[Xmca-l] Re: Fate, Luck and Chance

[Andy Blunden]

It's all in
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri13.htm
But Ilyenkov wrote a whole book on this question:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/index.htm


Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


jbmartin wrote:
> Andy... please... Reference of LSV
>
> Thanks
>
> João Martins
>
>
> Enviado do meu smartphone Samsung Galaxy.
>
>
> -------- Mensagem original --------
> De : Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> Data:24/11/2014 22:35 (GMT-03:00)
> Para: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Cc:
> Assunto: [Xmca-l] Re: Fate, Luck and Chance
>
> As Vygotsky puts it this way:
>
>     "But the problem of appearance is an apparent problem. After all, in
>     science we want to learn about the /*real*/ and not
>     the /*apparent*/ cause of appearance. This means that we must take
>     the phenomena as they exist independently from me. The appearance
>     itself is an illusion. This is the difference between the viewpoints
>     of physics and psychology. It /*does not exist in reality*/, but
>     results from two non-coincidences of two really existing processes."
>
> and notes that:
>
>     "Lenin says that this is, essentially, the principle of /*realism*/,
>     but that he avoids this word, because it has been captured by
>     inconsistent thinkers."
>
> which is why I put "real" in inverted commas. It is an imprecise term.
> But "to exist" means precisely to be outside of and independent of my
> consciousness.
>
> Andy
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> Martin John Packer wrote:
> > I think, Andy, that you are being unnecessarily paradoxical - in 
> addition to admitting to being odd and ambiguous! - in saying that 
> consciousness is real (in quotation marks no less) but that it does 
> not exist. LSV's point was precisely that consciousness *passes* 
> Lenin's test, the test that defines "what exists objectively" (quoting 
> LSV).
> >
> > I'm curious: would anyone on this list think that it is weird to 
> suggest that life is a material process? That life is matter in 
> motion? A couple of hundred years ago this was unthinkable: it was 
> considered obvious that matter was not sufficient for life; life was 
> 'given' to matter in the form of a soul, or spirits, or an *elan 
> vital*. Yet today we are completely comfortable with the notion that 
> life, in all its complexity, is at its base a process in which organic 
> molecules are interacting in complex cycles.  Or am I being paradoxical?
> >
> > Martin
> >
> > On Nov 24, 2014, at 6:46 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> >  
> >> Martin, to say "consciousness is an illusion" does not exclude the 
> fact that thanks to life-experience it is a useful illusion; 
> "completely an illusion" is not what anyone said and nor is that a 
> useful expression. For example, when I am driving I use my rear-vision 
> mirror, which presents me with an illusion - the car appears to exist 
> ahead of me in inverted form - but thanks, as you say to the fact that 
> I am "educated" with respect to mirrors, I can nonetheless steer my 
> car successfully with the use of a mirror.
> >>
> >> But of course it is not an illusion *that I have consciousness*. 
> Using this word "illusion" (Vygotsky says "appearance" and "phantom" 
> which are OK as well) is useful, not to argue against long-dead 
> mediaeval French philosopher-scientists, but to deal with present-day 
> neuroscientists who also tell us that "consciousness is an illusion" - 
> that is, that they have looked into the brain and taken images of 
> neuronal activity and sliced up the brains of animals and have not 
> found consciousness. So to say that "consciousness is an illusion" is 
> a very odd and ambiguous thing to say. It *is* an illusion, but I am 
> not deceived in believing that I have consciousness. It is only thanks 
> to this fine distinction used by Feuerbach, Marx, Lenin, Vygotsky and 
> Ilyenkov that we can make sense of the claim by neuroscientists that 
> "consciousness is an illusion" even though it is "real". It does not 
> exist (since to exist means precisely that it exists outside of my 
> consciousness) but it is real
> a
> >>    
> >  nd an essential component of human activity.
> >  
> >> The fact that we learn about consciousness "by making inferences" 
> is not at all something unique to consciousness. As Vygotsky points 
> out 
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1925/reflexology.htm 
> the historian, the geologist and the nuclear physicist and in fact 
> *all* the sciences also study the object of their science "by making 
> inferences" - not because history or geology or subatomic reactions 
> are "personal."
> >>
> >> Andy
> >> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >>
> >>
> >> Martin John Packer wrote:
> >>    
> >>> Well I think we are generally in agreement, Andy. However, there 
> are some points of difference that it might be worth exploring.
> >>>
> >>> First, from the fact that consciousness is fallible it does not 
> follow that consciousness is completely an illusion.  If that were the 
> case, how could one come to judge its fallibility? How can you state 
> with certainty that "My consciousness is an illusion"? No, 
> consciousness is incomplete, and partial, but it can also be educated. 
> Importantly, consciousness can come to know itself. And since I know 
> the world not only from what I experience directly, in the 
> first-person manner, but also from what others tell me and from what I 
> read, I can become aware of the limitations of my own consciousness in 
> this manner. (Consciousness is both natural and social, as I mentioned 
> in a previous message.) I know, these are also given to me in my 
> consciousness, but I don't see that any insuperable problems arise as 
> a consequence. Unlike Descartes, I don't believe that an evil demon is 
> bent on deceiving me. Consciousness is our openness to the world, as 
> Merleau-Ponty put it.
> >>>
> >>> Second, since consciousness is personal, I have to make inferences 
> about another person's consciousness. (With the exception of a few 
> occasions of experiencing things together with another - like dancing 
> salsa!) However, I also have to infer that, and rely on the fact that, 
> my own consciousness is a material process. My own consciousness can 
> be, and often is, outside my consciousness - this is, in a nutshell, 
