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Re: [xmca] Consciousness: Ilyenkov Epistemology Quiz
Victor,
What you write does seem at fist glance a very reasonable way of
thinking about 'idealizations.' But it is not, in my view, what
Ilyenkov proposes. In his account, it is possible for us to use an axe
or a shovel in practical activity only because collective social
practice has *made* them 'an axe' or 'a shovel,' and so they have an
ideal character (and material too, of course). The ideality here has
nothing to do with planning or blueprints or design; and all to do
with the way society confronts the individual as a second nature, as
an objectivity, as what has been called an equipmental totality, as
normative modes of behavior and the artifacts by means of which that
behavior is conducted. Even simply hacking a hole in the ground is an
action that is necessarily shaped by the labor of prior generations,
for these have produced both the tool and its user.
Martin
On Sep 28, 2009, at 5:53 AM, Victor wrote:
If we are designing a spade or axe, discussing which tool to use
for a particular practical objective, or using them as metaphors in
a literary product, then they are certainly idealizations. That is
to say they are abstractions (not necessarily the same abstractions
as this depends on the focus of the plan, practical objective, or
metaphor) represented by discrete symbolical forms such as pictorial
icons, spoken words and sentences, or graphically represented
speech, the significance of which is a function of their formation
and use by the community of users that depends upon them for
effective transmission of information. On the other hand, the axe
and spade used respectively to cut up firewood and to hack a hole in
the ground are in large part material, sensable objects the sensing
and handling of which are concrete and continuous involving constant
adjustments of bodily activity to realize the object of their use.
True, as Steve, citing EVI, reminds us, the object and formation
of the instruments of labour are in part the products of ideation,
the conventions for the production and use of the means of
production, but these are practically meaningless in the absence of
concrete productive activity.
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