERESTS (Politics and Ethics)
Of course there are the familiar concepts of money interest and of being interested
(curious about) something. But in philosophy there is a different concept (objective
or beneficial interest), namely, something which objectively benefits or is to the
advantage of someone or a group. This meaning of ‘interests’ is the most fundamental concept
in all of social science. A focus on beneficial interests is the key to understanding both
politics and ethics.
See also:
MATERIAL INTERESTS.
INTERESTS OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE
[To be added... ]
See also:
“PARTY OF THE WHOLE
PEOPLE”.
INTERNATIONALE (Song)
The Internationale is the anthem and fighting song of the international working
class. It is often sung by militant groups of workers and students while raising their
right clenched fists. The original French poem was written in June 1871, just after the fall
of the Paris Commune, by the French revolutionary Eugène
Pottier (1816–1887). The words were set to original music by Pierre De Geyter (1848–1932)
in 1888. The lyrics have been translated into about 100 languages, and the song is widely
sung around the world. Here is the 2-stanza version of the translation (by Charles Kerr)
which is most often sung in the United States:
Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world’s in birth!
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us,
Arise you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations:
We have been nought, we shall be all!
’Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The international working class
Shall be the human race
We want no condescending saviors
To rule us from their judgment hall,
We workers ask not for their favors
Let us consult for all:
To make the thief disgorge his booty
To free the spirit from its cell,
We must ourselves decide our duty,
We must decide, and do it well.
’Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The international working class
Shall be the human race
For further information about the Internationale see the Wikipedia entry.
INTUITIONISM
1. The view that intuition is the source of knowledge, or important parts of it. Henri
Bergson was one prominent idealist philosopher who maintained this.
2. [In ethics:] The view that moral terms such as ‘good’ or ‘right’ are indefinable in other
terms, that the meanings of these moral terms are “self-evident” and can only be understood
through one’s “intuition”. G.E. Moore was one of its leading
advocates.
“INVERTED SPECTRUM”
This is a puzzle or sort of a thought experiment championed by those influenced by
philosophical idealism (as most of us have been to some degree in
this society!). It is often presented along these lines:
How do I know that others see what I call red when they look at something that is red? Sure, they also call it red, but how do I know it looks the same to them as red looks to me? Couldn’t they be having the same subjective experience as I have when I look at blue things, for example? And couldn’t they have the subjective experience of seeing “redness” when they look at what we both call blue things?
In Chapter 23 of his book I Am A Strange Loop (NY: Basic Books, 2007), pages 333-338,
Douglas Hofstadter discusses this riddle at length and utterly demolishes it. (If this riddle
really bothers you, I suggest you go there for the full antidote! I’ll just refer to a few of
his points here.)
Hofstadter notes that those who are impressed by
this inverted spectrum argument make the unacknowledged assumption that “our experiences
of redness and blueness are totally disconnected from physics”. The feeling of a color,
they think, is some sort of individual invention which two different people could “invent” in
two entirely different ways. Actually, if two different people have senses which are more or
less equally capable of discriminating light of a certain color, and whose brains have neural
networks which signal when this specific color of light is detected, then there is every
reason to believe that the subjective experience of the two people is also equivalent. Why
would evolution have developed two wildly diverse subjective neural networks on top of
what is necessary to recognize and register the presence of a given color in an object? Moreover,
if the two people had developed these additional unnecessary subjective neural networks
(to reflect this differing subjective “redness” or “blueness”), this would be discoverable by
the close inspection of the two different brains. No such differences in brains have been
discovered, and no neurophysiologists really believe that they ever will be.
Hofstadter goes on to note that any presumed
difference in subjective feeling associated with the same color would therefore have to
be entirely unrelated to any physical structure of the brain or its neural networks. In other
words, the differences would have to be entirely in the realm of mind as opposed
to physical brains. Thus, this notion of the possibility of “inverted spectrums” (and of
generalizations of the idea encompassed under the name of “qualia”)
must of necessity imply a dualistic theory of mind and brain (matter). And
dualism, from the materialist perspective, and since it denies
that matter is the necessary basis for all mental phenomena, is merely a variety of philosophical
idealism.
INVESTMENT
1. [From the point of view of capitalists and well-off people in bourgeois society:] The
outlay of money with the goal of “making” (later receiving back) more money or profit.
2. [From the strict point of view of Marxist political economy:] “The conversion of money
into productive capital.” [Marx, Capital, vol. III, ch. 6, sect. 2, (International,
p. 111; Penguin, p. 207, which has “transformation” instead of “conversion”).
IRRATIONALISM
The theory that scientific investigation and rational thinking are not the correct paths
to truth and understanding, but rather that the correct path lies in some inexplicable or
mystical means such as intuition (see intuitionism above).
Of course it is inconsistent (and rather incoherent) to attempt to provide a rational
argument for irrationalism, but many people with religious impulses have nevertheless tried
to do so.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel
about irrationalism.
IWW
See:
IWW.
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