Andy wrote:
>[...] "Reflection" [...] is nevertheless a
>perfectly useful term which incorporates the idea that an objectively
>existing natural world is the utlimately determining side in the
>human-nature relation, and also expresses the way a host of processes find
>their properties reflected in another process, including human society
>reflecting aspects of the natural world it lives in. Surely?
Indeed, Andy, you can rightly say, an instinct reflects the natural
conditions of an animal in that it elicits adequate behavior in
certain parts or states of its environment, adequate in terms of
survival in those conditions. But in the case of cultural beings,
however much or little of that way of being bound into one's
environment continues, the situation is different. Those conditions
called natural are a limiting factor, yes, but much more important
in their effects are the conditions produced by fellow humans. And
those could as well be different than they are for any one individual
or group at any time. So human society does not, or to minor extents
only, reflect aspects of the natural world. Rather it reflects
interests and aspirations of particular groups. Power relations come
in, and more.
Under such circumstances transfering the notion of reflection from
the "objectivities" of nature to the multitudes and clusterings of
loyal "subjectivities" or using the same concepts undifferentiated
may prepare an attempt at producing and making use of some "harmony
of illusions" when the latter are presented as "objectives" to be
reflected into the becoming of any one person, often enforced by
problematic means. I use here "objectives" on purpose in the double
sense (a) of "objectivities", i.e. supposedly undeniable facts and
relations, and (b) of "goals" or plans set by some and to be executed
by others. For the latter perspective I refer e.g. to Action theories
a la Hacker proposed especially for industrial settings etc.
As an illustration I quote from the introduction of Ilyenkov's The
Metaphysics of Positivism (from the website you have given - I am
very grateful for having those texts so readily available!) :
And only materialist dialectics (dialectical materialism), only the
organic unity of dialectics with materialism arms the cognition of
man with the means and ability to construct an objectively-true image
of the surrounding world, the means and ability to reconstruct this
world in accordance with the objective tendencies and lawful nature
of its own development.
Note that I do not think this strategy to be used only in one part of
the world. Obviously this is a very old cultural strategy. Shamans
used variants thereof, the churches perfected it with their "truth"
articles, and most successfully the majority of the sciences of the
19th and 20th centuries. Their leading figures enforce loyalty of
their students in the name of scientific "objectivity" and largely
succeed so disguising their particular interest perspectives.
I say this all in the greatest worry: it is the weakness of the
cultural sciences that enables that silliest of transfers, namely to
treat of humans in culture with the conceptual and methodological
tools developed in the sciences of stuff and energy. We are in need
of conceptual tools that span our world in toto and so allow to
understand rather than to posit or deny the differences.
Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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