Lecture 12. Dialectics as a doctrine of the universal connection

1. Dialectics as the concept of universal connection.

2. Categories as objective and ideal forms of identity of being and thinking.

3. Law as a general and essential relation.

 

Nothing in the world stands by itself. Every object is a link in an endless chain and is thus connected with all the other links. And this chain of the universe has never been broken; it unites all objects and processes in a single whole and thus has a universal character. We cannot move so much as our little finger without "disturbing" the whole universe. The life of the universe, its history lies in an infinite web of connections.

Interaction is a process by which various objects influence each other, their mutual conditioning or transmutation and also their generation of one another. Interaction is a kind of immediate or mediate, external or internal relationship or connection. The properties of an object may manifest themselves and be cognised only through its interconnection with other objects.

Development. Any type of connection or interaction must take a certain direction. Nothing in the world is final and complete. Everything is on the way to somewhere else. Development is a definitely oriented, irreversible change of the object, from the old to the new, from the simple to the complex, from a lower level to a higher one. Development is irreversible. Nothing passes through one and the same state more than once. Development is a dual process: the old is destroyed and replaced by something new, which establishes itself in life not simply by freely evolving its own potential but in conflict with the old.

Dialectics and metaphysics. Dialectics is a theory of the most general connections of the universe and its cognition and also the method of thinking based on this theory. Anyone who wants to find a rational orientation in the world and change the world must have knowledge of the dialectics of life and thought.

Dialectics arose and develops historically in a struggle against the metaphysical method, which is characteristically one-sided and abstract and inclined to absolutise certain elements within the whole. Metaphysical views have taken various historical forms. While Heraclitus stressed one aspect of existence-the changeability of things, which the Sophists extended to complete relativism, the Eleatic philosophers in their criticism of the Heraclitean principle of flux, concentrated on another aspect, on the stability of existence and went to another extreme in supposing that everything was changeless. Thus, some philosophers dissolved the world in a fiery flux while others crystallised it into immovable rock.

In modern times metaphysics has taken the form of an absolutising of the analysis and classification techniques in the cognition of nature. Because they are constantly repeated in scientific research, the techniques of analysis, experimental isolation and classification have gradually imparted to scientific thinking certain general ideas suggesting that in nature's "workshop" objects exist in isolation, as it were, apart from one another. As philosophy and the specialised sciences have developed the focus of the struggle between dialectics and metaphysics has shifted from attempts to explain the connection of things to interpretation of the principle of development. Here metaphysical thought emerged at first in the form of simple evolutionism, and then in various concepts of "creative evolution"..

Categories. In philosophy, categories are extremely general, fundamental concepts reflecting the most essential, law-governed connections and relationships of reality. Categories are the forms and stable organising principles of the thought process and, as such, they reproduce the properties and relations of existence in global and most concentrated form. Categories are the result of generalisation, of the intellectual synthesis of the achievements of science and socio-historical practice and are, therefore, the key points of cognition, the moments when thought grasps the essence of things. This is the starting-point for the analysis of the diversity (individual and particular, part and whole, form and content, etc.).

The system and its elements. A system is an internally organised whole where elements are so intimately connected that they operate as one in relation to external conditions and other systems. An element may be defined as the minimal unit performing a definite function in the whole. Systems may be either simple or complex. A complex system is one whose elements may also be regarded as systems or subsystems. All things, properties and relations that strike us as something independent are essentially parts of some system, which in its turn is part of an even bigger system, and so on ad infinitum. For example, the whole of world civilisation is no more than a large and extremely complex self-developing system, which comprises other systems of varying degrees of complexity.

The concept of structure. The aim of scientific cognition is to discover law-governed relations between the elements forming a given system. In the process of this research we identify the structures peculiar to that system. When studying the content of an object, we enumerate its elements such as, for example, the parts of a certain organism. But we do not stop at that, we try to understand how these parts are coordinated and what is made up as a result, thus arriving at the structure of the object. Structure is the type of connection between the elements of a whole. It has its own internal dialectic. Wholeness must be composed in a certain way, its parts are always related to the whole. It is not simply a whole but a whole with internal divisions. Structure is a composite whole, or an internally organised content.

