Tony may be on the right track to remind us of form. An Aristotelian
materialism?
Martin
On Sep 25, 2009, at 11:40 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
OK. Obviously one can find plenty of true statements in Ilyenkov as
elsewhere. The point is consciousness matter and was Ilyenkov wrong
when he said:
"'Consciousness' ... 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"?
Your claim is now that the claim that consciousness is an attribute of
matter is tantamount to denying the above definition. I find the two
statements (Spinoza and Ilyenkov) quite compatible.
I grant that Spinoza's formulation was a deliberate effort to get out
of the hole that Descartes had dug by making Cs and matter the two
substances, i.e., fundamental components of reality. It directed
attention to the organization of matter rather than the presence of a
"life force" or some such thing. A great move for the 17th century,
and a better foundation for a science of consciousness. Though as it
turned out it was cultural psychology not neuroscince which cracked
the problem.
But being an attribute of something does not put it in the same
catgory. If Spinoza's formulation helps you, that's good; combine it
with the quoted sentence from Ilyenkov we have been discussing.
Andy
Martin Packer wrote:
On Sep 25, 2009, at 10:45 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
He means that if you deny the categorical difference between your
consciousness and the world outside your consciousness, then you are
an idealist. The fact that you do so by saying your thoughts are
matter rather than by saying that the sun and the moon are thoughts,
makes no difference.
Andy
Andy,
I've copied below more paragraph from Ilyenkov's text (thanks for the
link) with my gloss interposed (in the style of Steve). You'll see
that, on my reading, Ilyenkov agrees with Spinoza that thinking is
one of the attributes of substance (matter).
Martin
============
Lenin's position isn't formulated here very precisely. It doesn't
consist in the simple acknowledgment of 'the existence of an external
world and its cognoscibility in our sensations', but in something
else: for materialism, matter – the objective reality given to us in
sensation, is the basis of the theory of knowledge (epistemology), at
the same time as for idealism of any type, the basis of epistemology
is consciousness, under one or another of its pseudonyms (be it the
'psychical', 'conscious' or 'unconscious', be it the 'system of forms
of collectively-organised experience' or 'objective spirit', the
individual or collective psyche, individual or social consciousness).
<Lenin shouldn't be interpreted as saying merely that matter exists
and we can perceive and know it. His position was that matter is the
*basis* for knowledge. For idealism, the basis of knowledge is taken
to be Cs, but this is an error>
The question about the relationship of matter to consciousness is
complicated by the fact that social consciousness
('collectively-organised', 'harmonised' experience, cleansed of
contradiction) from the very beginning precedes individual
consciousness as something already given, and existing before,
outside, and independent of individual consciousness. just as matter
does. And even more than that. This social consciousness – of course,
in its individualised form, in the form of the consciousness of one's
closest teachers, and after that, of the entire circle of people who
appear in the field of vision of a person, forms his consciousness to
a much greater degree than the 'material world'.
<Social Cs comes before and forms individual Cs, much more than
experience of the material world does.>
But social consciousness (Bogdanov and Lunacharsky take precisely
this as the 'immediately given', as a premise not subject to further
analysis and as the foundation of their theory of knowledge),
according to Marx, is not 'primary', but secondary, derived from
social being, i.e. the system of material and economic relations
between people.
<But this social Cs is not basic; it itself is based on something
more fundamental: social *being*, the system of material and economic
relations among people.>
It is also not true that the world is cognised in our sensations. In
sensations the external world is only given to us, just as it is
given to a dog. It is cognised not in sensations, but in the activity
of thought, the science of which is after all, according to Lenin,
the theory of knowledge of contemporary materialism.
<We are *given* the world in sensation. But it is in thought that the
world is *cognised.* If we want to understand the basis for human
knowledge, we will need to consider the character of thought.>
... Spinoza. He understands thinking to be an inherent capability,
characteristic not of all bodies, but only of thinking material
bodies. With the help of this capability, a body can construct its
activities in the spatially determined world, in conformity with the
'form and disposition' of all other bodies external to it, both
'thinking' and 'non-thinking'. Spinoza therefore includes thinking
among the categories of the attributes of substance, such as
extension. In this form it is, according to Spinoza, characteristic
also of animals. For him even an animal possesses a soul, and this
view distinguishes Spinoza from Descartes, who considered that an
animal is simply an 'automaton', a very complex 'machine'.
<We agree with Spinoza, who considered thinking to be a capability of
certain kinds of material bodies. Bodies with this capacity can
adjust their activities with respect to other material bodies. This
is to say that one of the attributes of substance (matter) is thinking.>
Thought arises within and during the process of material action as
one of its features, one of its aspects, and only later is divided
into a special activity (isolated in space and time), finding 'sign'
form only in man.
<Thought arises in material activity, even in animals. In humans it
takes a more advanced form, in which activity is adjusted to signs.>
[...] If one proceeds from individual experience, making it the point
of departure and basis of the theory of knowledge, then idealism is
inevitable. But it is also inevitable if one relies on 'collective
experience', if the latter is interpreted as something independent of
being, as something existing independently, as something primary.
<It is a mistake to try to understand human knowledge in terms of
individual consciousness or experience. But it is also a mistake to
try to understand knowledge in terms of *social* consciousness. As we
have said, social *being* - collective practical activity is
primary. Nonetheless, we can learn a lot from Hegel...:>
[...]The collective psyche of mankind (spirit), which has already
been developing for thousands of years, is actually primary in
relation to every separate 'psychic molecule', to every individual
consciousness (soul). An individual soul is born and dies (in
contrast to Kant, Hegel caustically and ironically ridiculed the idea
of the immortality of the soul), but the aggregate – 'total' – spirit
of mankind lives and has been developing for thousands of years
already, giving birth to ever newer and newer separate souls and once
again swallowing them up, thereby preserving them in the make-up of
spiritual culture, in the make-up of the spirit. In the make-up of
today's living spirit live the souls of Socrates, Newton, Mozart and
Raphael – herein lies the meaning and essence of Hegel's –
dialectical – interpretation of the immortality of the spirit,
notwithstanding the mortality of the soul. One comes into being
through the other. Through its opposite.
<Hegel recognized how an individual's Cs is based on the collective.
Individuals come and go, but humankind as a whole has been developing
for many thousands of years and in this sense is immortal. The
individual soul is mortal, but the human spirit endures, and gives
rise to one individual after another. At the same time, it is
individuals who make up the collective psyche.>
With all that, Hegel always remains inside the sphere of the spirit,
within the bounds of the relationship of the soul to the spirit. All
that lies outside this sphere and exists completely separate from it
the material world in general – interests him just as little as it
interests Mach or any other idealist. But his idealism is much more
intelligent, much broader, and for that reason much more dialectical,
than the petty, vulgar and narrow idealism of Mach.
<But Hegel remained thoroughly idealist, and phased all this in the
idealist terminology of 'soul,' 'spirit,' etc. He tried to explain
the character and development of consciousness without reference to
the material world.>
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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