Re: [xmca] Consciousness: Ilyenkov Epistemology Quiz

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Martin, I think one has to simply let go of whatever you 
think "ideal" means and grasp what "ideal" means in 
Ilyenkov's writing. I think it is quite legitimate meaning, 
but it is not meaning available in everyday speech. There is 
an essay in his book devoted to the topic, so I won't try to 
summarise.

On "social consciousness" I think Marxists such as Vygotsky 
use it in the sense of ideas that are available (in the 
sense of "available narrative") and acquired by everyone. 
But every single individual has a unique take on any idea, 
but what is in common, so to speak, is the content of social 
consciousness.

The other contradiction in this wonderful term is that it 
can only exist in and through individual consciousness, 
simply because there is no other kind of consciousness than 
that which is tied to neurons in some way. But that of 
course by no means denies the meaningfulness of the term. 
After all "tornado" can exist only in and through "air" but 
both are unique and legitimate concepts.

Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
> 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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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, 
Ilyenkov $20 ea

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