here's the MORE LATER
Neopositivists, Marxist and non-Marxist, maintain that reason is the
objective expression of the physical structure of the individual brain and
as such is fundamentally and irreparably distinct from sensual experience.
From this point of view the analysis of intellect and the activities
emergent from intellectual process can only be understood by deep research
into the logical forms, categories, inherent to the individual human brain,
i.e. abstract, qua formal, logic. This essentially psychologistic approach
to human activity intellectual and practical contradicts the very basis of
Marxian theory, beginning with the first thesis of Ad Feuerbach all the way
through to the very last chapter of the third volume of Capital.
Ilyenkov in the first two paragraphs of Chapter 9 of Dialectical Logic
(written 1974, published 1977) presents the argument against the research
strategy of Neo-positivism in a most succinct form.
1. Like any other science logic is concerned with explaining and
systematising objective forms and patterns not dependent on men's will and
consciousness, within which human activity, both material-objective and
mental-theoretical, takes place. Its subject matter is the objective laws of
subjective activity.
2. Such a conception is quite unacceptable -to traditional logic
since, from the standpoint of the latter, it unites the unjoinable, i.e. an
affirmation and its negation, A and not-A, opposing predicates. For the
subjective is not objective, and vice versa. -But the state of affairs in
the real world and in the science comprehending it also proves unacceptable
to traditional logic, because in it the transition, formation, and
transformation of things and processes (including into their own opposite)
prove to be the essence of the matter at every step. Traditional logic is
consequently inadequate to the real practice of scientific and therefore has
to be brought into correspondence with the latter.
Note that the essence of the problem is not the (discardable) Aristotelian
axiom of the "law against the excluded middle" but the inadequacy of any and
all forms of abstract logic to model the essentially dynamic and
contradictory character of the encounter between human consciousness and the
things and processes of the world (including of course of human
consciousness itself).
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx
andthe thinkers he inspired'" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 18:09
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Contradiction inherent in symbolling
Thanks Victor,
Am still contemplating what you say below.
Hadn't thought of this - " the kernel of dialectics is purposive
activity, activity with an end " before. Hmmm
Charles
^^^^^^
Victor _
Well put.
I assume your message concerns the problem of expressing dialectics
through
formal logical formula.
If so, we can investigate more concretely the utility of formal
logical
expressions for representations of dialectical relations, than the true
but
rather abstract problem of the correspondence (not identity) between the
symbolic systems used to represent the message and the thing represented.
The kernel of dialectics is purposive activity, activity with an end.
That is, dialectics emerges when life forms do things in order to make
some
change in the state of the world of their activity (including, of course,
themselves). Most dialectical activity is not even willed much less
conscious. Some human dialectical activity is, indeed, conscious, and
some
is expressed in language form (that which is communicated between men).
Finally, a relatively small amount of human dialectical activity is
expressed in the form of concepts, some of which take the form of formal
logic. Formal logical representation is a special category within the
general category of dialectics. Having described the place of formal
logic
in the category of dialectics we can say that the correspondence of formal
logical systems to dialectics in general will, by virtue of the former
being
only a very particular representation of dialectical, i.e. reasoned or
logical activity, be restricted relative to the category of dialectics as
a
whole.
In the case of formal logic these restrictions are in part
represented
by its definitions, axioms, and propositions, but there are also other,
(as
Marx would put it) hidden restrictions that are necessary to the practice
of
formal logic. As we wrote above, some human dialectical activity (that
which is expressly social) is expressed through language. Most language
use
according to researchers and theorists of language learning and use, such
as
Vygotsky, is immediate representation of experience, particularistic and
directly related to the activity and things represented.
Conceptualisation
is a special development of meaningful speech in which particulars are
categorised by abstract representations in which particulars are grouped
according to some shared relation. The particular utility of the concept
is
in the use of the abstraction to design models (surrogates) of world
conditions entirely from symbolic components without reference to
immediate
experience. While the concept as the primary instrument of designed
activity imparts great advantages to the development of human practice:"We
pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider
conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to
shame
many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes
the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect
raises
his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality." (Marx
Capital
vol 1.)
it also restricts all creative human activity to the possible constructs
of
the linguistic system by which it is formulated.
For Hegel, conceptual activity includes all forms of consciously designed
purposive activity, i.e. the sciences. This is a far larger category
than
that of 'formal logic.' Formal logic is reason divested of all content
but
that of relation. In terms of language forms, formal logic is meaningful
speech reduced to the conjunctives, determiners, and prepositions. The
subjects of the employment of these operators, the nouns, pronouns,
adverbs,
verbs and adjectives is fortuitous and the outcome of pure logic is
indifferent to the relation of the reasoning to actual practice in the
world. This is the 'Pure Reason' of Kant, free of all relation to the
world
of movement and of sense. Need I say that the concept of pure reason as
anything but intellectual exercise is pure nonsense from the viewpoint of
objective idealist and of materialist dialectical concepts of knowledge.
MORE LATER.
Victor
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