[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] Consciousness "only a part of the material quality of the man-sign"



Oh I don't doubt that the various strands of abstract empiricism and so on are full of non-material representational systems and non-material all-sorts-of-things. I think you are just making a point about your not subscribing to Platonism or some dualist philosophical system.

But in the meaning *you* give to "material" aren't you making a tautology by saying that representational systems found in history are material? Or are there representational system which *you* say are not material?

Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
Andy,

Well, the (putative) representational systems studied by cognitive science, which are taken to be mental functions, properties of thought, which are not doubted to have a material substrate (the brain) but which are assumed not to be material themselves but ideal, in Plato's rather than Ilyenkov's sense. Chomsky's generative grammar is a good example. Piaget's theory of the mental actions and operations going on 'inside the head' of child is another.

Martin


On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:09 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

Martin, tell me a representational system which is *not* material.

a

Martin Packer wrote:
humans have evolved to use an ordered series of "representational systems." The sequence is as follows: the episodic, mimetic, mythic, and theoretic. I won't go into the details, but crucially important, I think, is that these systems are material.

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca



--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca