Is there anything at all?
Materialism and idealism in philosophy of consciousness.
by Paul Jones
I consider the commentary by V. V. Raman as a good example of dialectical negation, aimed to development rather than denial. Prof. Raman's remarks touch important points and there certainly are many statements that demand more clarification and explication, and I am grateful to him for that detailed and thoughtful review. In this response, however, I can only give hints to what should be done in reviewing the issues related to the opposition of materialism and idealism in philosophy, and, in particular, methodology of science. Some special topics (like integrity and complexity) have been discussed elsewhere (e.g. [1])---some other problems are still waiting for proper consideration.
To make things clear from the very beginning, I must stress once again that my treatment of the problem is based on a wider view, and I do not belong to neither of the two camps. However, I insist that one should not mix materialism and idealism in an eclectic way in any particular research, just because some things seem to look better one way than the other. As usual, the opposites have to be carefully discriminated before they could enter any kind of synthesis.
Here we come to the problem of consistency. V. V. Raman keenly indicates that some people may intentionally admit inconsistencies in their thought and action, just because "inconsistency is quite a pleasant experience", or "it is enjoyable". Certainly, the capability of mental play and experiment is one of the most important achievements of reason, distinguishing a conscious being from the animals. However, this is not the only, and in no way determinative, distinction, and it has to be complemented by the capability of pursuing one's goals despite the natural inaccessibility. In other words, consciousness implies both the wish and the will. The latter serves to preserve the integrity of activity, and, virtually, the integrity of the self. That is, one has to act consistently to remain a conscious being; otherwise, any activity is bound to degrade into a kind of field behaviour, requiring no consciousness at all [2].
This may be illustrated by the well known cases of the divided identity in psychiatry. Lack of behavioural and mental integrity is also an essential component of schizophrenia, paranoia etc.---in any case it is symptomatic of a mental disease [3].
However, there may be different kinds of integrity, and some of them may well admit controlled inconsistency, on the lower levels, to allow more flexibility in choosing the means of attaining the same conscious goal. This is reflected in the category "dialectical contradiction" in dialectical materialism, and the very opposition of materialism and idealism, or dialectics and metaphysics may well be dialectical, in the context of the development of philosophy as a whole; however, there can be no "pluralistic harmony", as V. V. Raman calls it, since, as soon as there is a contradiction, it will objectively lead to the dominance of one of the opposites in any particular activity.
Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of development as an objective process. It does not treat the opposites of a dialectical contradiction as mere "opinions", or the views of the same thing "from different perspectives"--- rather, the presence of the contradiction indicates that certain economic, spiritual or cultural formations have not yet developed enough, and the opposites of today are the raw material for a whole to be built in the future. There can be no development without dialectical contradiction---however, the forms of the manifestation of that contradiction may be different in different societies, being indirectly related to the kind of the contradiction. The form of the suppression of one camp by another, is characteristic for the class of societies we know as 'civilisation', based on private appropriation of the public product. In a higher-level society knowing no property at all, there will be no economic and social base for any antagonism, including ideological controversy.
One of the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism is the directedness of development, from the lower to higher levels. In other words, nothing is destined to last for ever, and all the existing things (material or not) are bound to become obsolete and give way to other, more developed (in an objective sense), things of a different kind. In particular, philosophy itself is objectively developing from the primitive to higher-level forms, and it is not a mere juxtaposition of all the philosophies ever known, but an integrity of a sort different from that of the Antiquity, or Middle Ages. That is, one can definitely assert that dialectical materialism is a more advanced form of philosophy than any one of the previously known forms---and that both materialism and idealism have to become history, being ousted by with a higher-level philosophy, with its own forms and trends. This certainly depends on the ways of the economic development of the human societies, and philosophies of different level may co-exist for quite a while, as long as their economic roots exist in the same time.
The development of consciousness obeys the same dialectical laws, and all the forms of human activity, and specifically the forms of spirituality like art, science and philosophy, can be considered as a manifestation of the current level in the development of consciousness. This provides a basis for an objective study of consciousness. However, dialectical materialism stresses that consciousness cannot be the same in different epochs; moreover, every act of cognition moves human consciousness a little higher, so that it is bound to change in the course of studying it, which resembles the situation with quantum mechanics, with an important difference that there is no external ('macroscopic') observer for the humanity, and we have to look at it 'from within'.
