Gnostic Marxist
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“robbo203 wrote: “Subjectivity is a function of the individual alone…”
Read the post.
If you shooting yourself in the foot isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is!
You’re an ideological individualist. I’m a Marxist social productionist.Its is clear from this that you really don’t understand what individualism means at all LBird. You never have. Your grasp of sociology is crap TBH. Saying that “Subjectivity is a function of the individual alone…” is NOT what individualism is about. It should be fairly obvious to anyone what I meant by that.
Subjectivity or consciousness requires a brain. A brain is an organ located in biological individuals (normally between the ears but elsewhere in the case of some people I can think of!). Society however does not possess a brain- unless you are talking figuratuively. Ergo, society does not possess, and is incapable of experiencing, consciousness
Contary to your crude attempt to caricaturise people here who oppose your nonsensical ideas, as believing that ‘mind’ is equated to individual ‘brain’ and thoughts are just neuronal reflexes, there is a middle position between your own non-marxist idealist philosophy and this mechananical materialist perspective you false attribute to us – namely emergence theory.
This holds that that the mind supervenes or depends on the brain but is not reducible to the brain. In the same way, society supervenes or depends on individuals but is not reducible to individuals. That is the position I hold at any rate. It allows for human creativity in history but avoids falling into the trap of making ludicrous claims such as you
have made that Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent’ of humanity, because humans couldn’t know it.As I keep on pointing dinosaurs has a ‘real existence independent of humanity’ as confirmed by the fossil record. Since that existence was many millions of years prior to the existence of humanity – dinosaurs died out 66 million years long before we came along – it was clearly ‘independent of humanity’. If you think otherwise then I take it you don’t go along with the fossil record on this matter, yes?
robbo203 wrote: “Subjectivity or consciousness requires a brain. A brain is an organ located in biological individuals (normally between the ears but elsewhere in the case of some people I can think of!). Society however does not possess a brain- unless you are talking figuratuively. Ergo, society does not possess, and is incapable of experiencing, consciousness”
The saddest part of this statement is that you really don’t recognise its philosophical and ideological content.
So, it’s not surprising that politics is a complete mystery to you.
Well, you stick with ‘brain equals mind’, which is as profound as ‘power equals muscle’. I know that you’re never going to read any explanation that I can give to you, which is historical and social, so I won’t bother.
Say hello to the ‘wet matter’ and dinosaurs for me, robbo.
Well, you stick with ‘brain equals mind’, which is as profound as ‘power equals muscle’. I know that you’re never going to read any explanation that I can give to you, which is historical and social, so I won’t bother.
No the saddest part is that YOU never read anything that other people tell you. I’ve just explained to you that I’ve reject mechanical materialism in favour of emergence theory. I will make allowance for the fact that you are philosophically and sociologically ignorant and inept (which shows particularly with the drivel you write about what you imagine is “individualism”) But I did make a brief attempt to explain to you what emergence theory is about
Emergence theory holds that higher levels of reality supervene or depend on lower levels but are not reducible to lower levels. So mental states – mind – depends on a brain but is not reducible to the brain. Meaning I am saying (and said quite clearly) the brain DOES NOT EQUAL the mind. In the same way, society depends on individuals in order to exist but is not reducible to individuals.
Why don’t you ever read what other people have to say first, LBird, before posting your nonsense?
I am still waiting to hear from you whether you consider whether or not you consider dinosaurs had a ‘real existence independent of humanity’ as confirmed by the fossil record or whether you actually believe they never really existed prior to humanity despite the fossil record. I guess I will be waiting forever for you to respond – like I will be waiting forever for you to explain how – and why – you propose to organise tens of thousands of votes among the global population (nearly 8 billion people) on the validity of scientific theories
You won’t answer these questions and you will steer the conversation right away from them because you know in your heart of hearts they expose the utter folly of what you are constantly warbling on about
Sigh!
robbo203 wrote: “I’ve just explained to you that I’ve reject mechanical materialism in favour of emergence theory.”
Is the ’emergent’ outside of social production?
If so, how would humans know the ’emergent’?
If it isn’t, the ’emergent’ is our social product. Who produces and how?Robbo, to help you with the philosophy, all that you’ve done is replace the concept ‘material’ with the concept ’emergent’. Both are social products.
And, so as save time, as synonyms of ‘material’, we also have ‘real’, ‘actual’, ‘objective’, ‘physical’, etc.Whatever name you give to your ‘stuff’, I’ll ask you ‘who produced it, and how?’.
This is basic post-Kantian German Idealism, and Marx followed that tradition.
All Marx did to p-KGI was to change the ‘subject’ to ‘humanity’, from the p-KGI ‘divine’. You seem to identify with Fichte, who regarded the ‘subject’ as ‘individual’.
It’s open to anyone, of course, to choose their subject, but Marx chose ‘social’, rather than ‘god’ or ‘biology’.
LBird
The last person I need “help” from, as you patronisingly put it, with respect to understanding philosophy is you, my feathered friend.
