[Xmca-l] Re: Отв: Re: Ilyenkov, Marx, & Spinoza

[Andy Blunden]

Nice point, David.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 7/08/2017 9:42 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Sasha:
>
> In the second chapter of "Pedology of the Adolescent" on methodology,
> Vygotsky introduces the idea that pedology is a "science of a natural
> whole", like geography, astronomy, ecology, and unlike biology, chemistry,
> physics and mathematics. Every discipline is defined by the object of
> study, but in some cases that object of study is itself the product of
> analysis into elements, while in other cases the object of study is a
> 'Gestalt" that appears as such in nature. In order to get the idealized
> object of study of biology (in order to see that bacteria, fungi,
> invertebrates and vertebrates are equally "living things") we require
> analysis into something that is not a unit but an element (e.g. metabolism,
> reproduction, homeostasis, equilibrium). The same thing is even more true
> of chemical molecules and the idealized billiard balls that physicists play
> with, and the object of study in mathematics is wholly imaginary, like
> religion and literature. But in order to get the concrete object of study
> of geography, astronomy, ecology and pedology, all we really have to do is
> to pay attention and observe: the object of study is given as such by
> nature.
>
> Vygotsky then says that people try to deny these sciences of natural wholes
> scientific status, because they supposedly do not have methods that are
> proper to themselves. The geographer, for example, has to consult a
> botanist and a zoologist and even an anthropologist to compile a geography
> of Australia. The astronomer depends on the physicist, the chemist, and the
> mathematician. Ecologists are notoriously "eclectic" in this sense (it
> should be obvious by now that I am not using "eclectic" in a perjorative
> sense, to mean a cardinal sin), and as Vygotsky puts it, the pedologist has
> no ways other than anatomy and physiology to describe the physical child,
> no ways other than those of the psychologist to describe her or his
> behaviour, and no ways other than those of the linguist to describe his or
> her speech. It is easy to conclude from this that pedology is
> methodologically eclectic, or--if we want to put a positive spin on
> it--"interdisciplinary" (like applied linguistics, which feeds omnivorously
> on other disciplines) or "transdisciplinary" (like my own tradition of
> systemic-functional linguistics, which tries to look at everything in terms
> of meaning, much as the nineteenth century scientists looked at everything
> in terms of time and history, and the eighteenth century "philosophes"
> thought about everything in terms of taxonomy and quantification)
>
> But Vygotsky doesn't say this. What he says is that the "primary" methods
> taken from other disciplines like anatomy/physiology, psychology, and
> linguistics are subordinated to very different goals than the ones they
> have on their home ground. The physiologist looks at physiology across the
> ages, not simply at the physiology of the seven-year-old child. But the
> pedologist, instead of looking at other ages, looks at the psychology of
> the seven-year-old and the language of the seven-year-old, and tries to
> explain them. To rise to explanation, the pedologist requires "secondary"
> methods, and these are quite specific to the science of the natural whole:
> the genetic method, the comparative method, and the synthetic method. For
> Vygotsky, the natural whole is not even the child, but the child in
> development--i.e. the specific age period. The age periods are like pages
> of a flip-book, or frames of a motion picture: put together, they allow us
> to see the dynamism of development. But of course putting each frame
> together, and putting the frames together into a moving image, require what
> (Basil) Bernstein called "weakly classified" forms of knowledge.
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> PS: Actually, the English is brilliant. Any poet can give you the stoniness
> of the stone in English. But only a non-native can give us the Englishness
> of the English.
>
> dk
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 6:09 AM, Alexander Surmava <
> alexander.surmava@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear David, I didn’t evenmention Marx as antinaturalist. This is the exact
>> citation from my article:“They (evidently – LSV & EVI – A.S.) are also at
>> one in recognizing thesocial, cultural-historical nature of the human
>> psyche, in their antinaturalism.”
>>
>> I agree with you that Marx andSpinoza can be hardly defined as
>> antinaturalists.
>>
>> In case of Vygotsky andIlyenkov everything is slightly more complicated.
>> Their common antipathy tonaïve attempts to deduce human psyche directly
>> from corporeal basis, from genesand from neurophysiology is something
>> evident. They both insisted that humanpsychology ascends to culture and
>> history. And this idea makes their positionssimilar to “antinaturalism”.
>> Surely, it doesn’t mean that they reject Nature asthe substance in
>> Spinozian meaning.
