CB,
Continued from last message.
First, let's not forget that a lot of human learning is human see human
do. And some of the things we learn this way are as complex as ant-fishing
with a straw.
[it's actually quite a complicated affair to get it just right. I've tried
it though I drew a line at eating the ants.]
According to Vygotsky, a truly creative relation to cultural conventions
(the development of conceptual speech) is a rather late stage in the
development of the child.
Second, Ilyenkov sees the origins of ideality in social labour, i.e. direct
cooperation, rather than in tool using. If I were to search for examples of
pre-human ideality I would look for collective work activity rather than
tool use. A number of pre-human predators; female lions and house cats,
canines of all sorts, and chimpanzee males engage in cooperative chase and
ambush of game (and in the case of chimpanzees of each other). Chase and
ambush of living game is a complex and very fluid activity requiring
considerable coordination between participants if it's to succeed, and could
conceivably be a basis for the establishment of ideal forms (rules or
principles of action designed to collectively achieve communal goals). It's
also possible that collective care and nursing of young characteristic of
prides of lionesses and of house cats, most canines and many of the primates
might also qualify here. Like pre-human toolmaking and use these primitive
ideals would be very abstract and particular to certain kinds of activities
and never reach the concreteness and universality of human ideality.
Oudeyis
- Original Message -
From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx
andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 17:08
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :BakhurstVictor
Victor
CB: Here we see why the transgenerational transmission of how to
make and use tools is the key type of social connection defining humans.
There are studies showing that chimps , on their own , int the wild, make
and use tools, such as sticks to dig in ant hills. But they don't pass on
to the next generation how to do it.
But they do or at least the women do:
-clip-
Actually, we've known for a long time that social groups of monkeys
and apes develop special cultural traits that are intergenerational for
the
group and distinctive from those of other groups. This was first noticed
by
Japanese researchers into the behaviour of different groups of Japanese
Macaques.
Some groups wash their food others don't, some bath in the hot
spring waters while others don't enter the water at all and so on. Since
then animal ethologists in Africa and Asia have been mapping the cultural
traditions of our anthropoid brothers.
Clearly, monkeys and apes do have cultural traditions that are
passed between generations, but it is much less sure that these traditions
are anything more than particular features of an otherwise non-cultural
array of practices. What distinguishes human culture from that of other
creatures is its universality, i.e. man's absolute dependence on culture
to
learn how to behave at all.
^
CB: Yes, however, what apes and monkeys have is monkey see monkey do
traditions, i.e. imitation. They don't have culture, because they don't
have
symbolling or _ideality_ . They are limited in what can be passed on to
new
generations by what can be taught through imitation. The distinguishing
characteristic of humans is ideality which allows a qualitatively
different
passage of experiences between generations.
^^
In truth, we should expect that ideality (and tool making) would
appear
historically, first, as a particularity, an abstracted individual
feature of
the universal life activity that preceeded it, rather than as a
full-blown
universal as it is for modern humans. In principle, the development
of a
universal such as social labour, tool making and commodity
production should
first appear as an individual case, become a particular class of
phenomena
as it expands beyond the individual case (as it does for learned
termite
fishing among chimpanzees) and only become a universal when it
becomes the
way things are done by everyone.
Ideality is necessary for this transgenerational transmission to
become as
efficient and extensive as it has among humans.
Thus , imagination ( ideality) , planning, focus for days,
weeks, years
at
a time on the same goal and purpose, all based on ideality and
imagination,
are the distinguishing characteristics of human labor, not tool
use.
On the other hand, the individual hunter or laborer's imagination
and
ideality contains so much information because many others are able
to
put
info into the system or ideological system or cultural tradition
that
makes that imagination.
Notice for example, that the significance of upright posture for
