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Re: [xmca] Consciousness "only a part of the material quality of the man-sign"



Andy,

You're misrepresenting what I wrote, and why I wrote it. I am indeed arguing that all representational systems are material. Yet I find myself dealing constantly with colleagues who believe that psychology must study non-material representational systems. That to understand children's development, for example, requires studying their 'internal,' 'mental' representations. I was citing Donald's work as an example that does a good job of explaining human cognitive development (historical rather than ontogenetic, but that's not an important difference in this context) with reference only to representational systems that are material. Plus brain functioning, construed in non- representational ways. No tautology here, and no problem.

Martin

On Sep 26, 2009, at 7:54 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:


Martin referred to a series of "representational systems" being all "material"; I pointed out that Martin had already said that *everything*, even consciousness, was material so the statement that these representational systems were material was a "motherhood statement", i.e., a tautology.

So I responded "show me a representational system which is *not* material" which is a problem for Martin because he says that everything is material.

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