Dear Andy, Martin, Steve, David and other contributors to this thread,
Let me butt in here, possibly a bit rudely...
I presume everyone agrees with LSV and me that consciousness (including
perceiving and thinking) and speech are actions of the person. [Even if
consciousness covers, or qualifies, a whole range of actions ('conscious
action'), it is still fundamentally actional – still something we /do
/(and have to learn how to do).]
And I presume everyone agrees with LSV and me that solo action is
derivative of and reducible to shared (concerted) activity, rather than
the other way round.
And I presume everyone agrees that LSV sometimes describes speech as if
it were the using of purpose-made artifacts (words qua 'tools') and at
other times describes speech as if it were not an artifact-using kind of
action at all, but rather a pure action (like sighing ostentatiously,
signalling 'no' or plucking a grape). [I agree with the 'pure action'
view. A written word is a graphic representation of an act of speaking.
But that act of speaking is not literally a matter of 'using a word'.
Even Skinner saw that.]
Whichever side we come down on on the 'words as artifacts' issue, we
still have to face the fact that there are such things as purpose-made
artifacts and they are somehow to be distinguished from natural
phenomena. And there are such things as people's actions too. These also
have to be distinguished, somehow, from natural phenomena.
So we are left with two very important questions. I personally would
much rather know what the answers to them are than know what any past
scholar, of whatever nationality or political persuasion, thought about
it (though that could be interesting).
1. Are purpose-made artifacts (a USB key, say, or a road sign)
objectively observable physical phenomena?
2. Are people's actions objectively observable physical phenomena?
Derek
http://www.derekmelser.org
2009/2/23 Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
I think I need to start saying things like 'ideal aspect' or
referring to 'ideality'. (Almost) everything made by human
labour has 'significance' or 'meaning' and this does not
exclude the fact that many properties of a thing may be
natural rather than ideal. The provenance of a coin
incorporates it within a country's money system, but none of
the physical properties of it establish that provenance,
because coutnerfeiters are clever. But the tarnishing of
silver coins is not an artefact, that is a natural of all
silver coins. I think 'ideality' is a property of certain
things which is quite distinct from any physical property.
How do you describe what sort of property is ideality?
Thinking about why Marx's analysis of money is so central
(for Ilyenkov for example) to a solution of the problem of
the ideal, and not just the nature of capitalism. I think
money is a kind of 'microcosm' (to link this to the
discussion with Nicolai).
People can say words are just made up, conventional symbols,
but words are just like money, and people think that money
is just a conventional symbol, too. The way money emerged
from thousands of years of human practice demonstrated how
the ideal emerges out of the practice of bringing things
into elation with one another in labour processes. I want to
think about this some more, MArtin, and thank you for your
continual challenges!
Andy
Martin Packer wrote:
> Andy,
>
> Once again you're pointing out what is material for Ilyenkov. I
didn't
> bother to emphasize what things are material, because Ilyenkov is a
> materialist. Everything in his ontology is material. He is a monist!
>
> But he still wants to draw distinctions. I should probably have
been clearer
> that when Ilyenkov writes that it is the task of philosophy to
clarify
> "the distinction between the 'ideal' and the 'real'
('material')," what he
> must mean is the distinction between what is ideal (and also
material) and
> what is material (but not also ideal). I presume that this
distinction must
> be drawn by humans (even philosophers are human!), using social
practices.
> If everything within social practice becomes ideal (if, as you
put it,
> "every artifact is... ideal"), how could this task ever be
completed? I can
> only infer that for Ilyenkov there are things within social
practice that
> are material (of course) but not ideal. And then it follows that only
> certain material things within social practice are (also) ideal.
>
> What are these ideal (yet material) things? Images, monuments, money,
> drawings, models, and "such symbolic objects" as banners, coats
of arms....
>
> Martin
>
>
>
> On 2/22/09 12:36 AM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>> Martin Packer wrote:
>>> Clearly he [Ilyenkov]
>>> understands that it is a complete mistake to draw the line
between the ideal
>>> and the material so that the mind is on one side and the world
on the other.
>>> But he evidently still wants to draw the line. My
interpretation is that he
>>> wants to draw it between those social artifacts that become
ideal and those
>>> that do not.
>> I don't think this is right Martin, though Ilyenkov focusses
>> so much on Marx's treatment of money, one wonders ... If
>> there is to be a line, then it would be between artificial
>> and natural, (i.e., part of a labour process or not part of
>> a labour process) or between the mental and the material
>> (see the commentary on Kant's idea about the real talers in
>> his pocket). But even then there could be no actual thing
>> which was wholly ideal or natural. Both the ideal and the
>> natural can be material and can be reflected in
>> consciousness. Ideal things are ideal from the beginning to
>> the end of their perception by an individual, that's the
>> point I think.
>>
>> Looking at any given artefact, there are things about it
>> which are incidental with respect to any labour process and
>> other things which can be understood only in relation to
>> their meaning in some labour process. Every artefact is (as
>> I read it) both natural and ideal.
>>
>> I take the materiality of a thing to be its existence
>> outside of consciousness and its connection with every other
>> material thing in hte universe. Materiality is therefore a
>> property of an ideal such as a coin as much as it is a
>> property of the other side of the moon. Hegel of course
>> "mistakenly" thought that ideality existed in Nature.
>>
>> In his book about Lenin, Ilyenkov says:
>>
>> 'Consciousness' let us take this term as Lenin did is
>> the most general concept which can only be defined by
>> clearly contrasting it with the most general concept of
>> 'matter', moreover as something secondary, produced and derived.
>>
>> You've raised some interesting issues in this email Martin.
>> I need to think some more about it ...
>>
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>>> I think, in fact, that the interpretation you are offering is
attributed by
>>> Ilyenkov to Hegel. For Hegel, he says (along with other
idealists such as
>>> Popper and Plato):
>>>
>>> "what begins to figure under the designation of the ³real
world² is an
>>> already ³idealised² world, a world already assimilated by
people, a world
>>> already shaped by their activity, the world as people know it,
as it is
>>> presented in the existing forms of their culture."
>>>
>>> This is your position too, isn't it - that the social world is
made up of
>>> ideal objects?
>>>
>>> Ilyenkov argues that Marx used the term 'ideal' in the same way
as Hegel,
>>> but applied it to a completely different "range of phenomena":
>>>
>>> "In Capital Marx quite consciously uses the term ³ideal² in
this formal
>>> meaning that it was given by Hegel... although the
philosophical-theoretical
>>> interpretation of the range of phenomena which in both cases is
similarly
>>> designated ³ideal² is diametrically opposed to its Hegelian
interpretation."
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
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Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
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