This apparent piece of nonsense of mine is the key issue in a nutshell. It
embodies almost all the issues of our discussion, our differences (and I
might add our concordances): the determination of rationality, of
objectivity and of men's relation to nature and nature's to men.
These issues are all very interrelated in so many different ways it's
somewhat difficult to consider where best to start. I'll begin with the
issue of 'rationality' since you directly challenge the proposition that
"dialectics is a universal property of all life activity no matter how
primitive", by asking if "an amoeba a being-for-itself in addition to a
being-in-itself".
1. Rationality: First, note that I described the subject of the universal
dialectical property to be 'life activity' and not the life form itself.
Second, I did not here suggest anything specific about the awareness of the
life form of his own activity. The reference for the assertion of
rationality as essence of life activity comes directly from the passage
the Grundrisse where Marx describes the essence of life activity as
self-perpetuation [the projection of being into the future through
reproduction - the appropriation of nature's goods and their transformation
into the forms of one's own organic body and, in the case of man and other
tool making life forms, one's own inorganic body:
"When the narrow bourgeois form has been peeled away, what is wealth, if not
the universality of needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive powers, etc.,
of individuals, produced in universal exchange? What, if not the full
development of human control over the forces of nature--those of his own
nature as well as those of so-called 'nature'? What, if not the absolute
elaboration of his creative dispositions, without any preconditions other
than antecedent historical evolution which makes the totality of this
evolution--i.e., the evolution of all human powers as such, unmeasured by
any PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED YARDSTICK--an end in itself? What is this, if not
a situation where man does not reproduce himself in any determined form, but
produces his totality? Where he does not seek to remain something formed by
the past, but is in theabsolute movement of becoming" (Marx 1857 Grundrisse)
The fact that life forms activities are directed to concrete future states,
they are, no matter how simple or mechanical, exercises in reason. This
why, if you will permit a reference to an earlier thread, I regard the
investigation into biosemiology to be a vitally important exploration of the
roots of reason. The most primitive forms of self reproduction are a
totally mechanical process yet
they are at the very root of the rational process.
We are not here proposing that nature has a rational aspect, a la Spinoza.
As I wrote earlier I really have no idea what nature or Nature is. What I am
proposing is that the roots of rationality are in the mechanical purposive
activity of life forms and that whatever life forms "know" [including
ourselves of course] is a function of our practical activities in nature
FROM THE VERY ORIGINS OF THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE in whatever form it
may be acquired, stored, recovered etc.
As I see it abstract life activity has for Marx the same relation to his
theory of human activity and human history that the abstract concept of
being has for Hegel's theory of science. Much as Hegel derives virtually
his whole system of science from the contradictions implicit in the theory
of being (in quality or determinateness to be exact) so too one can see the
whole development of first humanness and then the concrete development of
human sociality in his abstract description of the essence of life and of
life activity. It is this more than all else that makes Marx's theory a
materialist or natural science theory of humanity in all its aspects.
2. Objectivity: In its essence objectivity refers to conscious reflection
on something rather than the reflection of something in consciousness. That
is to say that objectivity is the function of a activity and not something
we passively assimilate as we confront the daily world. Some of the things
or, better, activities we objectify (very few in my opinion) are those of
our own subjective consciousness. Most are not. Most of our objectifying
involves activities that are the preconditions for our own subjectivities,
either the activities that emerge out of the collective subjective
activities
of men learned or developed in the course of collaborative activities while
others involve activities that are preconditions for consciousness in all
its aspects. Hegel, for example, divides his system of logic into two
parts, objective logic and subjective logic or notional logic where the
former is that logic which we enact without subjective reflection. Objective
logic is objective because the only way we can deal with it intellectually
in any other fashion than just doing it is as an object of reflection [I
expect AB to come down on me like a ton of bricks on this one].
