P. 302 of "The Ideal in Activity," by Ilyenkov:
"Here, then, is the question: take your thought, your
consciousness of the world, and the world itself, the complex and
intricate world which only appears to be simple, the world which
you see around you, in which you live, act and carry out your work
- whether you write treatises on philosophy or physics, sculpt
statues out of stone, or produce steel in a blast furnace - what
is the relationship between them?
"Here there is a parting of the ways, and the difference lies in
whether you choose the right path or the left, for there is no
middle here; the middle path contains within itself the very same
divergences, only they branch out within it in ever more minute
and discrete proportions. In philosophy the 'party of the golden
mean' is the 'party of the brainless', who try to unite
materialism with idealism in an eclectic way, by means of
smoothing out the basic contradictions, and by means of muddling
the most general (abstract, 'cellule') and clear concepts.
"These concepts are matter and consciousness (psyche, the ideal,
spirit, soul, will, etc. etc.). 'Consciousness' – let us take this
term as Lenin did - is the most general concept which can only be
defined by clearly contrasting it with the most general concept of
'matter', moreover as something secondary, produced and derived.
Dialectics consists in not being able to define matter as such; it
can only be defined through its opposite, and only if one of the
opposites is fixed as primary, and the other arises from it."
Andy Blunden wrote:
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.
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--
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Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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