Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote on March 18, 2021 at 4:58 PM

Reply to comment by train in What is it that Marxists think is scientific about their view? by Hibiscus_Syrup

Thanks.

Dialectical materialism, to put it simply, is a belief in an objective material reality that we can imprecisely observe.

This is most realist philosophy, which is a huge range of philosophy, so I'm not sure why Marxism is understood as scientific where presumably other positions aren't.

Maybe it will help here to introduce the idea of 'idealism', which I hear Marxists talk about. How does this relate?

It dictates that the ideas we use to describe objective reality are based on our observations. Thus as we come across new observations that contradict our previous ideas, we must develop new ideas to resolve this contradiction.

This seems to me just regular empiricism, so I'm still trying to figure out how Marxism specifically is relating to being scientific rather than other things. What is it measuring itself against?

train wrote on March 18, 2021 at 5:31 PM

Well for one I do think other philosophies are scientific in nature, particularly those that incorporate some understanding of uncertainty. Your best bet is to contrast dialectical materialism with positivism though.

I should also say dialectical materialism is unique in how it uses dialectics to frame and understand continuous processes. However it's still very much a materialist philosophy and so it's not unique in many other respects. That includes how it contrasts with idealism.