Structure and function. The life of a structure manifests itself in its function, they condition each other. The structures of the organs of the body, for instance, are connected with their functions. Any breakdown in structure, any deformation of an organ leads to a distortion of the function. In the development of organisms changes begin with the reorganisation of an organ's function under the influence of changing conditions of life, while its structure may survive for a time without any substantial modification. However, change of activity sooner or later leads to a change in structure. Functional disturbances in organs precede their morphological distortions. The contradiction between the organism's new mode of life and its structure is resolved by a modification in the latter.

Whole and part. We call something a whole that embraces all its parts in such a way as to create a unity. The category of part expresses the object not in itself but as something in relation to what it is a part of, to that in which it realises its potentials and prospects. For example, an organ is part of an organism taken as a whole. Consequently, the categories of whole and part express a relationship between objects in which one object, being a complex and integral whole, is a unity of other objects which form its parts. A part is subject to the influence of the whole, which is present, as it were, in all its parts. Every part feels the influence of the whole, which seems to permeate the parts and exist in them.

Content and form. We have defined content as the identity of the components of the whole with the whole itself. Now let us consider form. The category of form is used in the sense of external appearance, that is to say, the boundaries of the given content, its outward posture, in the sense of structure, and also in the sense of the mode of expression and existence of the content. Form is often defined in such a way that it coincides with structure, although these are different concepts.

The concept of essence and phenomenon. Essence is closely related to content. In fact, it is content, but not the whole content, only the main, basic part of it. Essence is related to all categories, to quality, for example. But quality does not exhaust essence. It expresses only one of its aspects. To reveal essence one must discover measure or proportion, the unity of quality and quantity. The path to essence lies through the categories of cause and law. Essence is an integral category, which embraces structure, part and whole, individual, particular and general, content and quality, proportion, contradiction, causality and law; it may also be regarded as an interweaving of the laws of the existence and functioning of an object. As the fundamental basis of the existence of an object essence manifests itself fully or partially, in the form of mere appearance-as a phenomenon.

Phenomenon as the external aspect is based on the internal essence. It is that in which the principle has expressed itself. What matters for a phenomenon is the result of the functioning of the principle as essence. The categories of essence and phenomenon characterise the interdependence of processes that take place in reality and the level to which thought has penetrated its object, whether we are still only on the surface or have broken through to the essence. A phenomenon usually expresses only some facet of essence, one of its aspects. For example, many manifestations of the essence of a certain type of malignant tumour may have been well researched, but its essence still remains an ominous secret.

Appearance. A phenomenon may or may not correspond to its essence, and this may happen to varying degrees. Appearance is supported by essence but does not always correspond to it. Appearance is essence in one of its definitions, aspects, or moments. In art, for example, appearance is the result of one or another form of discrepancy between phenomenon and essence, aim and the means, action and result, a discrepancy between what a person is in fact, and what he wishes to appear, or claims to be; essence reveals the comic side in appearance.

The individual, the general and the particular. Things differ from each other and in themselves. We speak of things as being as alike as two drops of water. But look at them through a microscope and those drops turn out to be different. There are no doubles in the world, though its population runs into billions. Every person is unique! Pure identity can exist only in formal terms.

The category of the particular is relative and fluid. In one relation the particular may more or less "approximate" to the general and act and be understood as something general in its connection with its own general nature. The particular "stands" midway between the general and the individual, holding them in its "embrace", as it were, and including them in itself.

Law as a general and essential relation. Everything is committed to a certain framework, like steel in its mould. When we speak of the laws of the universe we have in mind a certain regularity in the coming of events. Law is not an object, nor one of its properties, but a type of relations between objects. It organises the interconnection of the elements of a system. When speaking of a law we mean stable, repetitive, essential, necessary relations.

The discovery of laws is the basic task of science. Scientists constantly seek to establish regularity, "order", stable tendencies in phenomena, that is to say, laws. Man's power over the forces of the universe is proportional to the volume and depth of his knowledge of its laws.