In its many concrete manifestations in human activity, intellectual and
material, the principle of self-perpetuation, at least for men, is as
subjective an issue as is the concept of self; the idea of property, of
individual interests and even of "family values" are directly related to the
activity of primitive self-perpetuation, though highly charged with many
concrete connections to the complexities of human social existence. These
slogans of superficial individualism of Social Darwinism and its
inheritors, the bio-sociologists and others like them, only scratch the
surface of things. Regarded objectively, the self-perpetuating activity of
life forms is sublated in virtually all forms of human activity from eating
and intercourse to social labour, wage slavery, and social revolution.
3. Nature, Man, and Consciousness: Ilyenkov, along with Hegel, Marx and
Lenin, repeatedly make the point that only men, or mostly men [I do think
that at least some of the mammals can do some simple notional thinking
though this remains to be proved], can reflect upon the world as an other,
as an observer of things and activities, including themselves and their own
actions, and thereby objectify the subjects of their awareness. On the one
hand this capacity of man to reflect upon his activities and on the world in
general is a powerful means for imposing the satisfaction of human needs on
the body of nature. On the other hand, coupled with the radical division of
labour of modern industrial society and more specifically the division of
labour between those who think about things for other people to do and those
who do them, the human faculty for objectification of the world leads to two
fundamental kinds of restricted thinking.
The first of these is fetishism, the merging of human activity with nature
and the assumption that the products of human labour are in fact the
products of nature, i.e. the rising body counts of natural disasters,
economic individualism and so on. The second is an often very subtle form
of idealism in which men, mostly those who are deeply involved in
intellectual activity, reify the objects (the conceptual products)of their
subjective reflection on things and elevate them to the status of
independent natural reality, to the status of being independent of human
practice. Ilyenkov (In chapter 7 Dialectical Logic 1974) likens this
practice of philosophers to the entrepreneur's reification of value as the
essential property of things, and even produces a schematic analogy between
the accumulation of capital by the entrepreneur and of 'reality' by the
philosopher. The concept of nature of the thinker or thinkers who
"ontologise" their thoughts and who interpret them (and objective reality)
as independent of human intervention (in their origins in human practice and
in their ultimate objects as theory to be tested in practice) presents a
sort of negative to that of the fetishist. The fetishist merges human
activity with nature and interprets all his assumptions about the world as
natural, common sensical, while the ontologising philosopher disassociates
his view of the world from all human intervention, most of all his own, and
regards it as the absolute and unchangeable nature of things.
Ultimately everything is linked together with everything else and this no
less true for these topics than for any other. Human activity, like that of
all other life forms, is that of a self-reproducing (in the widest sense of
the word) system that projects its extant state into the future. Naturally,
the environment into which men work to realize their perpetuation is in a
constant state of change, not least of all as a consequence of their own
prior activities to this end. Thus, the key to self-reproduction is
adaptation. Men, more than any other creature adapt by adapting themselves
to new conditions; their own bodies, the artifacts they use to change nature
to their own advantage, and the activities they enact with both in their
interaction with their environment. [I would also add here that despite the
apparent security afforded us by the world of artifacts we have accumulated
it is at least my view that despite all men exist no further from the edge
of extinction than they did 2-3my ago on the African Savanna]. Our success
in this regard comes from our faculties for examining and evaluating
practice as an object or objective activity and then using these past
observations for planning to do better the next time around.
The natural sciences reflect exactly this relation between intellect and
practice. There are no real ontological truths in science. Nothing is holy
or beyond question and the only real proof is a sort of abstracted form of
practice, experimentation. Whatever ontologising scientists do, and some
do, is tolerated by the scientific community only insofar as it remains
speculation and does not interfere with the scientific process. Great
scientists have had "ideas"; Newton philosophized that the world was a
clock wound up by the creator and then left to its own devices, Einstein
was sure that "God does not play dice", and Hawkins was until a few years
ago sure that unified field theory would answer all the questions of
physics. Most of these and many more are, fortunately, either forgotten or
on the way to being forgotten, though the scientific contributions of their
makers remain important, even vital, components of the giant artefactual
system men have built to enable their persistence in the world.