>>
>> Nevertheless, there is aproblem here. And this problem is a problem of
>> transition from Nature toCulture and in this point Vygotsky’s superficial
>> idea of conventional signs andcoin tossing game looks evidently less
>> serious than Ilyenkov’s materialimplements, which are initial and universal
>> form of ideality.
>>
>> Anyway, I’m slightly afraidthat there is a problem with mutual
>> understanding in our communication, becauseinitially we are following too
>> unlike philosophic traditions…
>>
>> Thus I don’t know what youmean describing LSV’s methodology as “eclectic”?
>> You mean that he was a thinkerfree from ideological blinders, or you mean
>> that his theoretic culture wasregrettably low?
>>
>> As for me, I definitely shareposition of Hegel, Marx and Ilyenkov, and
>> estimate eclecticism as the greatestsin for a researcher. Moreover, I am
>> sure that intentionally Vygotsky probablyshared the similar position.
>>
>> Something else entirely is thefact that involuntarily Vygotsky himself
>> sank into eclecticism to a wideextent. In fact, the trap of eclecticism is
>> a usual risk for a researcher inthe process of building a theory. In the
>> same time eclecticism accuratelyindicates that a researcher got lost in
>> contradictions.
>>
>> Vygotsky’s interpretation offreedom that is again something what is
>> necessary to discuss.
>>
>> There is two oppositetraditions in interpretation of this concept in the
>> history of philosophy. Thefirst – Cartesian, the second – Spinozian.
>> (evidently Marxism shares the secondone.)
>>
>> The Cartesian one implies thata person has a magic ability to act contrary
>> to natural law. Surely, Spinoza asa materialist rejects such a possibility
>> as something fantastic. But it doesn’tmean that Spinoza is a fan of
>> fatalism.
>>
>> According to Spinoza freedomis not a possibility to dream about fairy
>> tales of totally unfettered freedom.From Spinoza’s point of view to be
>> free, to realize your freedom means torealize your aims. Meanwhile one can
>> realize his/her aims only in he/she willact strictly in accordance with
>> natural necessity.  Only in this case one will be free and willgain his
>> aim. Otherwise, he/she will successfully break their neck. As for LSVhe was
>> thoughtful enough to set up the problem of freedom as the centralproblem of
>> psychology, but being not capable to overcome the Stimulus-Reactiveapproach
>> he had no chance to solve the problem of freedom. Problem of freedomis
>> something absolutely unsolvable for S->R automaton, and it has clear
>> decisionfor acting subject. Anyhow, coin tossing in best case can help to
>> solve senselessproblem of Buridan donkey and can not help a human person in
>> substantial choice.
>>
>> Probablymy position in this crucial question can be clarified by my PPT
>> presentation “EvaldIlyenkov vs Leo Vygotsky”
>> https://alexandersurmava.academia.edu
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Sasha
>>
>>      пятница, 4 августа 2017 3:23 David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>> писал(а):
>>
>>
>>   I think that Sasha, on p. 37 of "Ilyenkov and the Revolution in
>> Psychology", slips one by us. He quotes Davydov, who says that Ilyenkov
>> provided the logical-philosophical basis for cultural-historical theory and
>> for Vygotsky's theory of instruction based on development. He then says
>> that Davydov is wrong on both counts: neither Ilyenkov nor Vygotsky would
>> have considered cultural-historical theory truly scientific, and Ilyenkov
>> hardly ever mentions Vygotsky. Before we can ask what Sasha means by the
>> first, he is off trying to explain why Ilyenkov doesn't mention Vygotsky
>> much. There are lots of reasons not to mention Vygotsky when you are doing
>> philosophy. I am more interested in Sasha's notion that Vygotsky would not
>> have considered Davydov's version of the theory scientific.
>>
>> Sasha calls Ilyenkov, Vygotsky, and Marx anti-naturalists. He says it is
>> because of their recognition of the social, cultural-historical nature of
>> the human psyche. But in all three cases, that social, cultural-historical
>> "nature" really is natural at its base: it depends on a "thinking body" in
>> the case of Ilyenkov (something Descartes would not have rejected!), it
>> depends on the domestication of the human body and mind in the case of
>> Vygotsky, and of course it depends on the transformation of use values into
>> exchange values in Marx. So I am not at all sure in what sense they are
>> "anti-naturalist". If we take the Spinozan view, to be anti-naturalist is
>> to be anti-substance, anti-thought, anti-extension. I don't think that
>> applies to Marx, Vygotsky, or even Ilyenkov.