The law-governed and the accidental. Everything that we observe is as it is and could not be otherwise. Accident is thus regarded as a purely subjective concept by which we designate something whose cause is unknown to us. As soon as a person discovers the cause of a phenomenon, it ceases to be accidental. It is true that there are no causeless phenomena in the world. Even accidental phenomena are causally conditioned. But this does not make them necessary. According to the concept of absolute necessity, which excludes chance, the final result of any process in the universe is preordained from the very beginning and must come about with inexorable force. Thus the final point of any process of development exists from the first in reality, like an "embryo" for whose development the process serves only as an external auxiliary factor, a "midwife".

When absolutised, necessity becomes its opposite: everything is a matter of chance and one must leave everything to chance. The offended vanity of an aggressor, the bad mood of a monarch, the whim of a woman, are sufficient cause for going to war, for throwing millions of people into the slaughter, destroying cities and plunging nations into poverty and grief, spreading disaster and despair for many centuries. We are thus faced with a false alternative. Either the world is ruled only by chance and then there can be no necessity, or else there is no chance and the world is ruled by necessity. In actual fact, both in nature and society, where chance appears to dominate, it is in reality subordinate to certain laws. But not everything that happens does so of necessity. Much occurs by chance. Chance has its share of "right" to existence.

Probability as the measure of realisation of chance. Probability is a degree of possibility, the extent to which a given event may be realised in given conditions and under a given law. It characterises the degree to which a certain possibility is grounded, the measure of its ability to become reality, the degree of its approximation to realisation, the ratio of favourable and unfavourable factors. Probability is not simply the measure of our expectation. It is an objective measure of the possibility of chance becoming reality. Probability tells us how likely an event is to happen, what the objective grounds are for its happening, or whether it may happen at all. More probable means a more justified possibility.

The real and the possible. The process of development is always connected with the passing of the possible into the real. Everything that exists is strictly and continually controlled by the law of the conservation of matter: nothing can come from nothing. The new must have premises in the old. The sources of the future lie both in the past and in the present. The person who exists in reality is preceded by his potential, by that which is given in the embryo. Everything arises from that which exists as a possibility but not as a reality.

Two factors are required for possibility to become reality: the operation of a certain law and the availability of appropriate conditions. People are born with exceptional possibilities in the form of their natural potentials. But these potentials can develop only under certain conditions. Any system contains more possibilities than it can actually realise. Everything that exists in reality is the result of this selection. Whether the result is a happy one is another question. No one can tell whether all this was inevitable. Sometimes we have to regret lost opportunities.

The concept of causality, determinism. All certainty in our relationships with the world rests on acknowledgement of causality. Causality is a genetic connection of phenomena through which one thing (the cause) under certain conditions gives rise to, causes something else (the effect). The essence of causality is the generation and determination of one phenomenon by another. In this respect causality differs from various other kinds of connection, for example, the simple temporal sequence of phenomena, of the regularities of accompanying processes.

Determinism proceeds from recognition of the diversity of causal connections, depending on the character of the regularities operating in a given sphere. Every level of the structural organisation of being has its own specific form of interaction of things, including its specific causal relation ships. Higher forms of causal relationships should never be reduced to lower forms. From a methodological point of view it is essential to take into account the qualitative peculiarities and level of the structural organisation of being.

The dialectical approach is incompatible with mechanistic determinism, which interprets all the diversity of causes only as mechanical interaction, ignoring the unique qualities of the regularities of various forms of the motion of matter. Determinism was given its classical expression by Laplace, who formulated it as follows: if a mind could exist that knew at any given moment about all the forces of nature and the points of application of those forces, there would be nothing of which it was uncertain and both future and past would be revealed to its mental vision.

Mechanistic determinism identifies cause with necessity and accident is completely ruled out. Such determinism leads to fatalism, to faith in an overruling destiny. The development of science has gradually ousted mechanistic determinism from the study of social life, organic nature, and the sphere of physics. It is applicable only in certain engineering calculations involving machines, bridges and other structures. But this kind of determinism cannot explain biological phenomena, mental activity, or the life of society.

Causality and purpose. The idea of teleology arises when a spontaneously operating cause comes to be regarded as a consciously acting cause, and even one that acts in a predetermined direction, that is to say, a goal-oriented cause. This implies that the ultimate cause or aim is the future, which determines the process taking place in the present. The doctrine that the universe as a whole is proceeding according to a certain plan cannot be proved empirically. The existence of an ultimate goal assumes that someone must have put it. Teleology therefore leads to theology.

The unity of opposites and contradiction. The opposite sides, elements and tendencies of a whole whose interaction forms a contradiction are not given in some eternally ready-made form. At the initial stage, while existing only as a possibility, contradiction appears as a unity containing an inessential difference. The next stage is an essential difference within this unity. Though possessing a common basis, certain essential properties or tendencies in the object do not correspond to each other. The essential difference produces opposites, which in negating each other grow into a contradiction. The extreme case of contradiction is an acute conflict. Opposites do not stand around in dismal inactivity; they are not something static, like two wrestlers in a photograph. They interact and are more like a live wrestling match. Every development produces contradictions, resolves them and at the same time gives birth to new ones. Life is an eternal overcoming of obstacles. Everything is interwoven in a network of contradictions.

The concepts of quality and property. The category of quality is an integral definition of the functional unity of an object's essential properties, its internal and external definiteness, its relative stability, its distinction from and resemblance to other objects. Quality is an existing definiteness, as distinct from other definitenesses. It is the expression of the stable unity of an object's elements and structure. Quality is at the same time the limits of an object within which it exists as that object and no other. This means that quality is inseparable from the object. In losing its quality any object ceases to exist as such.

Every property is relative. In relation to wood steel is hard, but it is soft in relation to diamonds. Properties may be universal or specific, essential or inessential, necessary or accidental, internal or external, natural or artificial, and so on. The concept of quality is often used in the sense of an essential property. The higher the level of organisation of matter, the greater the number of qualities it possesses.

Quantity. Every group of homogeneous objects is a set. If it is finite it can be counted, or a dimension if it can be measured. Quantity expresses the external, formal relation of objects, their parts, their properties, their connections, number, dimension, set, element (unit), individual, class, degree of manifestation of this or that property. In order to establish the quantitative aspect of an object we compare its constituent elements-spatial measurements, rate of change, degree of development, using a certain standard as a unit of computation or measurement. The more complex the phenomenon, the more difficult it is to study it by quantitative methods.

Besides discreteness, which serves as the real premise for the concepts of quantity and number, it is important for an understanding of the objective basis of mathematics to realise that discrete things, their properties and relations, are united in sets.

Measure. Measure expresses unity of quality and quantity. For example, the atoms of various chemical elements are only distinguished from each other by the fact that their nuclei contain various quantities of protons. If we change the number of protons in the nucleus, we change that element into another. Every colour has its wavelength and corresponding frequency of oscillation. Every drug has its measure: its good or bad effect depends not only on its quality but also its quantity. One and the same chemical substance in various doses may stimulate growth or inhibit it.

The transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. The path of development in nature, society and consciousness is not a direct line, but a zigzag. Every turn signifies the appearance of new laws that hold good for that particular leg. The limits of these laws are by no means always clearly fixed, sometimes they are conditional. Who can determine the exact limits showing where childhood ends and adolescence begins, where youth begins and when it enters the quality known as "young person"?

The process of radical change of quality, the breakup of the old and the birth of the new is what we mean by a "leap". A leap is a spontaneous discharge of mounting tension, a resolving of contradictions. The passage of a phenomenon from one qualitative state to another is essentially contradictory; it is a unity of destruction and renewal, existence and non-existence, negation and affirmation. A leap includes the moment of cancellation of the previous phenomenon by the new. The transformation of one phenomenon into another is a unity, an interaction of quantitative and qualitative changes, which pass through a number of intermediate phases. Moreover, different phases of change in a given quality signify changes in the degree of the given quality, in other words a quantitative change.

