LBird
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Back to the grind.
Bijou Drains wrote: “The actions I raised were actions which were based on observable brain activity”.
Once more, a simple question.
Is this a ‘conscious brain’ (ie a living brain) or a ‘conscious-less brain’ (ie. the matter itself, wet meat, a corpse’s brain).
If it’s the former, you’re trying to discuss ‘an active mind’, not ‘matter itself’.
I’d just like to openly support Bijou Drains’ position expressed above. At least BD tries to debate, if not very well – I suspect that the rest would shut me up, if they had the power to do so, without damaging their own image as ‘libertarians’ committed to ‘free’ speech.
Whilst I’m like an “arm wrestling …double jointed octopus which has covered itself in baby oil and dropped a tab of acid”, at least I can argue my position without insulting my opponent (because I’d be banned by the moderator if I wrote that of Bijou Drains or of any other poster, as I was last time I responded to insults by better insults).
Furthermore, I’ve got news for you BD. Youse are “some kind of Leninist group think sect, where all debate and discussion needs to be focussed on the needs of the vanguard”.
Your ‘vanguard’ is ‘matter’. And it’s causing precisely the same sort of problems that Marx predicted it would.
Anyway, good luck with the wet matter of the brain, and its adventures in politics.
Finally, thanks Bijou Drains – there’s always hope whilst debates continue.
I have answered the question BD.
Read my last post, to alan, in conjunction with my earlier replies to you.
Your ideology is to assume that an unexplained link between ‘brains’ and ‘politics’ shows that ‘social production’ is dependent upon biology.
As I’ve already said, you are a Skinnerist.
Furthermore, I’ve politely asked you to show the link between ‘in-growing toenails’ (biology) and conscious activity – you should be able to explain this, if biology is at the root of conscious human activity.
Marx argued that BOTH ‘biology’ and ‘mind’ were required for conscious human activity which can change things, that is, socially reproduce our world to our designs.
If you insist that a child’s smile to its mother is outside of conscious activity, it’s your task to show how this is possible. I’ve already supplied some objections to your claims, to help you formulate a better reply.
Of course, my replies to you won’t employ your ideology, but Marx’s, which I openly state is behind my views – unlike you, who hides their ideological views.
I should point out to alanjjohnstone, the originator of this thread, that the assumption that ‘brain’ equals ‘mind’ is an ideological assumption.
That is, he makes a categorical error, of juxtaposing ‘brain’ (a biological organ) with ‘politics’ (a socio-historical conscious human activity).
If alan really wants to seek the source of politics in brains, like many bourgeois ideological scientists do, that’s his choice. But alan should be aware of that choice, and consciously justify it to himself, rather than just assume that the two are linked.
I’d advise alan to research the ideology of his ‘researchers’, to whom he links.
Anyone reading this thread can see that I answer questions, and outline my democratic and Marxist beliefs about minds.
The materialists refuse to seriously engage with any questions about their materialism, and ALWAYS turn to abuse of individuals (‘fatuous’), just as Lenin, the archetypal materialist, did.
Put simply, the title of the thread is an ideological one, based upon elitist bourgeois materialism, that ‘brains’ (wet stuff) are the basis of politics. For democratic Marxists, it’s not the ‘brain’, but the ‘mind’, which is of central concern.
The mind is a socio-historical human product, and thus we can democratically change it.
Bijou Drains’ concerns with the role of in-growing toenails in the development of proletarian consciousness and the building of socialism is an ideological dead-end for workers.
Since Bijou Drains seems to be fascinated by movement in biological individuals, I’ve another question for him to ask…
“I will also ask you another question, is a person who has growing toenails, displaying behaviour?”
Bijou Drains wrote: “So an infant smiling at its mother is not a behaviour?”
Is it social? Does it require only a single biological individual, or a relationship between humans?
Does the smile ever change? Is it fixed, so that the infant smiles whatever the socio-historic developments involving it?
Is it a social product of the mother’s learned socio-historic growth?
Is BD a secret Skinnerist? Or is BD unaware of their own ideology?
I, ironically, won’t hold my breath, heavy or shallow, for a Marxist-inspired answer!
As I’ve said, BD, the concept of ‘behaviour’ depends upon one’s definitions and assumptions.
For example ‘how one breathes’ is entirely different to ‘breathing’ as an involuntary reflex.
Again, ‘impulse’ is not ‘behaviour; ‘involuntary’ is not behaviour.
Furthermore, ‘masturbation’ is a social behaviour, not biological individual involuntary impulse.
Lastly, Marxists are not Skinnerists, because ‘the whole issue is how to free [hu]man[ity]’.
If you wish to define ‘behaviour’ as ‘any action or movement’, that’s fair enough, but you should specify it as that. It wouldn’t be a definition that I would share. I would define ‘behaviour’ as ‘conscious human action’, because unconscious activity is a product of a society that pretends that ‘individuals’ are the location of ‘behaviour’, rather than the socio-historical conditions being the location of ‘behaviour’.
