[Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words

[Andy Blunden]

So "material" and "ideal" are not opposites. Hammers still 
have ideal properties as well as material properties.

Andy

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

On 2/05/2017 6:16 AM, ‪Haydi Zulfei‬ ‪ wrote:
> Andy,
> What I think has been omitted from your discussion is 
> 'metamorphasis' or 'reification' of ideals which requires 
> objectification and deobjectification of objects in 
> practical processes. As you well know , Marx never reduces 
> 'material' to 'ideal' . Ilyenko is quite in agreement with 
> Marx concerning the problem. Their objection is over the 
> issue of thinking that the ideal should be inside the 
> mind. What is outside the mind is material . He , as you 
> know , gives many examples : A church is an ideal , A 
> diplomat is an ideal as talers are , etc. and they are 
> outside the mind. Respectively , the worship of God has 
> been idealized in a church , the diplomat gets out of his 
> ordinary posture becomes a representative for the State , 
> talers in the pocket are nothing more than ordinary metals 
> but replacing precious golds in turn representing the 
> labour spent on their extraction in mines. The 
> above-mentioned items are ideal NOW; Hammers WERE ideals 
> THEN at the start of the practical process. Now they are 
> 'materials' reified and metamorphosed , that is through 
> the furnace of practical activity one essence has been 
> tempered and converted into another essence for which 
> marxists including Ilyenko have different definitions.
> Best
> Haydi
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> *Sent:* Monday, 1 May 2017, 11:30:04
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words
>
> And tables carry with them the practice of eating "at table"
> and meeting a the board room table etc., it not that the
> table carries the idea of table but is the bearer of
> practices, which have refined the size and shape of tables
> for eating, talking, etc. LIkewise pencils are for cursive
> writing on paper. not scratching hieroglyphics into clay.
>
> Great quote from Mike! There is a LOT of resistance to this
> idea ... everywhere. It smells of Marxism.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 
>
>
> On 1/05/2017 4:43 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> > Gordon Wells quotes this from an article Mike wrote in a 
> Festschrift for
> > George Miller. Mike is talking about artefacts:
> >
> > "They are ideal in that they contain in coded form the 
> interactions of
> > which they
> > were previously a part and which they mediate in the 
> present (e.g., the
> > structure of
> > a pencil carries within it the history of certain forms 
> of writing). They
> > are material
> > in that they are embodied in material artifacts. This 
> principle applies
> > with equal
> > force whether one is considering language/speech or the 
> more usually noted
> > forms
> > of artifacts such as tables and knives which constitute 
> material culture.
> > What
> > differentiates a word, such as “language” from, say, a 
> table. is the
> > relative prominence
> > of their material and ideal aspects. No word exists 
> apart from its material
> > instantiation (as a configuration of sound waves, or 
> hand movements, or as
> > writing,
> > or as neuronal activity), whereas every table embodies 
> an order imposed by
> > thinking
> > human beings."
> >
> > This is the kind of thing that regularly gets me thrown 
> out of journals by
> > the ear. Mike says that the difference between a word 
> and a table is the
> > relative salience of the ideal and the material. 
> Sure--words are full of
> > the ideal, and tables are full of material. Right?
> >
> > Nope. Mike says it's the other way around. Why? Well, 
> because a word
> > without some word-stuff (sound or graphite) just isn't a 
> word. In a
> > word, meaning is solidary with material sounding: change 
> one, and you
> > change the other. But with a table, what you start with 
> is the idea of the
> > table; as soon as you've got that idea, you've got a 
> table. You could
> > change the material to anything and you'd still have a 
> table.
> >
> > Wells doesn't throw Mike out by the ear. But he does 
> ignore the delightful
> > perversity in what Mike is saying, and what he gets out 
> of the quote is
> > just that words are really just like tools. When in fact 
> Mike is saying
> > just the opposite.
> >
> > (The part I don't get is Mike's notion that the 
> structure of a pencil
> > carries within it the history of certain forms of 
> writing. Does he mean
> > that the length of the pencil reflects how often it's 
> been used? Or is he
> > making a more archaeological point about graphite, wood, 
> rubber and their
> > relationship to a certain point in the history of 
> writing and erasing?
> > Actually, pencils are more like tables than like 
> words--the idea has to
> > come first.)
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Macquarie University
> >
> >
>
>
>