Justified negation as an element of development. Everything obsolescent strives to renew itself and hold its ground in regenerated forms. Between the new and the old there is similarity or generality (otherwise we should have only a multiplicity of unconnected states), differences (with out transition to something else there is no development), coexistence, struggle, mutual negation, and the transmutation of the one into the other and vice versa. The new arises in the womb of the old, achieves a level incompatible with the old, and the latter is then negated. Sooner or later the old must die so that the young can live. The eternal play of life is as ruthless as death, as inevitable as birth. In the positive understanding of existence dialectics also includes understanding of its negation, its inevitable destruction.

Continuity. The concept of development is characterised by continuity, consistency, direction, irreversibility and the preservation of achieved results. Development is not the sum-total of separate successive states. If this were so, processes would have no duration and everything would remain in the present; there would be no continuation of the past in the present, and no development. The new, which negates and replaces the old as a result of self-development, constantly preserves the connection with the old, absorbs from it everything viable and necessary, and discards everything obsolete, everything that holds up progress. The emergent new cannot affirm itself without negation; nor can it do so without continuity. For example, a biological species survives and asserts itself only through the destruction of individuals, which in the process of procreation exhaust their purpose and, since they have nothing higher, go on to their death.

The idea of progress. The fact of progress is clearly and impressively recorded on the scrolls of history. Knowledge acquired by one generation is passed on to the next. In inorganic nature processes of development take place which do not, however, embrace all changes and cannot be reduced to an ascent from the lower to the higher. The processes of development include the formation of elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cosmic systems.

The criterion of progress. A general criterion of progress is the perfecting, differentiation and integration of the elements of a system: elementary particles, atoms, molecules, micro-molecules. The criterion of progress consists in extension of possibilities of further development, its acceleration. As various forms of matter attain higher levels, the velocities of development increase.

The methodological and practical significance of this principle is important for an understanding of the general tendency of development and the connection between past and present that takes shape in the course of it. If the new arises out of the old and absorbs everything positive therein, it means that in both science and practice we must give due credit to the achievements of the past and critically accept its most valuable results.

 

Required reading:

1. Hegel, G. W. F. Science of Logic, tr. W. H. Johnston and L. G. Struthers, 2 vols., 1929; tr. A. V. Miller, 1969; tr. George di Giovanni, 2010

2. Engels, Frederick, (1877) Anti-Dühring, Part I: Philosophy, XIII. Dialectics. Negation of the Negation.

3. Engels, Frederick, (1883) Dialectics of Nature. Marxists.org. Retrieved 2011-11-03.

4. Lenin, V.I., On the Question of Dialectics: A Collection, pp. 7-9. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1980.

5. Berniker, Eli and McNabb, David E. (2006) 'Dialectical Inquiry: A Structured Qualitative Research Method', The Qualitative Report, 11(4): 642-664.

6. Ollman, Bertell. (1993) Dialectical Investigations New York: Routledge.

7. Rowan, John. (1981) 'A Dialectical Paradigm for Research', In: Peter Reason and John Rowan (eds.) Human Inquiry: A Sourcebook of New Paradigm Research (93-112) New York: Routledge.

8. Beyleveld, D., 1991. Dialectical Necessity of Morality: An Analysis and Defense of Alan Gewirth's Argument to the Principle of Generic Consistency, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Optional reading:

1. Kripke, S., 1971, “Identity and Necessity,” in M. Munitz (ed.), Identity and Individuation, New York: New York University Press, 83–94.

2. Lewis, D., 1976, “Survival and Identity,” in A. Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons, Berkeley: University of California Press, 17–40.

3. Chisholm, R., 1973, “Parts as Essential to their Wholes,” Review of Metaphysics, 26: 581–603.

4. Parsons, J., 2004, “Dion, Theon, and DAUP,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 85: 85–91.

5. Paul, L.A., 2002, “Logical Parts,” Noûs, 36: 578–596.

6. Pfeifer, K., 1980, Actions and Other Events: The Unifier-Multiplier Controversy, New York: Peter Lang Publishing.