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Re: [xmca] Re: xmca Digest, Vol 45, Issue 47: Ilyenkov on ideality and social relations

Derek, I am curious, instead of just observable you say 'objectively observable' - are you distinguishing the concept from just 'plain' observable, or from 'subjectively' observable (whatever that is), or, perhaps, from objectively 'invisible'? Just curious. If I take your questions in their everyday sense, I would answer as Andy did, yes and yes, for what that's worth. I wonder who would say no, and why.
As for Martin's question which has been driving this thread, what did Ilyenkov say and mean, I think we should try to keep on track with that. Martin and this thread has gotten me to take a new and more thorough than ever look at the essay The Concept of the Ideal again, and I am grateful for that. That essay had a big influence on me when I first came around CHAT about 6 years ago, and it is continuing to teach me now.
Once I began to grasp those ideas, the power of cultural-historical methodology and activity theory began to sink in for me. Ilyenkov stresses that the boundary between the material and the ideal is fundamental to philosophy, and one of the interesting things he does in this essay is trace the different approaches to ideality taken by Plato and Hegel, which he contrasts in detail with Kant, and then shows how Marx revolutionized the whole concept with his rigorously materialist approach to consciousness and activity. It is an interesting way of looking at the entire history of Western philosophy.
Interestingly, a central aspect of the essay is that it is really a correction of Marx. Marx never uses the term ideality the way Ilyenkov uses the term. Ilyenkov analyzes a number of places where Marx uses the term, correcting him each time. I went back to some of those quotes. There is one paragraph in Capital Ilyenkov points to where Marx uses the term about five times. But each time, Marx uses the term as a synonym for mental, for consciousness, just as Hegel did. So Ilyenkov spends some time explaining that, gently correcting Marx. But Ilyenkov's main argument and thrust, of course, is that Marx, especially in his study of exchange value and use value, very much uses the **concept** of ideality as Ilyenkov explains it.
Ilyenkov uses the term ideality as a synonym for actually two kinds of things: artifacts, and human activities when engaged with artifacts, including goals and needs. But only when the two things are together, in motion. Sociocultural motion, if you will. His very last point in this essay is that if you want to see ideality, you can't separate the artifacts and activities, you have to see them together, as a process, as an unceasing process of mutual transformation. This may be part of the some of the difficulty of a text-based email discussion, which focuses by nature on words like "object" and "artifact" and abstract things like "definitions." Always a hazard of philosophical inquiry, those frozen words. It just takes a little work sometimes to get them to thaw them out and get them to reflect the right motions.
What Ilyenkov is aiming at doing in this essay, I believe, is completing the revolutionary way of looking at human activity that underlies Marx's Capital. Human life isn't just a matter of labor being reflected in the exchange value of commodities, he explains - human life is a matter of human activity being represented in **all** artifacts. (Unless there are two kinds of artifacts in this regard, of course). And just as Marx discovered the secret of value, so elusive to bourgeois economists, he also discovered the secret of ideality, so elusive to idealist philosophers. The answer to the puzzle is the same for both - it's all about labor, or more generally, activity. The secret of value, the secret of all artifacts, the secret of meaning itself, the secret of ideality: is activity. 

Well, that is my take on Ilyenkov's concept.
On your presumptions, by the way, I am uncomfortable with your suggestion that individual action is reducible to shared activity. It is certainly based on it and derived from it, but individuals can and do add their own idiosyncratic twists and complexities to the cultural and social activities they interiorize and actualize, additions that don't "reduce." I have in mind the fact that some can turn such complexities into rather fine works of art that others cherish - and all kinds of forms of creativity, (some of which are cherished more than others!).
My reasoning here is based on ideas from dialectics and complex systems theory, where I would place the psychology of the individual at one of the highest levels of complexity in the human system. This notion is counterintuitive to the usual idea that groups of people are more complex than single individuals, and societies the most complex of all.
Certainly, the complexities of say the economic system are very real, and that lays the foundation of a society, according to my thinking. On top of that are many complex levels of superstructure, where, as we ascend, things keep getting more complex, with more degrees of freedom emerging, and entities gaining increased sensitivity to small changes, until we get to the psychology of a single individual, perhaps the crowning achievement of the whole shebang. At the same time as possessing their ultracomplex mind, this thing that can "contemplate," this individual, is also participating at all the "lower" levels. At the biological level this mind is a brain with neurons, and that is itself a highly complex thing. At the economic level, that mind is perhaps a worker, a home dweller, a commuter. At the social, historical, cultural levels, perhaps a parent, an artist. And so on. The Big Challenge in my mind is how to grasp and make sense of all these things happening at the same time.
A key to this, in my view, is to try to understand how each of these "levels" that humans engage in obeys its own unique laws of development, while also interacting with other levels in often very intricate ways, and again, in its unique manner. Thus, an artist- painter interacts with the laws of aesthetics AND the law of value - and the laws of optics - and much more. And somehow puts them altogether and paints something no one else ever has, or will, again.
This may be part of the problem with this pesky units of analysis issue - when we are talking about the psychology of an individual human, we are talking about something sitting at the top of the most complex heap of physical, biological, social, historical, cultural, and individual developmental processes in the known universe. It may make sense, in my view, to look for a **constellation** of units of analysis, microcosms, and germ cells. The scientific problem may lie more in figuring out how to coordinate them, than discover new ones.
The units of analyses we often discuss on xmca - word-meaning, mediated action, concerted action, class struggle, conditional reflexes, the cathartic experience, are ALL relevant to the psychology of an individual.
My question is: what happens when we claim we have found the one that the others can be reduced to?
Ilyenkov, interestingly, made a big contribution to this discussion, too. His best known work is The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's Capital (1960), where he elaborates on concept of the concrete universal. Perhaps that concept could shed some light on the u-of-a/cell/microcosm puzzle. But that is another discussion.
Back to Martin's question and the topic of this thread ... Ilyenkov begins his essay with a discussion of how the term 'ideality' is used in different contexts. Derek, I am curious, from the concerted action theory point of view you have developed, what is your concept of the ideal, where you would find the boundary between ideality and the material, how would you analyze this problem of the artifact? I suspect your questions about USB keys and people's actions are leading toward something ... 

Cheers,
- Steve


On Feb 23, 2009, at 5:53 PM, Derek Melser wrote:


Dear Andy, Martin, Steve, David and other contributors to this thread,
Let me butt in here, possibly a bit cheekily...
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.

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 the answers to them 
are.
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>


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> 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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