>>
>> I'm reading the Pedology of the Adolescent, and I find Vygotsky to be much
>> more methodologically eclectic than Sasha suggests with phrases like "sole
>> correct scientific method" and "whose theoretical analysis alone" (38). In
>> my reading, Vygotsky doesn't think of methods like that: methods are only
>> appropriate or inappropriate to problems of study. When you are studying
>> behaviour, psychology may be the appropriate method, but when you are
>> studying anatomy, try physiology. It is clear that Vygotsky has a
>> preference for his own "functional method of dual stimulation", but that is
>> precisely because it is appropriate to the goal of diagnosing the "next",
>> or proximal, zone of development. I think that even the psychotherapist's
>> couch, which as Sasha points out was artificially constructed out of
>> Freud's overwheening self-interest, had a place in Vygotsky's "science of a
>> natural whole": the only method he really does reject with disgust is the
>> practice of imagining what it is like to be a child and then pretending
>> that you have real scientific data. In the HDHMF, Vygotsky has a good deal
>> to say about Wundt and Titchener, not all of it critical (Chapters 3,4,5,
>> where "Titchener's Piano" is the empirical basis of his experiments with
>> choice). In contrast, Vygotsky has nothing to say about Socrates and Plato.
>>
>> I think that, rather like the "aphorisms" Sasha cites on 39, Sasha's paper
>> just touches on the problem that has always puzzled me: how Vygotsky
>> reconciles the explanans of Spinoza with his chosen explanandum of choice
>> and free will. It seems to me that they are reconcilable, but only through
>> the path that Sasha refuses to take, that is, the path of the semiotic,
>> semantic, systemic structure of the "thinking body". Vygotsky says that he
>> wants to know what a real human does in the Buridan situation, tethered
>> like the donkey between two equidistant and apparently equal piles of hay.
>>
>> Buridan himself would say that such a situation does not exist: piles of
>> hay are never equidistant and never exactly equal, and the universe is
>> really constructed like a chess game, where in any conceivable situation,
>> there is one and only one perfectly rational move, even if it is quite
>> beyond the power of man, beast, or even supercomputer to ever know what it
>> is. That was, I gather, Spinoza's solution as well, except that Spinoza
>> drew the logical conclusion that when you do not know which choice is
>> better, you must necessarily defer until you do. In the meantime, the
>> proliferation of choice, like the proliferation of method, is a positive
>> good, the closest we miserable slaves can get to freedom.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 5:23 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>>
>>> I did my best to follow the thread on Ilyenkov, Marx, & Spinoza and I
>>> probably did not read it as closely as I could have, nor did I read the
>>> originating article, that is, the one Mike attached as the knot to this
>>> thread, but I shall.
>>>
>>>
>>> Of course being a big fan of Spinoza I had to eye-wig in and see what was
>>> to be seen on this here persistent thread.
>>>
>>>
>>> I would like to make a contribution as a point in contrast, to what is
>>> becoming more prominent in my understanding of the non-dual view of the
>>> apparent world as seen through Vedanta.
>>>
>>>
>>> First, and I'm sure I shall be corrected, please note, I see the Western
>>> viewpoint (as springing from Descartes) as depicted as a linear rational
>>> (and historical) view whereby thought and material are different
>> entities.
>>> As I understand, according to Descartes, material comes into being
>> through
>>> thought. I think first before I am first. Is this correct?
>>>
>>>
>>> Spinoza, as I understand, saw that there was a historical aspect that
>>> Descartes missed that we actually transform material and it transforms
>> our
>>> thought and so on, as they weaves through one another. And so on through
>>> time. But how could this happen that if material and thought were of
>>> different substances?  (Am I getting this right?)
>>>
>>>
>>> But he also saw that we are not separate from nature, and are indeed
>>> helplessly subject to it, we are nature but nature isn't us. Yet this
>>> nature could not be separate from God, and thus with some lens-grinding
>>> Spinoza came to see that not only is nature not separate from God, and
>> that
>>> nature is not separate from us, but God is also not separate from us
>>> because we are of the same "substance" in nature, that we are indeed, as
>> if
>>> the same "material."
>>>
>>>
>>> But then what of free will? Are we merely reacting like mechanical
>> robots,
>>> or chemical reactions? or is there choice?
