sábado, 1 de septiembre de 2007

A criticism of Marxism

"it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness." (Marx, in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.)
Hence, universality of consciousness concerns to what is universal in the social existence.

The purpose is to specify what Marx means by "social existence" in a synthetic way. In particular seeing it as a "measure" of a more general 'social existence' of men and this last concept, at the same time, seen as a particular 'existence' for men, which may have 'existences' other than social. Finally, not just for men but for a more general category: CAS.

'Objective' is an agents universal distinction over the context being used. Example: "some say love is luck, others say is not". In the latter statement 'love' as a feeling condition, constitutes the object regarding to the agents 'some' and 'others' (which themselves constitutes objects under some existence condition regarding to the receptor of the statement), while in the statement: "some say love exists others don't", 'love' as a feeling condition don't constitute an object because there is no consensus regarding it's existence as a feeling condition. Of course we have assumed in the interpretation of the last two statements that 'some' and 'others' are referring to 'love' as a feeling condition, in case of the last statement, of arguable existence. Note that in the second statement, 'love' as a semantic condition constitutes an object. But even as a semantic condition we can find a no semantical object, as is the case in the statement: "some say kapush is a word others don't".
In order to address a 'distinction' in a given set of agents, from a sociocognitive dynamics, there must be a condition of existence to which this 'something' constitutes an object (within the set of agents). In 'kapush', if we assume it as an oral utterance, the 'object condition' has to be traced down up to a phonetic consensus, assuming both distinguishes uniquely the oral utterance: kapush!. Interesting questions depart from above; what other existence conditions can we find in the social use? what are the relations between the diverse existence conditions (developing useful schemes)?
'Subjective' is an agent dependent distinction over the context being used. From a sociocognitive dynamics, the existence of an 'object' (of at least one existence condition) precedes that of a 'subjective' distinction.
As opposed to 'objects', 'interpretation' refers to agent dependent increasing distinctions over objects.
If we read carefully the definition of 'objective' we will notice we defined 'objective' using the concept of 'distinction'. At the same time in the next paragraph we state that from a sociognitive dynamics, 'objectivness' precedes 'distinction'. This is the kind of paradoxes which arises in communication theory where one has to use communication to talk about communication. Interestingly, this is a problem you also find in cosmology, in the roots of the 'anthropic principle'. Looking closely to the paradox as found it in our disscusion of 'objects' and 'distinctions', we find that actually when we said 'objects' are precede by 'distinctions' this is an analytical precedence: a definition, an the opposed precedence is a dynamical relation: sociognitive dynamics. Es dificil no pensar en 'Ouroborus' como símbolo de esta paradoja, sin embargo, creo que una mejor analogía es la de pensar en la instancia de un lenguaje, topológicamente igual a un círculo y tal que analíticamente se lee en una dirección y dinámicamente en la dirección opuesta. Más aún, si pensamos en que el pensamiento analítico es en sí un fenómeno dinámico, podemos resolver esta nueva contradicción, distinguiendo la representación de los espacios físicos en que transcurre el pensamiento analítico y en que transcurre la dinámica social o física ah! e aquí de nuevo la paradoja, nos enfrentamos realmente Ouroborus!.

Existence concerns to all the different categorizations of experience for a CAS: Synchronic and diachronic experience. The first one, enforced by repetition and leading to time independent reality schemes; a static interpretation of objects. The second one, enforced by unpredictability leading to a historical or singular interpretation of objects. In order to have an equivalence between the concepts of time and space in replace of synchronic and diachronic we will talk of globally temporal and locally temporal. Analogously we may introduce the concepts of globally spatial and locally spatial. Given the cognitive nature of our subject of study, is important to clarify that whenever we speak about time or space in this context, actually what we mean by that is CAS time as for example anthropological time, and CAS space, meaning a CAS context or surrounding. The concept of local time as origin of singular interpretations doesn't has much sense if is not attached to the concept of local space. Because is precisely the notion of local time what allows, in a dynamic sense, the existence of local time as a social experience. Therefore we speak of spatiotemporal locality.

After all this we can state an hypotesis about the latter citation from Marx: he refers to 'social existence' as a globally temporal experience, which lead us to the conclusion that, either he underestimate or doesn't considers local spatiotemporal experiences as origins of consciousness on men.

1 comentario:

judijasa dijo...

Es precisamente esta subestimación la que constituye una de las principales críticas a las políticas Marxistas. Tomando la forma de una crítica a las pretensiones imperialistas de la lógica institucional sobre las diferentes dimensiones de la existencia individual. Igual, esto es una crítica que vale para muchos otros modelos políticos así que, personalmente no la considero suficiente en un sentido analítico.

Definitivamente sobre teoría política se podria hablar sin nunca llegar a una conclusión. A veces creo que es esa precisamente su naturaleza, la concepción política en una sociedad quizás sea como un sistema nervioso; para que este activo, debe establecer 'tensiones' entre sus partes. Sin embargo, por otro lado creo en la utilidad de establecer ciertos universales. La gran pregunta en esta misma linea sería quizás: Como determinar la naturaleza pragmática de estos universales: bajo que circunstancias (condicones CAS) deben ser denotativos? bajo que circunstancias opertivo ó metodológico?