See comments below.
What to do then? The first answer was Monism. e.g. "everything is
matter, even consciousness." Or "consciousness is a property of matter"
etc. This does not sidestep the problem but denies it. As I repeatedly
said to Martin, if everything is matter, everything you say about matter
is a motherhood statement. There is a distinction.
What Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Vygotsky, Leontyev and Peirce all did, each in
their own inimitable fashion, was to move away from the binary to a
three-part ontology. In general they have "activity" as the mediating
element. For Hegel it is "Particular." But the three "moments" can never
ever exist separately, they are always moments of one and the same
entity. So Cs is always correlated in some way(s) with matter *in and
through activity*. There is no Cs without activity.
So our writers rarely talk about this hateful dichotomy, but that
doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It cannot be abolished by a monism which
simply denies it. Mediation not Monism.
Why not both? Are they necessarily counterposed? Or aren't they both
fundamental to a [note the article] dialectical materialism?
Andy, you may not think the monist element useful; others, including me,
might find it necessary to a fundamentally materialist approach - either
way the problem with motherhood statements isn't that they're not true
but that nobody could disagree with them. In fact, in the wider world
there are plenty of people who do but that's not the issue here.
Consciousness is not just correlated with matter through activity but
also through the particular organisation of matter that enables
consciousness to emerge. One of the reasons the question has been posed
in dichotomous terms that aren't useful is that up to now (I nearly wrote
'until now' but we're not there yet) there has not been an adequate
scientific explanation of consciousness which has allowed all sorts of
both reductionist materialism and idealist mysticism (not quite the word
I'm after - nor am I including Andy in that) to flourish. I started but
did not finish writing a post as follows a couple of days ago:
<<Isn't the idea of consciousness as an emergent property of matter the
key to
understanding the relationship between the two? Consciousness is then the
result of a particular form of organisation of a particular form of
matter
(brain cells) and cannot exist without it but has properties that mean it
is
not simply reducible to a particular configuration of physical matter.
Exactly how the 'upward causation' works is not yet known but as I
understand it this view is both compatible with both the current state of
the science and with a non-reductionist materialist philosophy .
This is not to say that 'consciousness is given' in the sense of being
innate
rather that the matter develops both through biological processes and in
a form affected by interaction with the environment - for humans,
specifically social.>>
The idea of emergence implies a stratified conception of both matter and
of human beings and thus is not reductionist. Rather the point is that if
we are talking about a materialist ontology one has to provide an
explanation of how higher order forms (both historically and in terms of
complexity) such as consciousness are possible at all on the basis of
lower order forms. Otherwise they are left hanging. I don't have a
problem with the idea of a 'substratum' if understood as a level that we
need to understand the properties of consciousness rather than something
separate. A multi-level ontology (with more than the three levels Andy
refers to but including them) necessarily implies mediation but also
includes the 'monist' moment. Matter as abstraction from its forms - is,
I think, necessary even if one is asking such a 'higher order', 'social'
question as the nature of the ideal. Perhaps we can all agree that this
is taken for granted and a motherhood statement - if so, good but I think
it's still necessary to state it.
Finally a few points I intended to make earlier:
(1) I think people have been using the term material in two different
senses - one = reducible to matter; two = having a material force or
impact on the world - which maybe has confused things;
(2) To say consciousness is 'all we have' to know the workl with is
irrelevant to conceptualising the relationship between matter and
consciousness. It is an epistemological statement rather than an
ontological one. If we were to discuss whether or how a true ontology was
possible or sustainable given consciousness is 'all we have', that would
be a different discussion to which there are both philosophical and above
all practical (cf Theses on Feuerbach) answers.
Bruce R
Does that resolve the issues?
Andy
Vera Steiner wrote:
Hi,
I always wondered why "inside" in its strictest interpretation, that of
the brain/mind that is not accessible to unmediated eye sight should be
such a pervasive metaphor. Now, the "inner" is becoming more
accessible with CAT scans, X-ray, imaging, etc, should it still be
called "inside?" Theories are not immune to technological change, and
this which is so loaded an issue, we are stuck in an old dichotomy. Why
is stone the best example for matter? Why not blood that also changes
with environmental, physiological and pathological variables? It
changes as does the brain/mind through action, through aging, through
education, through the increasing, sophisticated understanding of
meanings. All of these changes take place with people, or by and
through their uses of signs and symbols, which are the consequences of
their prior, collective actions? Is material only that which we can
touch, but not what we create, including our minds which we create
in.interaction with others?
The categorical distinction between Cs and matter baffles me, The
discussion is still governed, I believe on both sides, by the old
difference between in here, that voice in my head, or those images,
which are no longer inaccessible, no longer "inner" in the old sense
of the word when approached with material tools and the grass outside.
But, it seems we cannot help but be snared by its pervasive,
metaphoric power..
Vera
----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Packer" <packer@duq.edu>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2009 6:40 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Consciousness"only a part of the material quality
of the man-sign"
Andy,
You're misrepresenting what I wrote, and why I wrote it. I am indeed
arguing that all representational systems are material. Yet I find
myself dealing constantly with colleagues who believe that psychology
must study non-material representational systems. That to understand
children's development, for example, requires studying their
'internal,' 'mental' representations. I was citing Donald's work as an
example that does a good job of explaining human cognitive development
(historical rather than ontogenetic, but that's not an important
difference in this context) with reference only to representational
systems that are material. Plus brain functioning, construed in non-
representational ways. No tautology here, and no problem.
Martin
On Sep 26, 2009, at 7:54 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
Martin referred to a series of "representational systems" being all
"material"; I pointed out that Martin had already said that
*everything*, even consciousness, was material so the statement that
these representational systems were material was a "motherhood
statement", i.e., a tautology.
So I responded "show me a representational system which is *not*
material" which is a problem for Martin because he says that
everything is material.
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Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov
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