>>>
>>>
>>> >From my Vedanta studies there are similarities to the monist Sponiza
>>> worldview of nature and God being one substance extending through time,
>>> transforming through laws of physics and so forth. I'm not clear how
>>> Spinoza saw the mind, and it seems that psychology, not having been
>>> named/formed/created historically at that point in time, he had to have a
>>> different word for that, which seems to have been "spirit," methinks.
>>>
>>>
>>> So we are at odds at the way translations go not only from one language
>> to
>>> another but from one historical moment to another (the way words mind
>>> versus spirit are used). But the actual ontology was perhaps the very
>>> turtle both psychology's notion of mind and Spinoza's notion of spirit
>> were
>>> identically referencing.
>>>
>>>
>>> Just thinking out loud here.
>>>
>>>
>>> Now in Vedanta, the cosmology is such that the mind and the body are
>>> indeed one substance, if there is a substance at all. And that the
>>> perceivable world, is just a beginningless dance of names and forms,
>>> whereby one thing becomes another thing, and its name changes, and so on
>>> through time and space. That there is an order of consequences through
>>> actions and reactions. Understanding the nature of those actions and
>>> reactions helps offer choice to the person, as to what actions one hopes
>> to
>>> perform to gain a particular (desired) consequence. And such is the
>>> importance of karma, to consider one's actions and the consequences that
>>> will come of them. It's just science, but a science incorporating the
>>> subtle forms not just the gross.
>>>
>>>
>>> If all that is here is non-dual, as the ancients claimed, then it would
>>> have to mean that mind and body are one substance, it seems that quantum
>>> physics does show that things are not as solid as we might think, and
>> that
>>> the mind is not as unaffected by gross material as we once thought.
>>>
>>>
>>> So if I am understanding the Vedic view of the mind and body being
>>> material, that is, of one substance, this substance must exist in name
>> and
>>> form across a spectrum, whereby on the one side we have all that is
>> subtle,
>>> and on the other we have all that is gross, again in terms of name and
>> form
>>> of said substance.
>>>
>>>
>>> A metaphor for this concept could be a consideration of the different
>>> forms of water. Solid at one temperature, liquid in another, and steam in
>>> yet another. If time and space are relative (i.e., Einstein), then let's
>>> pretend that they are infinitely stable if seen at an instant in time
>> (like
>>> now, the present moment). Then it does seem that ice is a different
>>> "material" than water, and also steam. But in reality their substance is
>>> identical: H2O.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is a gross simplification (pun intended), because we have one
>>> substance in three forms, but never at the same time, though in the same
>>> place. The change is caused by temperature, and we can only see the
>> change
>>> of form witnessed through time. But also the name changes too. So there
>> is
>>> as if an appearance of a linear change.
>>>
>>>
>>> W1(ice) must pass through W2(water) to become W3(steam) and back again,
>>> through time (with the help of temperature), but W occupies the same
>> space,
>>> though the volume might change a little.
>>>
>>>
>>> OK, thanks for staying with me this far.
>>>
>>>
>>> As I'm understanding it, there is in the Vedic worldview three gunas
>>> (branches, or better "properties") of which the perceivable world
>> consists,
>>> these being sattwa (energy, purity, light), rajas (action, movement,
>> heat),
>>> and tamas (form, heaviness, inertia, darkness). And every *thing* that
>> can
>>> be a *thing* is a unique combination of sattwa, rajas, and tamas. But
>> this
>>> is relative. For example a rock as more tamas than a river, which has
>> more
>>> rajas than a rock, but the sunlight shining on the rock and the river
>> have
>>> more sattwa than either of them. In otherwords, it's all relative. There
>> is
>>> tamas and sattva in the river, and rajas and tamas in the sunlight, and
>>> sattwa and rajas even in the rock, but those are in smaller ratios than
>> the
>>> other dominant properties therein.
>>>
>>>
>>> If we consider Einstein's theory of relativity, E = mc2, then this might
>>> also be seen sattwa = tamas multiplied by the speed of rajas. Put another
>>> way, that tamas in its gross form is transformed into sattwa its subtle
>>> form through rajas, its movement(activity) through time and space.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is from the aspect of the material world, as we (humans) can
>>> perceive, through physical laws. That there is only one substance here,
>> by
>>> metaphor like water, is what Spinoza (I think) was attempting to "see,"
>>> through a lens of inquiry and curiosity. How might this inquiry transcend
>>> the dualism as presented by Descartes?
