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Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation
Eric,
Can you offer us a summary of Spinoza's position? And does he end up on my
side, or Andy's? ;)
Martin
On 1/27/09 10:11 AM, "ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org" <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:
>
> Hello all:
>
> Having been away from a computer for a matter of days it appears I have
> missed a spirited debate : ( What strikes as most remarkable is that much
> of what has been debated and discussed is addressed in Spinoza's "Ethics".
> Right down to the example of two mirrors placed at 90 degrees may be
> theoretical but in practice quite difficult. My favorite example from
> Spinoza is that both a triangle and two right angles contain 180 degrees
> but that does not make them equal.
>
> eric
>
>
>
> "David H
> Kirshner" To: "eXtended Mind,
> Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> <dkirsh@lsu.edu> cc:
> Sent by: Subject: RE: [xmca] Re: Kant
> and the Strange Situation
> xmca-bounces@web
> er.ucsd.edu
>
>
> 01/25/2009 05:35
> AM
> Please respond
> to "eXtended
> Mind, Culture,
> Activity"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> How do you read this as a statement of a purely technical limitation?
>
> Because the project of gaining an exact picture is presented as
> conceivable, just impossible in practice.
>
> David
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Martin Packer
> Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 6:09 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation
>
> David,
>
> Marx wrote that the proposal that humans can obtain an exact picture of
> our
> social system (let alone the natural universe) is "an absurd idea, pure
> nonsense." How do you read this as a statement of a purely technical
> limitation?
>
> Martin
>
>
> On 1/24/09 6:59 AM, "David H Kirshner" <dkirsh@lsu.edu> wrote:
>
>> One could use these quotes to contrast Ilyenkov as a structuralist and
>> Marx as having poststructural tendencies. But Marx's objection to an
>> exact picture of the world is a technical one regarding the
>> impossibility of marshalling all of the requisite data as history
>> continues to unfold. This is quite different from a poststructural
>> critique which regards the presumed fixed point of view from which to
>> view the data as fictitious.
>> David
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>> On Behalf Of Martin Packer
>> Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 8:14 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation
>>
>> Andy, thanks for adding to the height of my reading pile! :)
>>
>> Until I complete the assignment (at least partly) I will merely
>> juxtapose
>> here two quotations whose contrast gives me pause for thought. The
> first
>> from the first page of the book by Ilyenkov you've provided:
>>
>> "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."
>>
>> The second from Carlos Marx himself:
>>
>> "The formulation on [in? MP] thought of an exact picture of the
>> world-system
>> in which we live is impossible for us, and will always remain
>> impossible. If
>> at any time in the evolution of mankind such a final, conclusive
> system
>> of
>> the interconnections within the world... were brought to completion,
>> this
>> would mean that human knowledge had reached its limit, and, from the
>> moment
>> when society had been brought into accord with that system, further
>> historical evolution would be cut short-which would be an absurd idea,
>> pure
>> nonsense" (A Handbook of Marxism, 1935, p. 234)
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On 1/23/09 5:56 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Martin, I have converted to PDF Ilyenkov's book defending
>>> Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism":
>>>
>>> http://marx.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/positivism.pdf
>>>
>>> I think you can agree that if such a renowned Hegel
>>> interpreter as Ilyenkov can defend "reflection" and Lenin's
>>> book, then there has to be something in it. The above is
>>> much shorter and easier to read than Lenin's book, BTW.
>>>
>>> Sidney Hook is far from alone in the sentiments he
>>> expresses. But you have to take Lenin and Engels and the
>>> Russian CHAT people *as a whole* and this criticism (which I
>>> sympathise with) of the notion of "reflection" as "passive"
>>> is, as you have remarked yourself, constantly contradicted
>>> by the "change the world" notes constantly and discordantly
>>> accompanying every mention of "reflection."
>>>
>>> This is the point: humans change the world, but only
>>> according to its own nature. The aeroplane actually obeys
>>> the laws of nature as it flies across the sky. Hegel has a
>>> great bit on this:
>>>
>>> "So also when someone starts building a house, his decision
>>> to do so is freely made. But all the elements must help. And
>>> yet the house is being built to protect man against the
>>> elements. Hence the elements are here used against
>>> themselves. But the general law of nature is not disturbed
>>> thereby. The building of a house is, in the first instance,
>>> a subjective aim and design. On the other hand we have, as
>>> means, the several substances required for the work - iron,
>>> wood, stones. The elements are used in preparing this
>>> material: fire to melt the iron, wind to blow the fire,
>>> water to set wheels in motion in order to cut the wood, etc.
