a) Andy says "consciousness is what is given to us". How is the
"us" given to us? For consciousness to be given to "us", don't we
need an "us" first? And isn't this "us" that is given to us
actually emergent through phylogenetic and then sociogenetic and
then finally ontogenetic change? (I don't think the word "emergent"
is any more vacuous than the word "evolved", and in many ways it is
actually more descriptive, particularly since "evolution" has
acquired a meaning which is frequently opposed to revolutionary
change.)
b) In my profession, a lot of abstract stuff comes to us in exactly
the "reified" form that Andy talks about in his paper for
discussion where he says that the worker experiences labor as
making a "living" and the capitalist as "making profit" but
objectively it is reified as yarn. For example, I have on my desk a
text which purports to teach English words like "can" and "your"
through the use of pictures! I just sat through a two hour lunch
with other members of the department where we discussed the
furniture of the new "English Zone" in the department and the
bookcases and the website and so on but never once touched on what
is now known rather ridiculously as "content" (it appears that for
the "Conversation Clinic" there will be no content at all, only
furniture). Isn't this reification as much a proof of monism as the
historical, evolutionary nature of consciousness? David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Tue, 9/29/09, Bruce Robinson <bruce@brucerob.eu
<mailto:bruce@brucerob.eu>> wrote:
From: Bruce Robinson <bruce@brucerob.eu <mailto:bruce@brucerob.eu>>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Mediation AND monism
To: ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>, "eXtended Mind,
Culture,Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>
Date: Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 3:24 PM
Tell me: If I say, "I don't know anything really for sure about
the world, maybe you're right about phlogiston and maybe the world
is governed by the will of Allah, but what I do know for sure is
that there is something there outside of my consciousness," would
you disagree? Would you say "Well, that's a matter of opinion" or
"That's something which needs to be tested by the methods of
science"? or is it just simply true beyond any dispute or
scientific theory? That's what is meant by being a categorical truth.
Andy
Would anyone but a philosopher say that? For most 'ordinary people'
it would be a matter of common sense borne out of their experience.
Does one have to start from the individual seeking to establish a
firm footing in the world - an abstraction supreme like the utility
maximiser of neo-classical economics?
I'm not sure anything is beyond dispute - you may conclude that the
disputer is irrational but I'm sure there is nothing universally
accepted except, if I remember rightly, in Jane Austen and the
American Declaration of Independence.
Bruce
Bruce Robinson wrote:
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 <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto: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 <mailto:packer@duq.edu>>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto: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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