Doctrine of Principle Coordination

A fallacy concept used by the German advocate of empirio-criticism Avenarius (Machist) to disguise the essence of his subjective idealism; it was a philosophical proposition which emphasized the dependence and inseparability between self and non-self, and between self and the surrounding.

Avenarius expounded his theory of principle-coordination in his work The Human Concept of the World and Remarks on the Concept of Object of Psychology. In his theory, “self” is a “central term” of coordination, and “environment” is an “opposite term” of coordination. “Self” and “environment” here refers to subject and object, consciousness and the outer world, spirit and matter. “Coordination” means “interconnectivity”. Avenarius argued self and the environment are in a relationship of principled coordination, which means the two aspects are interconnected and inseparable from each other. There is no “opposite term” without the “central term”, no “surrounding” without “self”, and no “object” without “subject”.

Although Avenarius’ theory of principle coordination claims that self and environment are interconnected and inseparable from each other, and seems to agree that neither of the two things can exist alone without the other, in fact it advocates that “environment” cannot be separated from “self”, “object” cannot be separated from “subject”, and “matter” cannot be separated from “consciousness” or “spirit”, that is to say, “spirit” is primary while “matter” is secondary. The essence of principle coordination is to deny the existence of an objective world that is independent of human consciousness, and denies the independence of objective reality, which is the basic premise of subjective idealism.

Avenarius claimed that his theory of principle coordination supports naive realism (or spontaneous materialism), transcends the partisan dispute between materialism and idealism, overcomes the bilateral opposition between materialism and idealism, consequently it is the so-called “latest philosophy”. Lenin went straight to the point in his Materialism and Empirio-criticism that the doctrine of principle coordination is drawn from Fichtean works; it is nothing genuine, but falls back on the time-worn argument of subjective idealism, and merely uses sophistry to disguise the subjective idealist essence of empirio-criticism.