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Re: [xmca] Re: Mediation AND monism



Oh. Andy, you agree with me. Now I'm totally confused. ;) Have I completely missed the point of what you're saying?
Bruce


----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 1:20 PM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Mediation AND monism


All agreed, Bruce.
andy

Bruce Robinson wrote:
Mediation and Monism: you suggest not either but both. Yes.
How could one disagree. Really, as soon as dualism is rejected, one has a kind of monism. But unless one finds a way to *deal with the distinction* which generated the original dualism, not just deny it, then dualism pops up again at a deeper level. That's why I insist.
I accept that - there is something that needs to be explained. But I 
suppose that underlying what I wrote is that the distinction cannot be 
resolved by shuffling the philosophical categories or looking for the 
correct definition of consciousness but rather that the question can only 
be resolved by a scientific explanation of consciousness as a - dare I 
use the word? - material phenomenon. While I do not hold that the 
development of science will abolish philosophy, I think this is one area 
where philosophy has tried to speculatively fill in for gaps in our 
scientific knowledge. That's why I'm not happy with your view that: "My 
position is that consciousness is a *category* not a thing."
(To avoid one possible misunderstanding: I am not saying scientific 
knowledge is independent of methodological, philosophical or social 
pre-conceptions.)
Emergence: Emergence has an intuitive attraction, as a counter to the idea of causation, but I have discovered that in dialogue with neuro-types "emergence" acts a little like God: it is the idea you stuff into that gap you can't explain. "Oh! I don't know how Cs arises from a material system; it is emergence. I don't have to explain it."
Yes, maybe emergence is a fashionable explanation precisely because it 
avoids other obvious pitfalls of dualism and reductionist materialism. I 
am not sufficiently up to speed on the current state of neuro-science but 
there certainly are attempts to provide a more specific explanation of 
consciousness as emergent from 'brain matter', Gerald Edelman's for 
example.
Bruce

Meaning of "Matter" and "material": more than 2 meanings. Several. Add 
"something else that I don't know about, outside my consciousness". Add 
the Nature (outside of any labour process) as opposed to "material life" 
in the sense of industry and commerce. I sure many many definitions of 
matter have been used in this discussion. The one I have tried to convey 
has mostly still not been accepted.
C'est la vie.

Andy

Bruce Robinson wrote:
See comments below.

What to do then? The first answer was Monism. e.g. "everything is matter, even consciousness." Or "consciousness is a property of matter" etc. This does not sidestep the problem but denies it. As I repeatedly said to Martin, if everything is matter, everything you say about matter is a motherhood statement. There is a distinction.
What Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Vygotsky, Leontyev and Peirce all did, each 
in their own inimitable fashion, was to move away from the binary to a 
three-part ontology. In general they have "activity" as the mediating 
element. For Hegel it is "Particular." But the three "moments" can 
never ever exist separately, they are always moments of one and the 
same entity. So Cs is always correlated in some way(s) with matter *in 
and through activity*. There is no Cs without activity.
So our writers rarely talk about this hateful dichotomy, but that 
doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It cannot be abolished by a monism 
which simply denies it. Mediation not Monism.
Why not both? Are they necessarily counterposed? Or aren't they both 
fundamental to a [note the article] dialectical materialism?
Andy, you may not think the monist element useful; others, including 
me, might find it necessary to a fundamentally materialist approach - 
either way the problem with motherhood statements isn't that they're 
not true but that nobody could disagree with them. In fact, in the 
wider world there are plenty of people who do but that's not the issue 
here.
Consciousness is not just correlated with matter through activity but 
also through the particular organisation of matter that enables 
consciousness to emerge. One of the reasons the question has been posed 
in dichotomous terms that aren't useful is that up to now (I nearly 
wrote 'until now' but we're not there yet) there has not been an 
adequate scientific explanation of consciousness which has allowed all 
sorts of both reductionist materialism and idealist mysticism (not 
quite the word I'm after - nor am I including Andy in that) to 
flourish. I started but did not finish writing a post as follows a 
couple of days ago:
<<Isn't the idea of consciousness as an emergent property of matter the 
key to
understanding the relationship between the two? Consciousness is then 
the
result of a particular form of organisation of a particular form of 
matter
(brain cells) and cannot exist without it but has properties that mean 
it is
not simply reducible to a particular configuration of physical matter.
Exactly how the 'upward causation' works is not yet known but as I
understand it this view is both compatible with both the current state of
the science and with a non-reductionist materialist philosophy .
This is not to say that 'consciousness is given' in the sense of being innate rather that the matter develops both through biological processes and in a form affected by interaction with the environment - for humans, specifically social.>>
The idea of emergence implies a stratified conception of both matter 
and of human beings and thus is not reductionist. Rather the point is 
that if we are talking about a materialist ontology one has to provide 
an explanation of how higher order forms (both historically and in 
terms of complexity) such as consciousness are possible at all on the 
basis of lower order forms. Otherwise they are left hanging.  I don't 
have a problem with the idea of a 'substratum' if understood as a level 
that we need to understand the properties of  consciousness rather than 
something separate. A multi-level ontology (with more than the three 
levels Andy refers to but including them) necessarily implies mediation 
but also includes the 'monist' moment. Matter as abstraction from its 
forms - is, I think, necessary even if one is asking such a 'higher 
order', 'social' question as the nature of the ideal. Perhaps we can 
all agree that this is taken for granted and a motherhood statement - 
if so, good but I think it's still necessary to state it.
Finally a few points I intended to make earlier:

