Andy,
He says we shouldn't take the middle path, for sure. I completely agree,
and I'm not taking a middle path. It seems to me that *you* are trying
to take a middle path! And when I opt for materialism, you tell me it's
empty! Ilyenkov is also saying we should not select the incorrect path
from the two that remain, but what you've copied here does not include
his characterization of these two paths. I will download this chapter
and take a look.
Martin
On Sep 25, 2009, at 10:12 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
You can buy it, with all Ilyenkov's essays from
http://www.erythrospress.com/ or you can get it a chapter at a time
from http://marx.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/positi.htm
it continues:
"The difference and opposition of materialism and idealism is thus
very simple, which, on the part of the idealists of various shades,
serves as the basis for reproaches directed at materialism, such as
'primitivism', 'grade-school sophistication', 'non-heuristic nature',
'banality', 'being self-evident', etc. (Such a reproach was directed
at Lenin as soon as his book was published: 'In general, even if one
acknowledges as correct the materialist propositions of Mr Ilyin about
the existence of an external world and its cognoscibility in our
sensations, then these propositions can nevertheless not be called
Marxist, since the most inveterate representative of the bourgeoisie
hasn't the least doubts about them,' wrote M. Bulgakov in his review
of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.)"
I stopped before that because it gets rather tedious at this point.
And the point had been made already. What he is saying is that if you
try to choose a middle way between materialism and idealism, then you
find that in fact you are continuously faced with the same choice at
every step. In other words there is no middle road. The first step you
take along what appears to be middle road immediately faces you again
with a choice to go this way or that way. Ilyenkov is saying: take the
path of materialism.
Andy
Martin Packer wrote:
Andy,
I don't have this text. It seems to me you stop too soon; Ilyenkov
says we have to take one of two paths, not a middle way. He is
presumably about to describe the alternatives. What comes next?
Martin
On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:52 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
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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Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
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