18 september 2000
from peter jones, sheffield hallam university
dear mike and colleagues
(really putting me on the spot now ...). i think i can summarise my difference
with david quite briefly although implications for practical research
orientation are a little more difficult to spell out (he says desperately
playing for time..). in fact i wrote a reply to david's paper in Language and
Communication and developed the points at some length. for interested
colleagues i attach this paper to this message. the editors of the journal
turned it down (language and communication is not really the journal for nit
picking discussions of soviet philosophical ideas!!). but essentially the
difference boils down to this: in my opinion, david's interpretation of the
term 'ideal' is too broad. he extends it to cover any and every object, or
process involved in or touched by human purposeful activity. this includes the
functional qualities of any artefact or tool since when these are put to work
by people in the pursuit of some aim they take on the 'significance' of the
activity (they serve as the vehicle for achieving the goal) and it is this
'significance' for david which is taken as ideal. similarly, anything made for
a purpose (eg bread baked for eating) is 'ideal' because it has been made for
that purpose - its 'significance' is that it is food, ie it embodies a human
aim or goal, it is produced with an idea in mind so to speak (and it 'embodies'
that idea). i hope that this is not too crude an interpretation of david's
version.
my objection is that this confuses two things: the natural (material) qualities
and properties inherent in the things which we put to use in activity (and
which inhere in those things independently of our aims and goals) and the goals
themselves, ie the purpose (the aim) in accordance with which we set these
things to work in the realisation of our purposes (in the production of things
we need). when we produce bread as food, it is not the bread that is ideal; the
ideal is the inner goal, or purpose impelling the bread producing activity (and
hence 'turning itself into' real bread through that activity). the ideal in
this case - 'ideal bread' - is the image of the thing to be produced; it is the
real bread itself only in a different form - as an 'idea' (the idea of bread as
it were). so that the ideal is the bread-producing activity but as an 'idea',
as the image of the result, as the purpose which exists at the start of the
activity (and dies when the real bread is produced). how can the 'idea' of
bread (ie the 'image' of bread and of the bread-producing activity) exist
before the real production begins (and before the real bread is produced)? it
can only exist as and through another thing which 'stands for' it within the
activity cycle: ie it can only exist as a symbol, as something which represents
the thing to be produced and the process of production. it is that thing, that
symbol, which is ideal within the system of production in which it functions:
the goal and inner aim of the activity taking the form of a special thing which
can itself be produced, created, altered, criticised, developed etc
independently of the real production process (with which, of course, it is
necessarily connected however). These sections from the attached paper sum up
the argument:
Hence, the argument according to which tools or other artifacts are ideal
because they embody or realise human aims misses the point: it is the aims
themselves which are ideal - the conscious aims with which humans represent
their future activity and in the light of which they act to produce what they
need; human aims are nothing but the material process and outcome of activity
reflected in images and represented ideally.The ideal image is the object of
production (ie the outcome of productive activity) converted into (or ideally
posited as) an internal image, as a need, as a drive and as purpose (1977a,
p 260, quoting from Marx, Grundrisse). The distinction between things that are
material and things that are ideal is a fact about how these things relate to
one another within material production, material activity directly altering
nature.
For Ilyenkov, as a Marxist, the human life process is essentially a material
and not semiotic process. Humans act to produce things which satisfy their
needs and it is this process which, in its own self-development and
differentiation, generates an ideal (or semiotic) image in the form of a
relation in which some things (words, pictures, money etc) come to stand for
other things (the outcome, process and instruments of production, etc). This
reflective function of ideal forms, which is the very basis for human thinking,
is an internally generated aspect of the social human life process understood
as a specific material system of dynamic interactions between socially
organised material beings and material nature. The ideal arises and takes shape
as a necessary mediating link within practical activity, reflecting the forms
of activity themselves as well as the forms of the material world with which
activity brings us into direct contact. This, indeed is the special and vital
function which ideal forms fulfill in human life-activity in allowing the
goals, aims, drives, purposes, strategies and forms of action and cooperation
of social humanity to be expressed outside of, prior to and independently of
the real activities which engender them:
the ideal is only there where the form itself of the activity corresponding
to the form of the external object is transformed for man into a special
object with which he can operate specially without touching and without
changing the real object up to a certain point. Man, and only man, ceases to
be merged with the form of his life activity; he separates it from himself
and, giving it his attention, transforms it into an idea (1977a, p 278).
what are the implications of these differences for practical research? i argue
in the paper that david's reading gives us essentially a hegelian picture of
human life activity in which the world with which humans interact is always the
result (the objectification) of the idea (of the ideal), and that this picture
therefore is not a materialist one. the consequence, i think, is that the
materialistic conception in which material production (and the real processes
of material transformation effected by human labour) lose their primary and
determining role within our conception of the dynamic of human social life
activity. if tools and instrumental processes are just as 'ideal' as words,
then what reason would we have to attribute to the production of the
instruments of labour, and the material processses of production a causal
primacy within social development and a primacy with respect to 'ideal''
activity (of whatever kind)?
so my argument is that this overly broad conception of the ideal departs from
the materialist conception of the nature of the human labour process and the
dynamic of social development, for what that conception is worth. so the
argument really is of importance only if we value that materialist conception.
i should say that in a personal message to me some time back david said that he
thought i had a point about the overextension of the term although that didn't
commit him at all to my version (with which i think he has profound
disagreements).
having gone on for so long i'll halt at that, perhaps overly general, point and
try and think up something a little bit more concrete!!
with all best wishes
P
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