> LSV's argument in Crisis. In just the same way I come to learn that my 
> digestion is a material process. I come to learn that my life itself 
> is a material process - there is no 'life spirit' that animates me. 
> Both life and digestion are, like consciousness, first-person 
> processes, and nonetheless material processes. Perhaps I am helped in 
> coming to these conclusions by observing other people, whose processes 
> of living and digesting I cannot experience directly.
> >>> Where is the paradox here? It seems to me the paradox lies with 
> those who say that experience is all in the mind, and yet at the same 
> time that we can know the world. That was Descartes' paradox, and it 
> remains the paradox, unresolved, of most of contemporary social science.
> >>>
> >>> Martin
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Nov 24, 2014, at 5:48 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> 
> >>>      
> >>>> I'll try to explain it my way, why "consciousness is a material 
> process" despite the fact that "matter is what exists outside of and 
> independently of consciousness" as you say, Martin.
> >>>>
> >>>> In 
> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#A
> >>>> Marx said "My relation to my environment is my consciousness" 
> although he crossed it out in the manuscript. But why did he suddenly 
> introduce the first person pronoun here?
> >>>>
> >>>> Everything I know of the world, in any sense of the word "know," 
> I know through my consciousness, but my consciousness is an illusion, 
> a phantom, and fundamentally different from that which is outside my 
> consciousness and reflected in it. Nonetheless it is what I use to 
> determine my actions in the world. I do not act exclusively through 
> conditional reflexes like a simple organism as an immediate material 
> process, but on the contrary, mediate my relation to my environment 
> through my consciousness, which I learn, is not 100% reliable, because 
> it is just an illusion, but is reliable enough and in any case is more 
> effective thanks to socially constructed mediation, than nervous reflexes.
> >>>>
> >>>> But *your* consciousness is also outside my consciousness, and 
> therefore I must regard it as material, and if I am to get to know it, 
> I rely on the fact that it is a material process, arising from your 
> behaviour and your physiology, and although *like anything* I cannot 
> have unmediated access to it, I can learn about it only through 
> material interactions, the same way in that sense that I learnt your 
> name and age.
> >>>>
> >>>> But you are of course in the same position. A world of phantoms 
> and illusions is all you have to guide your activity in the material 
> world, too. Vygotsky says that the confusion arises "When one mixes up 
> the epistemological problem with the ontological one". That is the 
> relation between consciousness (an illusion) and matter 
> (interconnected with all other processes in the universe) is actually 
> an epistemological one, that is, of the sources and validity of 
> knowledge, and not an ontological one, that is a claim that 
> consciousness is something existing side by side so to speak with 
> matter. So it is important that while I recognise that for any person 
> the distinction for them between consciousness and matter is 
> absolutely fundamental, I must regard their consciousness as a 
> material process, explainable from their physiology and behaviour. 
> This is not a trivial point. Consciousness is not neuronal activity. 
> Neuronal activity is the material basis, alongside behaviour, of con
> s
> >>>>        
> >  ci
> >  
> >>>>   
> >>>>        
> >>> ousness, but the world is not reflected for me in neuronal 
> activity, which I know about only thanks to watching science programs 
> on TV. Consciousness is given to me immediately, however, and I am not 
> aware of any neuronal activity there.
> >>> 
> >>>      
> >>>> So yes, what you said was right, "consciousness is a material 
> process," but I think it unhelpful to leave it as a paradox like that. 
> And I admit it is unhelpful to be rude. Perhaps we both ought to 
> exercise more restraint?
> >>>>
> >>>> Andy
> >>>>
> >>>> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Martin John Packer wrote:
> >>>>   
> >>>>        
> >>>>> Don't get your point, Huw. A rectangle is generally defined as 
> having unequal sides, in contrast to a square, so that's not helping 
> me. Obviously (I would think) I am not saying that consciousness is 
> the entirely of matter. Perhaps you can help me in my struggle...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Martin
> >>>>>
> >>>>>      
> >>>>>          
> >>>>>>> Andy,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I don't see that being rude advances the conversation.  When I 
> assert a
> >>>>>>> position here in this discussion I try to base it on an 
> argument, and/or in
> >>>>>>> sources that we all have access to. I'm certainly not trying 
> to cloud any
> >>>>>>> issues, and I don't think that arguing from authority (one's 
> own assumed)
> >>>>>>> dispels the clouds.  I guess I simply don't have access to "a 
> whole
> >>>>>>> tradition of science."  :(
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> To respond to your other message, yes, I am arguing that 
> consciousness
> >>>>>>> (and thinking) are material processes. They are consequences 
> of (certain
> >>>>>>> kinds of) matter in (certain kinds of) motion.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Against whom am I arguing? I am arguing against all those 
> psychologists
> >>>>>>> who argue that consciousness (and thinking) are mental processes -
> >>>>>>> processes which they believe take place in some mysterious 
> realm called
> >>>>>>> "the mind" that is populated by "mental representations" of 
> the "world
> >>>>>>> outside." I deal with people who make this argument on a daily 
> basis. They
> >>>>>>> believe that the proper object of investigation for psychology 
> is "mind,"
> >>>>>>> and so they have no interest in setting, or culture, or practical
> >>>>>>> activities.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Yes, Haydi's message is the portion of Crisis that I pointed 
> to in my last
> >>>>>>> message.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Martin
> >>>>>>>              
> >>>>>>>              
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 
> >>>      
> >>
> >>    
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >  
>
>
>