I note that you have nothing to say about the fact that you have, yet again, completely distorted my views when you said “Well, you stick with ‘brain equals mind’”. “Brains equal minds” is precisely the mechanical materialism that everyone here has repudiated yet you continue wilfully misrepresenting what the SPGB means by materialism
I have explained briefly what emergence theory is about as a broad paradigm. In the cognitive sciences, it means mental states depend, or “supervene”, on neurophysical states but are not reducible to the latter. This is demonstrated by the fact that mental states can exert “downward causation” on neurophysical states, the placebo effect being one of the more noteworthy numerous examples of how this can happen. But neurophysical states can also exert upward causation on mental states as exemplified by such things as mood-altering drugs
So there is an interactive relation between body and mind – it is not purely one way despite what your idealist non-Marxist philosophy tells you.
Moreover saying that the emergent property of the mind to exert downward
causation is a “social product” is not very useful in this instance because this presupposes the very thing it is supposed to account for. It’s in effect saying human consciousness came into being as a result of human consciousnessYou seem to identify with Fichte, who regarded the ‘subject’ as ‘individual’.
Human consciousness or subjectivity is something that only biological individuals can experience. This is because we have an organ called a brain. If you think society or a group can experience human consciousness explain how. Note that saying only biological individuals can experience human consciousness has got nothing to do with “individualism” about which you have made no end of crass ill-informed comments
You are right, Robbo, to point out that only an individual human can have “consciousness” in the sense of being “conscious” and so that to talk of humanity having consciousness in that sense can be misleading. For instance when Eugene (not Joseph) Dietzgen writes:
“phenomena outside of us … exist independently of individual man, although they cannot exist for mankind independently of human consciousness”, what did he mean? He would indeed seem to be implying that there is such a thing as “human consciousness” apart from the consciousness of individual humans. Which, as you point out, doesn’t work either as a fact or as an analogy.There is, however, another sense of “consciousness” — as the content of what people think as, e.g., in “class consciousness” as a common view held by a group of people. But this sense won’t work either for Eugene Dietzgen as there is not a human consciousness in the sense of a view held by all humans.
Consciousness in this sense is of course a social phenomenon if only because it is expressed in language which itself is social. But what conditions what views a group of people hold? Marx’s famous answer setting out “the materialist conception” of history (and society) seems clear enough:
“The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary,their social being that determines their consciousnesses.”
Also, on Eugene Dietzgen’s apparent theory, a “false consciousness” is impossible.
ALB wrote: “You are right, Robbo, to point out that only an individual human can have “consciousness” in the sense of being “conscious” and so that to talk of humanity having consciousness in that sense can be misleading.”
ALB, can I take it now that you’ve also ditched Marx’s concept of ‘social consciousness’, in favour of robbo’s ‘biological consciousness’?
ALB wrote “For instance when Eugene (not Joseph) Dietzgen writes:
“phenomena outside of us … exist independently of individual man, although they cannot exist for mankind independently of human consciousness”, what did he mean? He would indeed seem to be implying that there is such a thing as “human consciousness” apart from the consciousness of individual humans. Which, as you point out, doesn’t work either as a fact or as an analogy.”Yes, both he and Marx, not only ‘implied’, but openly argued for, ‘human consciousness’. It is a fact.
ALB wrote: “Also, on Eugene Dietzgen’s apparent theory, a “false consciousness” is impossible.”
Well, it is impossible. Marx never claimed it was possible. Engels invented the concept of ‘false consciousness’, not Marx.
Once again, we have a further example of a materialist claiming that if Engels said something, it can be applied to Marx’s views. To do this, one needs, like Lenin, to employ the concept of a unified being, a certain ‘Marx-Engels’.
We’re getting to the nub of the issue here. Is ‘consciousness’ biological or social? Is ‘consciousness’ in ‘the brain’, or in ‘a society’? Where does our ‘consciousness’ come from? From each individual brain, as a biological product, or from a specific society, as a socio-historical product.
I’ll refer to Marx on this issue, rather than robbo or ALB, or indeed, Engels or Lenin.
robbo203 wrote: “It’s in effect saying human consciousness came into being as a result of human consciousness“.
Well, Marx argued that an ‘individual consciousness’ came into being as a result of ‘social consciousness’. ‘Social consciousness’ is a product of human ‘conscious activity’.
If we’re to talk about humans, we have to talk about both consciousness and being, and to separate them, and ask where either came from, in the absence of the other, is meaningless and impossible to resolve. I gave Marx’s statement on this earlier in the thread, so have a look at that.
To clarify, to ask ‘where did human consciousness come from?’ is to simultaneously ask ‘where did human being come from?’.
One can’t argue that ‘consciousness came from being’ (the materialist view) or that ‘being came from consciousness’ (the idealist view). Marx solved the philosophical debate by arguing that both are necessary in any account of ‘origin’ of either. Thus humanity produces humanity, both human consciousness and human being.
