File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 565


Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 20:38:30 +1100
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-TH: being determines consciousness ?


Hello again, Ralph,

A particularly disappointing missive, I'm afraid.  You wrote:

>Now how much does the existence of language and the capacity to learn
>language depend on social relations and how much on biology?

Of Course biology is necessary.  But a good Darwinian (or should I say one
whose knowledge of evolution comes exclusively from David attenborough)
would suggest biology itself depended on the specific characteristics and
challenges that define the species in question during its development (a
bit of a dialectic there, eh?).  We were, after all, pretty well ordained
to be socially interdependent (being physically clumsy and insubstantial,
and also rather tasty).

>How much can
>you answer this question by referring to philosophers and to Marx or Engels,
>and how much can you learn from discourse theorists who come from literature
>or philosophy, and how much by referring to linguists, psychologists,
>neuroscientists, or evolutionary biologists?  And even if you know anything
>about sociolinguistics, to whom do you refer and in what capacity?

Well, philosophy is sort of everywhere, isn't it (it exists either as
conscious or unconscious premises and logic, I'd have thought)?  But yeah,
I'm a wanker from the humanities who daily sees even more shameless wank
than he's capable of soiling the pages of journals in his 'field' (with
plenty of noble exceptions, mind).  I am not a pomo - I do not see
scientific methodoly and laws as just so many tyrannical 'contending'
discourses from just so many anointed priests.  I am not a discourse
theorist beyond a position that demands we must treat conscious humanity
differently from the natural world and unconscious humanity.  So, yeah, the
science is important.  And I know bugger-all about it.

>And what do you think philosophers understand about the nature of language,
>period, let alone the possible status of cognition outside or beyond what is
>understood as "language", without having actually studied any of the
>specialized sciences?

Does anyone from the specialised sciences actually know about the extent to
which cognition proceeds independently of language?  Babies seem to evince
thought long before they evince behaviour uniquely consistent with
linguistic intercourse.  And chimps think (although they may have language,
I s'pose) - certainly their cognition processes become apparent to us most
famously when we teach them a language.

>The number of Marxists who have learned or understood anything at all about
>real linguistics I can count on one hand, or maybe even one asshole.

Who's the arsehole you have in mind?

I know it shouldn't be, Ralph, but this is beyond me (although I have
studied a little sociolinguistics).  I gotta go with what I have, and hope
to get more along the way.  What am I saying that peeves you so much?

Cheers,
Rob.





************************************************************************

Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

************************************************************************

'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

************************************************************************




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