In particular, the admissibility of certain forms of behaviour is never absolute, depending on the general level of cultural development. The ability to correlate one's behaviour with the objectively progressive norms is one of the fundamental components of consciousness, along with awareness and self-determination. In other words, people admitting acts inferior to the level of spirituality reached by the humanity demonstrate lack of consciousness and could not be called conscious without reservations. This directly applies to the consistency and orientation of one's philosophy. Thus, eclecticism is admissible in ideology until the distinctions between the ideas involved become clear enough. Well, the statement "2*2=13" is much closer to the truth than "2*2=45", provided one does not know that 2*2=4.
In other words, consistency is one of the internal criteria of truth understood as objective phenomenon developing in a dialectical way. Consistent thought can still fall in error---but no truth can be inconsistent. Denying the need of consistency means inability and refusal to understand anything, and hence imposing the limits for the growth of one's consciousness.
Of course, inconsistency should not be blamed in itself, and it may be quite appropriate in many cases, to a definite limit. In general, since every activity is hierarchical, it implies specific levels of consistency on different levels, and it is the topmost level that determines the overall tendency. For instance, one cannot arbitrarily decide whether to trust binary logic or not---this is determined by a number of objective cultural processes. Eventually, inconsistency itself has to possess internal consistency.
Deliberate deviation from the culturally established routes in physical or mental activity can be innocent enough, when it takes the form of a game. That is, one knows well that the moves made do not mean anything real, though they may pretend to be for serious. Thus, a materialist can play idealist reasoning on certain issues, to probe the possible ways of extending the current circle of views, or check the limits of their applicability. However, all that play gets put aside, as soon as anything practically important is concerned. One of the manifestations of consciousness is the ability to discriminate the situations where it is allowed to play from the situations demanding seriousness. When philosophers become driven by their play of ideas, forgetting about the practical needs, this is a typical case of lacking consciousness.
Talking about consistent idealism, I indicated that it has to admit the existence of just something to talk about---and it has to be a unique supernatural mind (though one could hardly characterise it as a mind in this case). "What's wrong with admitting the existence of only the supreme mind?" V. V. Raman asks. Well, there is nothing wrong in mere imagination, and one can create myths and tales of gods and demons, or the absolute idea, or the world's soul... or anything. The problems show up when it comes to practical activity and the everyday necessity of making decisions. Since there is no supreme mind anywhere at hand, people implicitly substitute it with their own minds, thus pretending to be gods in their contacts with the others. Shall I repeat that this 'upper position' is generally induced in a person by his or her actual social position?---one can hardly imagine oneself a god being socially deprived; however, there is an inverse mentality, when the very inferiority becomes an absolute value, which formally makes it equivalent to a god, and as misleading. V. V. Raman correctly indicates that "idealist philosophy has come to the help of many struggling and suffering people", providing them a kind of narcosis with declaring anything they experience as mere dream; is it always moral to make the people drug addicts?
Dialectical materialism says that nothing can be "logically established", since it in practical activity only that anything can be proven as 'true' or be rejected for inadequacy. The demand to logically demonstrate the existence of matter is essentially idealistic. This is one more paradox of idealism: being logically inconsistent (and sometimes even hostile to logic), it demands logic from its opponents. One should be aware that it is only one component of logic that is meant in such cases, namely, deductive schemes; logic is wider than that, encompassing the variety of schemes that cannot be all reduced to deduction [4]. In the same way, the demand to "clearly define" what dialectical materialism (or any other philosophy) is should be considered a manifestation of the same idealistic tendency to reduce anything to deductive schemes; in reality, nothing can be defined in any complete way, since the complete definition would be equivalent to the very existence of the thing defined, which is infinitely hierarchical and hence irreducible to any finite construction. Limiting thinking to the "clearly definable" only, would violate the universality of human activity and mind, and hence deny consciousness itself.
"Why cannot consciousness explore the nature of consciousness, as one would see ones image in a mirror?" The question answers itself: because there is no mirror. The only way to reflect anything is to reflect it in something different, and it is only the reflection of a thing's traces in the world in the same thing that is the basic mechanism of self-reflection.
Can one study anything "without appealing to dialectical materialism", or any other philosophy? Yes, if it is explicit appeal that is meant; no, if the directing role of philosophy in scientific research is thus denied. Refusing to 'talk philosophy', one is bound to involve it implicitly, in a confusing and inconsistent way, which often leads to methodological problems and inadequate special techniques. In some cases a wrong methodological orientation may make hundreds of scientists waste their effort and time in the attempts to solve a scientific problem either incorrectly formulated or demanding a quite different means of investigation.