So, neither divine conscious activity, nor human biological passivity, but human conscious biological activity. Social production – the scientific key to our mystery. Not ‘mind’ nor ‘matter’, but US. And we can change both.
Social production – the scientific key to our mystery. Not ‘mind’ nor ‘matter’, but US. And we can change both.
Not unless you set about engaging in organised political and economic action and for all your claimed insights, you have offered no strategy or offered any participation or involvement in that process of change, have you?
You have no aspiration for any audience other than a handful on this forum who have repeatedly rejected your philosophical overtures towards them.
I await a sign of your own “activity”, LBird
alanjjohnstone wrote: “Social production – the scientific key to our mystery. Not ‘mind’ nor ‘matter’, but US. And we can change both.
Not unless you set about engaging in organised political and economic action and for all your claimed insights, you have offered no strategy or offered any participation or involvement in that process of change, have you?
You have no aspiration for any audience other than a handful on this forum who have repeatedly rejected your philosophical overtures towards them.
I await a sign of your own “activity”, LBird”
It’s still a surprise that you don’t read what I write, alan.
‘Us’. ‘We’.
Not the individualist (your ideology) ‘your own’.
I’m all for, and have often done, “set about engaging in organised political and economic action“. I rejected the SWP because it was not Democratic Communist nor Marxist, but was Engelsist and Leninist.
Imagine my surprise to discover that the SPGB follows as similar ideology to the SWP, materialism, to the same ends: ‘socialism’ meaning an elite of active ‘specialists’ and a mass of passive ‘generalists’.
But, the difference is, while the SWP makes no bones about its supposed specially conscious Central Committee, the SPGB claims to be democratic, which implies that it allows for ideological change within its ranks. Of course, you and the other materialists have ‘repeatedly rejected’ both my and Marx’s ‘philosophical overtures’. But, will youse all continue to do so?
Of course, being an ideological materialist, you define ‘activity’ as merely ‘doing stuff without thought’, or ‘practice’ without ‘theory’, so you can skip the necessary building of ideas and theory to inform our activity. So, you can skip the democratic stage, and press on with your supposed ‘own “activity” ‘ – but I can’t.
So, alan, you can carry on with blind practice, or come over to Marx, and start discussing the building of democratic socialism, which requires mass participation in our social theory and practice.
And active democracy in all social production – including consciousness, theory, concepts, logic, politics, philosophy, physics, maths, science, arts…
Just when were you thinking of becoming ‘active’, alan? Or are you sticking with passivist materialism? And leave it all, like robbo, to the elite experts?
ALB, can I take it now that you’ve also ditched Marx’s concept of ‘social consciousness’, in favour of robbo’s ‘biological consciousness’?
LOL LBird. You don’t get it, do you? So once again you misrepresent what I was saying. I am fully in agreement with Marx on the question of “social consciousness”. But, unlike you, Marx would have entirely recognised that social consciousness is an emergent phenomenon arising from our nature as a biological species. In other words, he would have recognised, unlike you it seems, that you can’t have consciousness without a brain and that a brain is something that pertains only to individual biological human beings
The existence of individual biological human beings is thus the absolute precondition of social consciousness. The latter entails interaction and communication between these individuals. It is through such interaction and communication that social consciousness emerges and takes on a life of its own, as it were. It exerts “downward causation”, to use the jargon. But the key question here is – what does it exert downward causation on?
To say that:
Marx argued that an ‘individual consciousness’ came into being as a result of ‘social consciousness’. ‘Social consciousness’ is a product of human ‘conscious activity’.
is to miss the point.
You are talking about the contents of individual consciousness which is indeed shaped by social consciousness, by the interactions that occur between individuals. I am talking about the capacity or potential for consciousness – individual or social – which is indeed biological inasmuch as it necessitates, and presupposes, a biological organ called the brain.
Therefore it is not possible to argue, and Marx himself certainly did not argue, that that consciousness and being are both necessary in any account of ‘origin’ of either. How can consciousness explain the origin of being – that fact that we are a biological species that possess an organ called the brain that allows us to experience consciousness in the first place? That’s absurd and that’s not what Marx meant. It would imply that you can have consciousness without a brain capable of human consciousness which then works to bring that capacity into being
robbo203 wrote: “Therefore it is not possible to argue, and Marx himself certainly did not argue, that that consciousness and being are both necessary in any account of ‘origin’ of either.”
Here’s Marx’s words, again, in this thread, robbo. Do try and remember the points being made, or we’ll just go round in circles – or is that your method?
Marx wrote: “Now it is certainly easy to say to the single individual what Aristotle has already said: You have been begotten by your father and your mother; therefore in you the mating of two human beings – a species-act of human beings – has produced the human being. You see, therefore, that even physically man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the one aspect – the infinite progression which leads you further to inquire: Who begot my father? Who his grandfather? etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject. You will reply, however: I grant you this circular movement; now grant me the progress which drives me ever further until I ask: Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is wrongly put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for a reasonable mind. When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in so doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, ||XI| then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don’t think, don’t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?” [my bold]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
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