[Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words

Tue May 2 08:03:03 PDT 2017

Haydi,
Thanks for focusing our attention upon the relativITY (quality of the relative) exploring ideal and material emerging within goal-oriented joint practical activity.
I want to abstract and focus on the term (goal)
Does goal imply (intentionalITY – having the quality of the intentional)?

This then returns us to Wolff-Michael and Alfredo who suggest differing qualities of relationalITY (qualities of the relational).
The suggestion is not to begin with he or she being intentional, but rather to begin with the relation/place from which he and she ARE TAKEN TO BE …

This may be crytic and may misrepresent this alternative lense of discernment?
If so I will continue to listen

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Andy Blunden
Sent: May 2, 2017 2:03 AM
To: ‪Haydi Zulfei‬ ‪; xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words

Haydi, where did you get this quote: "The REIFIED ideal is 
no longer ideal"?

I couldn't find it in "The Concept of the Ideal" 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/ideal/ideal.htm

I'd like to see it in context.

Andy

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

On 2/05/2017 6:29 PM, ‪Haydi Zulfei‬ ‪ wrote:
> For the first part of your remark Ilyenko gives a 
> definition which you are quite familiar with "ideal is 
> nothing more than the reflection of the material onto 
> mind". Then they are distinct but very closely related . 
> The relativity , I think , is not a matter of gradience or 
> salience as David quoted from Mike. To put water into 
> steam you need 'heat'. The heat we need to put ideal into 
> material and inversely material into ideal is the very 
> process of goal-oriented joint practical material activity.
>
> For the second part of your remark , I think you've 
> forgotten Ilyenko (otherwise you knew well) saying "The 
> REIFIED ideal is no longer ideal". Then,how can it possess 
> the properties of the ideal? Does water have retained the 
> properties of oxygen or hydrogen .That was why I said 
> hammers are 'material' NOW. Hammers are now ready for use 
> . As to the history Mike mentions , yes , it's the very 
> history of idealization of a need which , in the process 
> of material practical activity , turns into an object as 
> product retaining no trace of its once ideality. Ilyenko 
> himself says that the very knowledge/cognition of a 
> phenomenon is to be able to unmediationally trace the 
> genesis and emergence of that phenomenon. But that's for 
> the theoretician not for the worker or whoever who has to 
> use the hammer not as the embodiment of interactions , 
> practices , experiences or what you correctly rejected as 
> the carrier of ideas.
> Best
> Haydi
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> *To:* ‪Haydi Zulfei‬ ‪ <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>; 
> "xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 2 May 2017, 5:37:55
> *Subject:* Re: [Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words
>
> 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://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> 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> 
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu 
>> <mailto: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
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>