Thus, the idea that that consciousness is not a biological phenomenon but rather a social (cultural) formation was introduced in dialectical materialism after a careful analysis of the previous attempts to comprehend consciousness; the search for a material substrate of consciousness was an indispensably materialistic requirement, while the necessity of finding a substrate of a special kind allowing for the development of all the features of consciousness, including its apparent independence of matter, was a part of the dialectical approach. Human society was found to be the only possible carrier of consciousness, and individual consciousness was logically interpreted as a projection of the social processes onto a biological body---in analogy to how a cell regulates molecular flows, a molecule constraints the motion of the atoms consisting it, an atom binds the nucleus and electrons etc. Once the social nature of consciousness is accepted, it becomes clear that it is no use to seek for consciousness on the biological level, and no brain function can be said to 'produce' consciousness. However, the scientists educated in the line of primitive materialism cannot accept that indication, and their scientific potential is bound to be wasted in the endless attempts to reduce consciousness to physiology.
"Does the author imply that a child left in the woods (obtaining nutritional sustenance in some way) without any human interaction will grow up to be without any consciousness?" Yes I do assert that. Human physiology has developed to support consciousness, but it cannot produce consciousness on itself. Accordingly, there can be no language in a child deprived of any communication without the other people. Certainly, some human features can be developed in an individual grown to some age---but not too old---in the wild nature environment; however, the examples known show that the range of human capabilities will remain very limited in such people for the rest of their lives. Consciousness cannot grow outside the society. However, in interpreting observations and experiments, one should account for the fact that the individual's social life begins very early, before the physiological birth, since the woman's organism is very sensitive to the social environment during pregnancy, and the very chemistry of foetus development is dependent on the mother's communication with the people; on the later stages, a month or two before the birth, a child can participate in the social life, reacting on outer events in a relatively independent way.
The assertion that "ALL mental forms are nothing but schemes of activity provoked by material/economic factors" is one of the most important achievements of dialectical materialism. The dialectical side of it is that the influence of economy on mentality can be indirect, with so many mediating steps that a spiritual phenomenon may seem to have no economic roots at all. However, this circumstance is a usual case in many sciences, which have to extract meaningful results from experimental data using a number of elaborated techniques based on a definite theoretical model; one could refer to the physics of autoionising states in atoms and ions [5], or to the standard practices of psychoanalysis, for another example. Still, "the claims of Vedic rishis, ... of the Prophet Mohammed, ... the dedication of Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa, and the creativity of Pushkin and Tchaikowski, can all be explained ... in terms of economic factors". In this quotation from V. V. Raman, I have omitted Moses and Jesus for the reason of their doubtful existence, and replaced the words "explained simply" with only "explained", since the explanation is in no way simple in complex cases. Basically, one has to consider culture as a hierarchy of all the products of human activity, and distinguish material culture (things made and relations established) from spiritual culture (skills of production acquired = schemes of activity = mental structures and social climate); further, any element of culture (either material or spiritual) can be used to construct another product, which will become a part of culture through the process of socialisation, and hence become able to generate other products, related to the primary products in a more indirect way.
But "how does dialectical materialism explain the many random thoughts that also arise in the human mind?" Well, as most psychoanalytic therapists would agree, there are no random thoughts at all. Every thought can be explained, if one had enough time and patience to trace its origin. Schematically, one has to consider self-communication as a kind of social process, governed with the same objective laws. There is no experience that "is ineffable and cannot be communicated", since one has at least to communicate it to oneself, to make it conscious; otherwise, there is nothing more than mere animal sensation, having nothing to do with human spirituality. There is no 'esoteric' knowledge, since it can only be called knowledge after it has been socialised, and communicated to the society as a whole, to become an element of the culture.
It should be stressed that the acceptance of the universal determinism in dialectical materialism does not deny neither randomness, nor freedom. The former refers to the level of physical things and characterises a particular way of the representation of the lower levels of hierarchy on a higher level, when it is only certain average motion that matters, the rest of the system's behaviour remaining 'arbitrary'. Since the formation of hierarchical structures is an objective process [6,7], randomness should not be considered as mere interpretation or mental construction---though such constructions could be considered as a natural phenomenon too, being just another case of interlevel relationships. Freedom is different from arbitrariness in that it refers to the level of consciousness (social motion), being an expression of the consistency of an individual activity with the current level of cultural development. Thus, one cannot be free if one's actions contradict to the cultural background, which will result in a kind of conflict and hence restrict the person's access to cultural resources. Freedom is the ability to use the possibilities opened by the culture, and one also cannot be free if one does not know about the possibilities available or does not have enough skill in using them. In particular, a scientist ignorant in philosophy is not free in his or her studies, being driven by random circumstances rather than purposefully applying an adequate methodology. The same limitation of freedom is implied by the inconsistency of reasoning, accept the case of its conscious imitation (play).
