Re: [xmca] Consciousness: Ilyenkov Epistemology Quiz

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

In an earlier message I mentioned the fact that I have some problems  
with the terminology Ilyenkov uses to explain the phenomena he is  
interested in. It seems to me that by using the term 'ideality' of  
material objects he (1) is just plain confusing: in what sense can  
something *both* ideal and material? (2) risks reintroducing a  
dualism, not the mind/world kind, but some kind of duality to every  
object in the world, (3) invites us to imagine that this ideality must  
exist in *some* kind of consciousness - so there must be a *social*  
consciousness. Like Victor, I have grave doubts about the idea of a  
social consciousness. I think consciousness is a social process, but  
when consciousness has itself as an object, it is as an evidently  
*individual* phenomenon. We use the term  "self-consciouness"  in two  
ways, I think, somewhat confusingly but they both make sense. Self- 
consciouness is consciousness aware of itself; but it is also  
consciousness of 'self' as the center (or locus) of consciousness.  
Consciousness is in each case 'mine.'  So 'social consciousness' is a  
contradictory term.

(If it seems weird to say that Cs is social even though it is in each  
case mine, consider this. We each have first-person familiarity with  
the biological processes we call life. I have no access to another  
person's digestion, respiration, and so on. But we have leaned to see  
that it makes sense to think of life as a distributed phenomenon, of  
which each organism is merely a participant.)

What terminology would be better? One that avoids suggesting that the  
ideality of objects (of materiality in general, to be more precise) is  
an *epistemological* matter. The way Ilyenkov writes, it is very easy  
to interpret him as saying, on one hand there is a spade  
(materiality), and on the other hand there is what the spade means  
(ideality). Closer inspection doesn't support this way of reading him,  
but it's very tempting. What he actually means, in my reading, is that  
*being* a spade is possible only given the practices of a particular  
social group. (Or if you prefer trains to spades, *being* the 8:15 to  
Paris.) He's making an  *ontological* claim, not an epistemological  
one. His ontology is one in which there is not just one way to be  
(substance), let alone two (substance; mind). He has a social  
ontology, in which cultures define the multiple ways that things  
(people, events, artifacts) can be.

That's not to say issues of meaning (significance) don't arise. They  
do, but they're not primary. It may be the case that one particular  
8:15 to Paris has special significance to some people (or even just  
one person) because, for example, it was the one on which Lenin  
travelled to a conference with the Mensheviks. But that depends on it  
already being the 8:15 to Paris. Its meaning doesn't define its being.

Now (finally!) we can understand why Mike can talk to his students  
about unicorns. In our culture, being fictional is one way to be. We  
all know, without thinking about it, that we will never see a  
fictional character such as a unicorn, but we know, equally, that they  
are good. Unicorns don't actually exist, but they don't actually not  
exist, either. Their ontological status differs from both these  
alternatives.

Martin
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