OK, let's see if I can handle these ...
Martin Packer wrote:
So in your view matter is independent of consciousness, but
consciousness is not independent of matter?! That strikes me as a
very strange phrasing. I have been using 'independent' in the sense
'not connected with another or with each other; separate.' You?
No, I do not mean "not connected, separate."
Consciousness depends on matter in the obvious sense. Without a nice
climate on Earth and intact, mature, living human beings, there is
no consciousness. And Everything that I have in my consciousness
originates one way or another in material causes, in matter.
The independence of matter from consciousness does not negate the
fact that through my body, in which my consciousness is a cause,
things happen in the wider material world. The way consciousness
gets to act as a cause in the world through material organisms
obedient to the determinant laws of biology, chemistry and physics
is an intriguing problem which we may get to soon.
But Cs is able to act as a cause in the material world only insofar
as it acts in line with Nature and on the basis of a natural
substrate. And if there is no Cs, matter is still there, just as it
was for 6 billions years before we came along. The reverse does not
apply.
An equally important point is that Cs is not 'given' to us, unless
you mean that in the sense of some mysterious gift. Things are
given to us *in* Cs. As Ilyenkov says, the world is given to us in
consciousness. The child has Cs awareness of objects before they
have awareness of Cs.
Mmmm, how can I say this? I don't mean "Cs is given to us"; I mean
"Cs is what is given to us." And I don't mean by that the things we
take to be the sources of sensations, etc. I mean: "What we are
given; that is Cs." Does that make sense?
Andy
Martin
On Sep 25, 2009, at 8:54 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
Martin Packer wrote:
I responded that this seemed dualistic. You seemed to be saying
that we have access only to Cs and not to matter; that matter is
"independent" of consciousness (and presumably vice versa); and
that two separate kinds of inquiry are needed.
*No way is consciousness independent of matter!* It is just what
is given to us immediately.
The difference in methods of enquiry is that between natural
science (which takes matter as its substance) and human science
(the humanities), which takes (or should take) activity as its
substance. Both are sciences.
-------------------------------
We can 'contrast' Cs and matter, but that isn't necessarily to
draw
a categorical distinction between them.
This is the point. The difference is a categorical one. I am still
waiting for someone to give us a definition of consciousness which
includes (or excludes) all the different entities and states found
under this category, without descending into nonsense. Once you
proceed down this path you will of course have a great big fuzzy
boundary with things like the consciousness of rats and amoeba,
deja vu, dreams, premonitions, reflexes, undefinable emotions and
so on. There you will find no sharp dividing line. ... but you are
still left asking: "What is consciousness?"
-------------------------------
In the context of that debate it was important to insist that
there is a material reality that is "independent" of
consciousness. But within the context of a dialectical
materialism that way of phrasing things is misleading. Human
consciousness is derived from matter; and the material world is
shaped by human activity, and so by human consciousness. There is
not "independence," in either direction.
That human beings shape the material world does not alter the fact
that matter exists independently of consciousness.
Matter *is* what is outside of and independent of consciousness.
Surely there can't be *nothing* out there?! Some things out there
are part of my consciousness. "My consciousness is my relation to
my evironment." But not everything. No-one bothered about climate
change. It was never part of our consciousness, ... but suddenly
we are all thinking about it. Why? Because matter exists, i.e.,
there *are* things we don't know about. Climate change was there
all the time! There are things which are independent of our
consciousness.
(Metaphors are inherently dangerous in trying to make this
distinction BTW. I am drawing on "examples" to try to clarify, but
"illustrations" of the deepest categorical distinction necessarily
open us up to trivalising matters.)
Andy
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.>
--
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Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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