In the end, a few words about 'praxis'. Any philosophy is nothing but the way to orient people and organise their activity. Idealism leads to the acts that differ from those stimulated by materialism; however, in many cases, this difference is not apparent, referring more to the spiritual side of activity rather than its material side. This makes it possible to use 'good' ideas to disguise 'bad' acts (one should remember the dependence of 'the good' and 'the bad' on the level of cultural development and social positions).
As V. V. Raman truly indicates, some ideas of dialectical materialism may resemble those of Christian theology, Yoga, various kinds of Humanism etc. No wonder, since dialectical materialism has grown as a natural continuation of the general line of the development of philosophy, including all its positive content. However, there cannot be mere 'embedding' of an idea from one philosophy in another; ideas transform in a different context, to become different from what they were originally. Sometime, this may cause difficulties and misunderstanding: thus, a few places in the works by L. Vygotsky are textually close to some texts by M. Bakhtin, which even caused the claims of plagiarism---however, careful reading will make it clear that the same words mean quite different things for a materialist (Vygotsky) and idealist (Bakhtin), and there are no 'stolen' ideas, despite of all the possible influence of Bakhtin's works on Vygotsky.
In the same way, the acts motivated by different ideologies will be different acts, despite of all their apparent similarity. For instance, a man saving another man for a reward vs. a man saving another man for mere desire to help (which does not exclude being eventually rewarded). There is a difference in the degree of freedom: the act motivated at a lower level is less free than the act following higher-level motivation---while the very hierarchy of motives is objective, corresponding to the current level of cultural development.
It should be noted that the difference in ideology often results in the different forms of the 'same' activity, which may produce different effect in the end. Thus, a monk working as a nurse in a hospital will perform basically the same functions as a professional nurse, but the monk may additionally impose certain ideological preferences, which may be helpful in curing the disease, but may also lead to social inadequacy in the future life of the person. If, instead, there were a nurse with some experience in materialistically oriented psychotherapy, the treatment might be much more successful, since the patient would have been trained to efficiently cope with the difficult situations in his or her life and work, rather than vainly hope for help from the sky. Pray and meditation may help some people to overcome the stress and regain self-control, to consciously act---however, they may be harmful if exercised with excessive devotion, in an uncritical way: this is like driving a nail into a plank with the hammer, and then continuing to knock at the plank until it splits. Conscious behaviour implies concentration, but not obsession.
With idealistically minded people, one should always distinguish apparent and actual motivation. Since no idealism can be consistent, the actions of an idealist are often caused by quite materialistic reasons, being re-motivated afterwards. On the other hand, one could recall that materialism does not exclude moral commitment, dedication to serve the human family, compassion, caring and other similar qualities, which have nothing to do with philosophic idealism and religion, though there have been many attempts to oppose them to any materialism. Dialectical materialism treats the sphere of morality as one of the levels of spirituality in general, corresponding to certain objective phenomena in economic and cultural development. Quite often, the materialistic approach to humanism makes it much more 'humanistic' than any kind of abstract humanism, and any religion [8].
To conclude, the problem of consistency and freedom, has to be considered in the context of the objective development of human culture, and the growth of social and individual consciousness accompanying it. One is free to try different ways, and experiment within the limits of social responsibility. However, no action is arbitrary on the level of consciousness, and there always are economic and social grounds for every subjective phenomenon---this does not restrict one's freedom, which is rather restricted by animal-like behaviour, irresponsibility and inconsistency, lack of the understanding of objective cultural processes, and hence inability to use them in one's activity.
References and Notes
[1] P. Ivanov, http://geocities.datacellar.net/unihl/texts/cx/cx.htm
[2] The role of the bridge between the wish and the will is performed by knowledge.
[3] Today, some people argue that there is no such thing as a mental disease at all, and all the kinds of behaviour should be considered as equally normal---I do not share this opinion, being convinced that the level of cultural development is based on objective premises, which eventually determine any conceptual distinction.
[4] http://geocities.datacellar.net/unihl/hl/papers/p00b1200.doc
[5] A.L.Godunov, P.B.Ivanov, V.A.Schipakov, P.Moretto-Capelle D.Bordenave-Montesquieu and A.Bordenave-Montesquieu, "Excitation of autoionizing states of helium by 100-keV proton impact: II. Excitation cross sections and mechanisms of excitation" J. Phys. B 33, 971-999 (2000)
[6] E.N.Yeliseyev, The structure of the development of complex systems (Leningrad: Nauka, 1983)
[7] B.Drossel, "Simple Model for the Formation of a Complex Organism" Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 5144 (1999)
[8] P.Jones, "Unism and Humanism" http://geocities.datacellar.net/unihl/texts/humanism.htm
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