>>> The result is that the wind, which has helped to build the
>>> house, is shut out by the house; so also are the violence of
>>> rains and floods and the destructive powers of fire, so far
>>> as the house is made fire-proof. The stones and beams obey
>>> the law of gravity and press downwards so that the high
>>> walls are held up. Thus the elements are made use of in
>>> accordance with their nature and cooperate for a product by
>>> which they become constrained. In a similar way. the
>>> passions of men satisfy themselves; they develop themselves
>>> and their purposes in accordance with their natural
>>> destination and produce the edifice of human society. Thus
>>> they fortify a structure for law and order against themselves."
>>>
>>> http://marx.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction.htm
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> Martin Packer wrote:
>>>> At risk of actually killing the horse I'm flogging, I want to return
>> one
>>>> more time to the debate over 'reflection.' Mike asked me why I would
>> be sad
>>>> to hear that Vygotsky was significantly influenced by Lenin. I've
>> been
>>>> reading some of the work in the 1920s and 30s by Sidney Hook, on the
>> topic
>>>> of Marx and Hegel. I'm copying below a fairly long excerpt in which
>> Hook
>>>> takes to task both Engels and Lenin (in 'Materialism and
>> Empirio-Criticism,'
>>>> at least) for viewing ideas as "reflections" of reality - exactly in
>> the
>>>> sense of mirror images or copies. That Lenin did this was the sense
> I
>> have
>>>> got from reading other comments on Lenin, though I haven't read
> Lenin
>>>> myself.
>>>>
>>>> The problem, as Hook points out, is that the reflection view treats
>> thinking
>>>> as a passive process, that solipsism and skepticism cannot be
>> avoided, that
>>>> in this view knowledge cannot be creative, and consequently
> knowledge
>> of the
>>>> world cannot change the world. This, as he notes, is a long way from
>> Marx.
>>>>
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>> The excerpt is from:
>>>> Hook, S. (1928). The Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism. II. The
>> Journal
>>>> of Philosophy, 25(6), 141-155.
>>>> [ http://www.jstor.org/stable/2014691 ]
>>>>
>>>> "He [Engels] presents the "dialectic" as the method which
>>>> corrects the limited and ossified character of classificatory
>> thinking
>>>> and claims that it enables one to avoid the predicament of English
>>>> empiricism which is peculiarly addicted to this way of thinking.
>>>> But Engels failed to understand the real weakness of English
>>>> empiricism. Otherwise he would have realized that his uncritical
>>>> reference to ideas as reflections, pictures, or images (Abbilder,
>>>> Spiegelbilder) of things made him fall into an epistemological trap
>>>> whose mazes lead into the cul-de-sacs of solipsism and nominalism-
>>>> the very positions he was anxious to avoid. Since sensations,
> accord-
>>>> ing to Engels, gave immediate knowledge, the organizing activity of
>>>> thought becomes purely ancillary to classifying and relating sensa-
>>>> tions. Practice and experiment, which he later says must serve as
>>>> the criteria of truth, are introduced by a double inconsistency. For
>>>> if our sensations are copies, we can never know anything of the
>>>> originals or even know that there are any, while if sensations give
>>>> immediate knowledge there is no sense in trying to check up upon
>>>> them by experiments which only give other sensations, just as im-
>>>> mediate. The disastrous consequences of the belief in the cognitive
>>>> character of sensations comes to light in Lenin's fanatical
>> insistence
>>>> upon accepting every word of Engels literally. According to Lenin,
>>>> sensation is "a copy, photograph, and reflection of a reality
>> existing
>>>> independently of it." He takes Plekhanov to task for regarding
>>>> sensations as "signs" or "symbols" of what things are, instead of
>>>> adhering to the crude formula, "(sensations) are copies, photo-
>>>> graphs, images, mirror-reflections of things" (p. 195). He adds
>>>> further on, "the idea that knowledge can 'create' forms and change
>>>> the primeval chaos into order, is an idealist notion. The world is
>>>> a uniform world of matter in motion, and our cognition, being the
>>>> highest product of nature, is in a position only to reflect this
>> law."
>>>> But if knowledge only "reflects" the laws of the world, how can it
>>>> change the world? A mirror or a lake reflects the natural scene,
>>>> but neither knows nor changes it. This is, indeed, a far cry from
>>>> the functional and experimental theory expressed in Marx's gloss
>>>> on Feurbach and strange words from one who believed that by "mass
>>>> action" and the creation of new machines and forms of distribution,
>>>> a better social system will be evolved." (p. 149-150)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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