‘Unconscious individuals’ are socially produced, and we can change that.
Of course, at the root of my definitions and assumptions are democracy, Marx’s social productionism, and our ability to change our world.
I suspect that those who want ‘any action or movement’ to be the defining characteristic of ‘behaviour’ are not interested in those three assumptions.
Which is fair enough, but then they should outline their ideological beliefs – Individualism? Fixity? Matter? A supposedly asocial and ahistorical ‘Science’?
On the contrary, I would stress – society, change, human production, and ‘science’ as a socio-historically changing product. Marx’s concerns, too, in fact.
Bijou Drains wrote: “…we also need to be careful about the pure behaviourist (Skinnerist) assumption that all behaviour is learnt. It clearly isn’t. For instance, following birth, we didn’t learn to breathe by trial and error.”
We have to conceptually separate ‘biological behaviour’ from ‘social behaviour’.
Since ‘biology’ (eg. breathing) is fixed, we have no choice, so it’s not a ‘behaviour’.
‘Behaviour’ is always social, so it is a socio-historical product, and so we can change it.
One’s definitions and assumptions will determine one’s views.
Value cannot be measured. It’s a social relationship, that can be estimated by society, through the mechanism of a democratic vote.
Price can be measured. It’s an individual opinion, related to an individual’s estimation of valuable-to-them.
Bourgeois science has mathematised nature and physics, in its drive to ‘measure’ so-called ‘objective reality’, which is a by-product of capitalist valuation and money.
Once money and measurement are taken out of any social equation, we are left with ‘value’ being determined, not by ‘price’, but by us. That’s why we can democratically overthrow ‘value’, and determine for ourselves what is ‘valuable-to-us’.
‘Price’ and ‘matter’ are the stuff of individuals, not of democratic producers, of socialists.David Adam, ‘Karl Marx & the State’ (alan’s link) wrote:
“To reiterate Marx’s point, there is a material contradiction in commissioning members of a divided and atomized civil society to somehow represent the general interest of that society. Even from a formal point of view, the deputies recognized as deriving their mandate solely from the popular masses, become, once elected, independent of their electors, and are free to make political decisions on their behalf. This is distinct from Marx’s vision of a society that “administers its own universal interests.” As Marx put it, “The efforts of civil society to transform itself into a political society, or to make the political society into the real one, manifest themselves in the attempt to achieve as general a participation as possible in the legislature . . . . The political state leads an existence divorced from civil society. For its part, civil society would cease to exist if everyone became a legislator.”9 There is an important point here: the separation of the state from civil society depends on limiting popular participation in government.”
The same political and philosophical point applies to science, too.
The separation of science from civil society depends on limiting popular participation in science.
The only democratic socialist answer is ‘to achieve as general a participation as possible in’ science.
If anyone is interested in a ‘scientific’ application of Marx’s social productionism, have a read of the chapter ‘Science as Social Action’, in Lewontin, R. C. (1993) Biology as Ideology, pp. 105-23, in which he argues that ‘organisms create their own environment’, and thus are able to change it.
Marx would’ve replied with the same answer, if asked about ‘science’, too, alan.
Democratic control of any social power was the political and philosophical basis of Marx’s social productionism.
ZJW quoted White: “There are several aspects to Bogdanov’s concept of collectivism, reflecting different strands in his thought. One of these is the elimination of the organiser/ \executor division, that is the distinction between people who organise and those who carry out orders. For Bogdanov this is the earliest and most fundamental social division which afflicted mankind, one which preceded the formation of social classes. It was responsible for authoritarian thinking and for the dualist view of the world that divided phenomena into the physical and the psychical. In socialist society this division is overcome, and the monist view of the world is restored.”
The ‘dualist view’ that both White and Bogdanov, in company with Marx himself, condemned, is ‘materialism’. This 18th century view regards ‘the physical’ as the source of ‘the psychical’ – ‘mind’ originates in ‘matter’.
Marx unified ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ in a theory of ‘social production’ – that is, both ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are products of our conscious activity, and so we can change both ‘mind’ and ‘matter’. The monist view makes human conscious activity its ontology.
And as both Marx and Bogdanov were democrats, they believed that only society as a whole (no ‘elite’ politicians, scientists or technocrats) can determine our world, our nature, our universe.
Bogdanov and Lunacharsky both tried to build ‘Proletcult’, a democratic workers movement which embodied Marx’s concept of “workers’ self-determination”.
This movement, weak though it was, was destroyed by the Bolsheviks. The Leninists have ‘Scientific Socialism’, which makes ‘Scientists’ the creator of ‘Socialism’, and not the workers themselves. Socialism is democratic, and the only acceptable ‘science’ is one built by workers themselves, employing democratic means.
Leninists and Materialists will always deny this.