>>>
>>>
>>> But I would like to prpose right about now that the dualism as presented
>>> by Descartes was "historically invented" as a means to bypass
>> intellectual
>>> persecution by the Church fathers (i.e. Galileo). It is not apparent to
>> me
>>> that Descartes even believed everything that he wrote, but that it was a
>>> story crafted to gift the material world for experimentation (with
>>> impunity) to the scientists (so we could really figure out what was going
>>> on here in the material world) and to leave the empty carton of the
>>> "spiritual" (i.e. the mind) to the Church, which was just like selling
>> the
>>> Church a bridge that leads to swampland, really. And it worked!
>>>
>>>
>>> I digress. Because the mind question really is a material question, but
>> of
>>> a subtle nature, and it would have to be that if we assert non-duality,
>>> which I am, but you do not have to, as that is your choice! :)
>>>
>>>
>>> It ends up that much of cognitive science is showing mind as a material
>>> question to be the case, for example by its examination of distributed
>>> cognition, embodied thinking, and so on, and also in cultural psychology
>>> (like wet water) the way culture's soup creates so much of our human
>>> experience. It is all relative, which means, to be relative it must be
>> one
>>> unified substance. Mind is created through activity and culture, which
>> also
>>> creates activity and culture, as woven threads extending out through time
>>> and space in all directions.
>>>
>>>
>>> Substance is a difficult and slippery word, because anything that would
>> be
>>> made of this substance couldn't be perceived by us, as we are products of
>>> that substance.
>>>
>>>
>>> It gets a bit Escher here if we could. You know staircases collapsing
>> upon
>>> one another, or hands drawing themselves, etc. Kind of Mobius strippy.
>>>
>>>
>>> But this creates a reality of turtles all the way down, of infinite
>>> regression. That does not work.
>>>
>>>
>>> Spinoza's insight is that there IS a oneness, and that this can be
>>> experienced ("seen"), but only through spiritual pursuit of
>>> self-examination and inquiry, which was a kind of purification to him. In
>>> this sense there is free will, because one is choosing to do this self
>>> reflection, but on the other hand there is a necessary result that comes
>> of
>>> seeing what is already there, nothing is "produced". Hence the beauty of
>>> him being a lensgrinder, is a marvelous metaphor in so many aspects.
>>>
>>>
>>> My intuition is that LSV was attempting to balance Spinoza's substance
>>> with Marx's materialism as a way to bring the two together, with the goal
>>> of illustrating that there was a predictable "physics" to the way mind
>>> develops as a necessary consequence of culture moving through history
>> (i.e.
>>> meaning), and vice versa (culture and history being created in turn by
>>> mind).
>>>
>>>
>>> This is not a linear summation or consequence, but an intermingling of
>>> three properties (in relation to one another), light, mass, and energy or
>>> as the ancients called them sattwa, rajas, and tamas, and these
>> properties
>>> are always in movement and in consequence to one another, but from the
>>> aspect of the perceivable world.
>>>
>>>
>>> >From the aspect of itself, it is static, nothing is changing, and it
>>> exists outside of time and space. This is what Spinoza would have called
>>> God (or nature), or in Vedanta, "Brahman," which cannot be objectified,
>> but
>>> it can be known because it is the only "thing" here, upon which all
>> things
>>> depend for existence. Like the pot is dependent upon the clay for its
>>> existence.
>>>
>>>
>>> This metaphor useful here for how the clay still "sees itself" as clay
>>> even if it is in the shape of the pot, or a plate, but the pot can only
>>> "see itself" as a pot if the form is of a particularly named shape, but
>> is
>>> no longer one if the pot-shape is shattered, though the clay remains
>>> regardless of the presence of the pot-shape or shard-shape. It is still
>>> clay. Relative to the pot, the clay is not changing, outside time and
>>> space, relative to the pot, which is changing inside time and space.
>>>
>>>
>>> When a pot can only see its own potness, then it appears there can be no
>>> unifying principle inside time and space. It is a duality. But if pot can
>>> see that its true unifying substance is clay, then its clayness stands
>>> outside of time and space, and it continues to exist as long as clay is
>>> there, just in transformation from the aspect inside time and space, but
>>> eternal from the aspect outside of time and space.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for reading, and thanks also for your commentary. All being food
>> in
>>> my pot. :)
>>>
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>>
>>> Annalisa
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>