robbo203
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LBird
How on earth is that Marx quote relevant to, or in contradiction to, what I earlier said about the need for a brain to think with and experience consciousness? As usual, you are not making yourself clear at all. Consciousness did not create the brain; on the contrary, it presupposes a brain. Unless it is the case you believe consciousness can exist apart from or outside of the brain and so gave rise to the brain. Do you?
I repeat again in case I am once again misinterpreted – that does NOT mean the brain “determines” what you think. Mental events are NOT reducible to physical events (neurons firing) even if they entail physical events. What makes them non-reducible is the fact that they exert “downward causation” along with being subject to “upward causation”
It’s the same with society and the individual. There is ALWAYS a two-way interaction taking place these different levels of reality
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
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
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
“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 is a function of the individual alone since “society” is not some entity capable of “thinking”
Yet again LBird has shot himself in the foot!” [my bold]
LOL! Ironic!
How is it ironic? If you object to the statement could you explain how society is something that “thinks”? Do you or do you not agree that thinking is a function of the human brain which is what the individual happens to have?
Your ‘subject’ is the biological individual, and so you assume ‘something independent of itself’. This is dealt with by Dietzgen earlier. Having started from this political assumption, you then assume that the biological individual brain is passive, so that ‘something independent’ actively impinges upon the brain. You make the ‘independent’ into the ‘active side’, to quote Marx. Your ‘subject’ is the biological individual, and so you assume ‘something independent of itself’.
I said nothing of the sort. I wish you would learn to read. I said “Humanity produces the idea of matter but not literally matter itself”. What do you think “produces the idea of matter” denotes if not a human subject that actively structures their view of the world around them.
So my subject is not as you say the biological individual but the creative and active individual except that unlike you I do believe that dinosaurs existed many millions of years before human beings did and therefore existed independently of human consciousness. But by all means
if you wish to argue, along with the reverend Bishop Ussher, that the world was created intact with dinosaurs and humans alike on Sunday 23 October 4004 BC, please feel free to argue this point here.The “idea” of dinosaurs is a product of human minds but the reality of dinosaurs predating human beings is an objective fact demonstrable by the fossil record. Do you agree with what the fossil record suggests or are you a creationist? Do tell us
So, since you’re not a Marxist or social productionist, you conclude that ‘the very term makes no sense’. It doesn’t ‘operate on’, it ‘produces it’. Nothing ‘exists for us’ until we produce it.
That nothing exists “for us” doesn’t mean it doesn’t or didn’t exist. Did dinosaurs exist many millions of year before human beings existed? Yes or no LBird? Please answer the question!!!
No, you are not a Marxist and the logic of your whole argument shows that you are not a “social productionist” either. You are what I would call a bourgeois idealist. You think the world is wholly created out of the human mind which spontaneously generates ideas about the world and that there exists nothing out there for the mind to interact with or actively “operate on” to use your expression. Your worldview has got nothing to do with Marxism. Its pure idealism
Also since we cannot directly access other people’s mind only our own this flatly contradicts your whole claim to be a social productionist since nothing exists for you outside the human mind which can only be YOUR mind as an individual. Everything you see around you is the product of your mind and according to your logic other minds cannot exist for you in the same way that dinosaurs cannot exist for you. On the contrary, you produce both of them. Therefore according to you, there can be no such thing as social production
Marxists on the other hand – unlike you – would take the view that other minds exist despite being objective or external to us and can influence our own mind and that ideas are social in origin.
“Nothing is ‘independent’ of human production…Marx and Dietzgen: humanity produces matter and mind.”
This is misleading. Humanity produces the idea of matter but not literally matter itself. The dinosaurs went extinct some 66 million years- millions of years before human beings roamed the earth and were capable of conceptualizing the notion of “dinosaurs”. Or is LBird seriously trying to tell us that they didn’t exist before human beings “produced” them. Is he saying the fossil record is false?
What human beings produce is the idea of dinosaurs and, certainly, ideas are not independent of “human production” in the Kantian sense. But sensory perception has to operate on something independent of itself otherwise the very term makes no sense.
We cannot apprehend “dinosaurs” independently of our mind, our cognitive apparatus, but the idea of “dinosaurs” doesn’t come from nowhere which is what LBird seems to be suggesting. If he had said humanity produces “matter” in the phenomenal sense that would kind of make sense. But that’s not what he is suggesting. He is suggesting, albeit probably unintentionally because of the clumsy way he formulates his argument, that human beings produce matter in the noumenal sense as things in itself. But we don’t and can’t.