Finally, the natural science of human activity and history, and this is what
Historical Materialism, should be and sometimes is, can least afford the
ontologising forays that occasionally crop up in fields such as physics,
chemistry and organic sciences. The very abstractness of the subjects of
these sciences renders the prononciamentos of important scientists fairly
harmless in the long run. The natural science of human activity is as
concrete as a science can be. It deals directly with human activity and
with its consequences, and philosophic dogmatism of the left and of the
right can only cause disaster, to real people and real communities
(as we have witnessed in the past and as we do witness today). The only way
to avoid these disasters, to the extent they can be avoided at all, is
through adopting a critical and practical approach to theorizing and to
subject every idea to serious debate and testing much as we are doing here.
Oudeyis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 4:28
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
A question on one of your assertions:
Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but
rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life
activity no matter how primitive.
How can dialectics be a property of all life no matter how primitive when
you deny a dialectics of nature apart from praxis, which assumes cognitive
activity? Is an amoeba a being-for-itself in addition to a
being-in-itself?
At 03:47 PM 5/29/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote:
Nicely put.
Several tentative responses:
The question remains, though, even within our sphere of
> action, discovering nature's properties independent of us, is
> dialectics
> just a matter of cognition, or the structure of social activity more
> generally, or does it begin in the natural processes apart from
intelligent
> life activity that, after all, have ultimately generated conscious
> beings? Is there an objective dialectics in this latter sense?
Following Hegel's schema of the development of logic, I would argue that
just as there is objective logic (i.e. logical activity that can only be
"known reflectively" as an object of reflection) there is an objective
dialectic. The basic kernel of both logic and dialectic (they are after
all
the same) is purposive activity. It matters not that the agents of
purposive activity are fully or even at all conscious of their cognitive
activity, the very prosecution of intentional activity implies
logic/dialectics.
Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but
rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life
activity no matter how primitive.
> Science, let us say, correctly characterizes the natural world
independently of us. But is dialectics pertaining to this
> independent external world the dialectics of nature itself or the
> dialectics of science?
I think I gave a partial answer to this question in my response to Steve's
last message. The products of human activity should never be regarded as
the issue of pure logic or of the unfettered human imagination. Even
Hegel
would not accept this proposal.
Science no less then the material products of human labour represent a
unity
of human activity in an independent external world that has existed prior
to
man's emergence and confronts men's ambitions with conditions to which he
must accommodate his activity if they are to realize their goals. Labour
is
a cooperative activity in which men work with nature as their partner.
Oudeyis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 12:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
> I will need to address subsequent posts on this topic, but first: there
> is
> an interesting implicit subtlety here. If the question is not whether
> nature is dialectical but whether science (the study of nature) is
> dialectical, then even though nature exists independently of man,
> science
> as a form of human activity and cognition does not, since,
> tautologically,
> we only know what exists via interaction with the rest of nature and
> can't
> speak of anything else except as a hypothetical metaphysical
> possibility. The question remains, though, even within our sphere of
> action, discovering nature's properties independent of us, is
> dialectics
> just a matter of cognition, or the structure of social activity more
> generally, or does it begin in the natural processes apart from
intelligent
> life activity that, after all, have ultimately generated conscious
> beings? Is there an objective dialectics in this latter sense? Again,
> here's the ambiguity. Science, let us say, correctly characterizes the
> natural world independently of us. But is dialectics pertaining to this
> independent external world the dialectics of nature itself or the
> dialectics of science?
>
> More to come.
>
> At 12:14 PM 5/27/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >but what about history of nature? I mean before there wasn't
> >anything
that
> >can be qualified as man's interaction with world. does in your
> >view
> >dialectics start with the appearance of a species that does not
> >simply
> >adjust
> >itself to nature like other animals but starts changing it more or
> >less
> >consciously by labour?
> >
> >NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN
HISTORY
> >IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION
> >WITH
THE
> >WORLD
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