(1) I think people have been using the term material in two different senses - one = reducible to matter; two = having a material force or impact on the world - which maybe has confused things;
(2) To say consciousness is 'all we have' to know the workl with is 
irrelevant to conceptualising the relationship between matter and 
consciousness. It is an epistemological statement rather than an 
ontological one. If we were to discuss whether or how a true ontology 
was possible or sustainable given consciousness is 'all we have', that 
would be a different discussion to which there are both philosophical 
and above all practical (cf Theses on Feuerbach) answers.
Bruce R








Does that resolve the issues?
Andy


Vera Steiner wrote:
Hi,
I always wondered why "inside" in its strictest interpretation, that of the brain/mind that is not accessible to unmediated eye sight should be such a pervasive metaphor. Now, the "inner" is becoming more accessible with CAT scans, X-ray, imaging, etc, should it still be called "inside?" Theories are not immune to technological change, and this which is so loaded an issue, we are stuck in an old dichotomy. Why is stone the best example for matter? Why not blood that also changes with environmental, physiological and pathological variables? It changes as does the brain/mind through action, through aging, through education, through the increasing, sophisticated understanding of meanings. All of these changes take place with people, or by and through their uses of signs and symbols, which are the consequences of their prior, collective actions? Is material only that which we can touch, but not what we create, including our minds which we create in.interaction with others? The categorical distinction between Cs and matter baffles me, The discussion is still governed, I believe on both sides, by the old difference between in here, that voice in my head, or those images, which are no longer inaccessible, no longer "inner" in the old sense of the word when approached with material tools and the grass outside. But, it seems we cannot help but be snared by its pervasive, metaphoric power..
Vera
----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Packer" <packer@duq.edu>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2009 6:40 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Consciousness"only a part of the material quality of the man-sign"

Andy,

You're misrepresenting what I wrote, and why I wrote it. I am indeed arguing that all representational systems are material. Yet I find myself dealing constantly with colleagues who believe that psychology must study non-material representational systems. That to understand children's development, for example, requires studying their 'internal,' 'mental' representations. I was citing Donald's work as an example that does a good job of explaining human cognitive development (historical rather than ontogenetic, but that's not an important difference in this context) with reference only to representational systems that are material. Plus brain functioning, construed in non- representational ways. No tautology here, and no problem.
Martin

On Sep 26, 2009, at 7:54 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:

Martin referred to a series of "representational systems" being all 
"material"; I pointed out that Martin had already said that 
*everything*, even consciousness, was material so the statement 
that these representational systems were material was a "motherhood 
statement", i.e., a tautology.
So I responded "show me a representational system which is *not* 
material" which is a problem for Martin because he says that 
everything is material.
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Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea
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Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea
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Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea
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