Even if we cannot apprehend dinosaurs apart from our minds we use our minds to infer that dinosaurs must have existed independently of us since they clearly predate us by millions of years
Also, since we cannot directly apprehend what goes on in the minds of other human beings, we cannot directly experience what they are thinking, Their minds are unknowable in the same way that dinosaurs are unknowable outside of our minds, according to LBird’s logic
If so, what then are we to make of LBird’s notion of the social production of ideas. Since the social production of ideas entails other people who cannot exist outside of our minds and which we “produce” in the same way as we produce dinosaurs according to LBird, then we cannot posit that these ideas are “socially produced”. To say that ideas are socially produced is to say that other people exist apart from us and independently of us – like dinosaurs
This is why LBird’s idealist way of approaching the question of “matter” fundamentally contradicts everything he has to say about the social production of knowledge. So it turns out that LBird is the ultra-individualist here since reality for him is entirely subjectively constituted. Subjectivity is a function of the individual alone since “society” is not some entity capable of “thinking”
Yet again LBird has shot himself in the foot!
And since you’ve returned, as I always predict materialist will, to insults rather than reasoned discussion, I’ll now return to ignoring your naive questions.
This is rich coming from our feathered friend who has done nothing except insult the SPGB, dismissing it as Leninist-Engelsist, elitist, undemocratic etc etc blah blah blah and then has gone out of his way to completely avoid reasoned discussion by completely ignoring all questions such as HOW he proposes to organise a vote by the global population on tens of scientific theories
robbo, if anyone’s ‘living in a complete dreamworld’, it’s those who believe science is powerless.
Once again more distortion from our feathered friend.
I was NOT talking about science but about the presumed power that you imagine a scientific elite would exercise over the general population in the absence of your crackpot idea of the general population voting for tens of thousands of scientific theories
Typically , you produce not the slightest argument in support of your claim that a so called scientific elite would be able to exercise power over the population in a society based on common ownership of the means of production where goods and services are free and labour is perfomed on a purely voluntary basis. In these circumstances there is no leverage in which anyone, let alone a so called scientific elite, could use to exercise power over anyone else and I defy anyone to show otherwise. The state through which such power could be exercised would have disappeared.
As usual, LBird, your incoherent and sloppy sociologising is proving to be your undoing. And you still havent answered my question – HOW do you propose to go about organising a democratic vote on not just one scientific theory amongst 8 billion people but tens of thousands of them!!!!
HOW, LBird? HOW HOW HOW???????
Once more, robbo, if 8 billion workers (to use your terms) are not going to democratically determine science in its entirety, who is?
Once more LBird no one has to determine science in its entirety at all, and why should they? Where did you get this crackpot idea from? Don’t tell me it is from Marx because nowhere did Marx ever suggest that tens of thousands of scientific theories should be subject to a vote by the global population. Your view has nothing to do with Marx, it is entirely your own invention
Insofar as Marx referred to the need for social production to be democratically organised he was emphatically NOT referring to the social production of scientific theories. If you think otherwise PROVE IT!
Just becuase something is “socially produced” does not automatically mean it should be subject to a democratic vote. My breakfast is a social product inasmuch as the ingredients I consume are socially produced. Would you have that the world population vote on what I have for breakfast, eh?
Once more you continue not to provide the slightest suggestion of a reason as to WHY scientific theories should be voted on. What purpose would a vote serve? Democratic decision making needs to be purposeful in order to meaningful
Once more you fail to to explain HOW the fact that scientific theories would not be voted upon (and would have absolutely no need to be voted on) in communism, somehow gives the scientists some kind of “elite power” over others in a free access, voluntaristic society in which people will be free to determine their own needs and be free to determine their own contribution to society.
Once more you fail totally to explain HOW you propose to organise a global vote on just one scientific theory, let alone tens of thousands of them. You seem to have zero understanding of what a massive undertaking this – and all for no good reason whatseover since you are never going to stop people disagreeing over the things like scientific theories. And why should they? New understandings arise from disgreements and debate which you want to stifle under your version of a revived Spanish Inquistion.
You want to impose a conformist blanket on public opinion with your fascistic reoganisation of society in which THE TRUTH gets voted upon – FFS – and your tiny unrepresentive and undemocratic political elite (which is what it will be) gets to enforce what it claims “society” has democratically voted for. Even if (optimitically) only 0.000000057 per cent of the population voted!!!
You are living in a complete dreamworld, LBird
The self-emancipation of the proletariat means we will determine ‘science’ (both its theories and its practices), by democratic means.
How? How are tens of thousands of scientific theories going to be voted on by the workers of the world (nearly 8 billion of us)?
Why is it even necessary? What do you hope to achieve by voting on a scientific theory?
Explain
It’s amazing how hostile the reaction has been to talk of democracy within the communist mode of production.
More lies from our feathered friend.
We have repeatedly said that means of production will be subject to democratic control in a communist society. We just don’t see the point of extending democratic decision making to such things such as the truth of scientific theories etc etc
