Steve, Andy,
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?
Yes, Steve, the word *objectively* is crucial. Any study claiming to
be
scientific must employ objective observation methods. That is, all the
variables affecting the phenomenon under observation must be
recorded and
controlled, phenomena under observation must be strictly quantifiable
(observing implies measuring), observations must be precisely
repeatable (by
anyone anywhere employing the same observation techniques), and so
on. And
it's no good saying '*Oh, that's just the physical sciences*'
because there
ain't no other kind. Unless you employ *objective* observation
methods, you
are not doing science. [Incidentally, I love science, particularly
neurophysiology, and zoology generally.]
What other kinds of observation, of observation method, are there? I
am
interested in two in particular. First is the kind of informal
everyday
objectivity that science is a rigorous version of. This is our shared
perception of things in the physical world. The objectivity of
things in the
world, indeed the world itself, is simply a reflecton of the
shareability
and repeatability of our perceptions. (Roughly, if they are not
shareable
and repeatable, they're illusions not perceptions.)
However, the most interesting unscientific observation method, and
by far
our most important everyday perceptual mode, is what I call 'empathic'
observation, or just 'empathy'. Other terms used to label it are:
*verstehen
*, *re-enactment* (Collingwood), *interpretation*, *hermeneutics*, *
simulation.*
It seems to be as plain as day that our observations of other people's
actions are all, and must be, empathic rather than objective. In
order to
see what action is being performed we have to see what the other is
doing as
if we were doing it ourselves. We perceive the things (including any
artifacts) relevant to the action in much the same way as the actual
agent
is perceiving them. We organise these perceptions, order and
prioritise
them, etc., according to the action being performed. The action we are
imagining performing is the 'vehicle' for our perceptions. Indeed,
to the
extent we are sharing the agent's perceptions we are actually
*imitating*him, doing them in concert with him, rather than merely
empathising. And my
claim is (and actually Vico's and Collingwood's and quite a few other
people's) that if you do not empathise, you simply do not perceive
actions.
You might, if you had a biologist's hat handy to put on, see a human
organism exhibiting some macro-physiological activity – but you
wouldn't see
George making a wry smile. You've got to empathise with George to
see that.
Similarly, if George is making a cup of tea. If you have no
experience of
making cups of tea, and you consequently cannot imagine doing what
it is you
are observing, neither will you be able to identify what George is
doing.
It also seems to me as plain as day that empathy is out of bounds for
*scientists.
*If you are doing science then, by definition, you are committing to
abandoning our everyday informal observation methods and adopting
science's
strictly objective ones.
I have to say that I find the notion of 'sciences' of history,
politics,
society, behaviour, economics, etc., as simply embarrassing. They
are not
even would-be sciences. We can only be talking pretend-science.
As for the two questions: Are either artifacts or activities
objectively
observable? My answer is no, of course they aren't. You have to
empathise
the relevant activity before you can correctly identify either.
What does this have to do with Ilyenkov? Well, Ilyenkov is
attempting to
solve exactly the same problem – about the incommensurability of
objectivity
and activity (people's activity, *our own *activity) – that I am
raising
here. He concentrates on artifacts, things made for a purpose, and
distinguishes them from natural physical. phenomena by saying that
they have
the property of 'ideality'. He then defines ideality in terms of
activity
and thus ends up saying that artifacts have a certain activity
'implicit in
them' or they 'bespeak' or 'represent' that activity. A bicycle pump
'implies' or 'signifies' the action of pumping up a tyre. Well, this
is
perfectly sensible but it doesn't take us very far. It's just saying
that
the activity is somehow 'in' the object, 'inherent' in it. This is a
fairly
unimaginative metaphor is it not?
To my mind it is much more fruitful to think of the problem as *not*
being
about the *ontology* of the artifact or activity respectively, but
instead
being about the observation technique being employed by the
observer. That
is where the distinctions should be made. In order to identify an
artifact –
in order to see it for what it is – we have to ourselves incipiently
rehearse the relevant use-activity. And this imaginative rehearsal or
re-enactment on our part straight away rules out the kind of
objectivity
that a scientist must maintain.
Derek
http://www.derekmelser.org
2009/2/25 Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
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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