Engels
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
(orig. 1886)
Part 2: Materialism
... From the very early times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies, under the stimulus of dream apparitions came to believe that their thinking and sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death — from this time men have been driven to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world. ... The quandry arising from the common universal ignorance of what to do with this soul... and not religious desire for consolation, led in a general way to the tedious notion of personal immortality. In an exactly similar manner, the first gods arose through the personification of natural forces. And these gods in the further development of religions assumed more and more extramundane form, until finally by a process of abstraction, I might almost say of distillation,... there arose in the minds of men the idea of the one exclusive God of the monotheistic religions.
Thus the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of the spirit to nature — the paramount question of the whole of philosophy — has, no less than all religion, its roots in the narrow-minded and ignorant notions of savagery. But this question could for the first time be put forward in its whole acuteness, could achieve its full significance, only after humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages. ...
The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature... comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.
These two expressions, idealism and materialism, originally signify nothing else but this; and here too they are not used in any other sense. ...
But the question of the relation of thinking and being had yet another side:... Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality? In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of thinking and being, and the overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question. With Hegel for example, its affirmation is self-evident;...
...there is yet a set of different philosophers — those who question the possibility of any cognition, or at least of an exhaustive cognition, of the world. ... What is decisive in the refutation of this view has already been said by Hegel, in so far as this was possible from an idealist standpoint. ... The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice — namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable “thing-in-itself”. ... For 300 years, the Copernican solar system was a hypothesis... But then Leverrier... not only deduced the necessity of the existence of an unknown planet, but also calculated the position in the heavens which this planet must necessarily occupy, and when Galle really found this planet , the Copernican system was proved. If, nevertheless, the neo-Kantians are attempting to resurrect the Kantian conception... , this is, in view of their theoretical and practical refutation accomplished long ago, scientifically a regression and practically merely a shamefaced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world.
...these philosophers were by no means impelled, as they thought they were, solely by the force of pure reason. On the contrary, what really pushed them forward most was the powerful and ever more rapidly onrushing progress of natural science and industry. ...ultimately, the Hegelian system represents merely a materialism idealistically turned upside down in method and content.
...
The course of evolution of Feuerbach is that of a Hegelian... into a materialist;... ...Feuerbach is finally driven to the realization that the Hegelian premundane existence of the “absolute idea”, the “pre-existence of the logical categories” before the world existed, is nothing more than the fantastic survival of the belief in the existence of an extra-mundane creator;... Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter. This is, of course, pure materialism. But, having got so far, Feuerbach stops short. He cannot overcome the customary philosophical prejudice, prejudice not against the thing but against the name materialism. ...
...
...Feuerbach lumps together the materialism that is a general world outlook resting upon a definite conception of the relation between matter and mind, and the special form in which this world outlook was expressed at a definite historical stage... But just as idealism underwent a series of stages of development, so also did materialism. With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, it has to change its form; and after history was also subjected to materialistic treatment, a new avenue of development has opened here, too
The materialism of the last century was predominantly mechanical, because at that time, of all natural sciences, only mechanics... had come to any definite close. ...
The second specific limitation of this materialism lay in its inability to comprehend the universe as a process, as matter undergoing uninterrupted historical development. ... Nature, so much was known, was in eternal motion. But according to the ideas of that time, this motion turned, also eternally, in a circle and therefore never moved from the spot; it produced the same results over and over again. ...
This same unhistorical conception prevailed also in the domain of history. ... The great progress made in the Middle Ages... was not seen. Thus a rational insight into the great historical interconnectedness was made impossible, and history served at best as a collection of examples and illustrations for the use of philosophers.
The vulgarizing pedlars, who in Germany in the fifties dabbled in materialism, by no means overcame this limitation of their teachers. All the advances of natural science which had been made in the meantime served them only as new proofs against the existence of a creator of the world;...
...Feuerbach had lived to see all three of the decisive discoveries — that of the cell, the transformation of energy, and the theory of evolution named after Darwin. But how could the lonely philosopher, living in rural solitude, be able sufficiently to follow scientific developments... ? The blame for this falls solely upon the wretched conditions in Germany, in consequence of which cobweb-spinning eclectic flea-crackers had taken possession of the chairs of philosophy, while Feuerbach, who towered above them all, had to rusticate and grow sour in a little village. It is therefore not Feuerbach’s fault that this historical conception of nature... remained inaccessible to him.
...Feuerbach is quite correct in asserting that exclusively natural-scientific materialism is indeed “the foundation of the edifice of human knowledge, but not the edifice itself”. For we live not only in nature but also in human society, and this also no less than nature has its history of development and its science. It was therefore a question of bringing the science of society... into harmony with the materialist foundation,... But it did not fall to Feuerbach’s lot to do this. In spite of the “foundation”, he remained here bound by the traditional idealist fetters, a fact which he recognizes in these words: “Backwards I agree with the materialists, but not forwards!”
...
...we simply cannot get away from the fact that everything that sets men acting must find its way through their brains... The influences of the external world upon man express themselves in his brain, are reflected therein as feelings, impulses, volitions — in short, as “ideal tendencies”, and in this form become “ideal powers”. If, then, a man is to be deemed an idealist because he follows “ideal tendencies”... , then every person who is at all normally developed is a born idealist and how, in that case, can there still be any materialists?
...
Margaret Macdonald
Art and Imagination
(1953)
Examples of the wider doctrine which does define all works of art as works of imagination are the theories of R.G. Collingwood, Jean-Paul Sartre, both influenced by Croce. According to them a work of art must be distinguished from all physical objects, even from such objects as the picture on the gallery wall,... One reason given for this is that although a work of art cannot be communicated to others without a physical vehicle it can be imagined, and thus internally produced, by an artist who did not choose to manifest it externally. I think the relation is somewhat complex between works of art and physical objects, or, rather, between what is correctly said about works of art and the physical world. But this is not elucidated by the metaphor popular with certain aesthetic philosophers of a work of art as a mysterious message transmitted by an intrinsically worthless instrument, the physical medium. The very notion of a medium suggests the spiritualist séance rather than the study or studio. Nevertheless, it does make sense (though it may be false) to say that Shakespeare made up a play which he did not write down or get performed and that no-one but he knew of this. So, it is argued, this situation may be generalised. ... There may, indeed, be good evidence to show that an artist had contemplated and even thought out a work which he never committed to word, paint, sound or other material. ... But I doubt if an ordinary person would unhesitatingly assert that he had thereby produced the work. ... An imaginary picture or statue just isn't a picture or statue because these words stand for works which need hands as well as heads to bring them into existence. This may not be quite so clear for other works of art. ... Normally, a lost literary or musical work is one of which the text or score has disappeared or been forgotten, not one which no text or score, written or oral, existed. But while no-one would say that a picture which had not been painted however clearly a painter had imagined or even described it, had existed and been lost one might hesitate to deny that a poem or a song had existed because it was known only to its author and had never been spoken or sung aloud. ... This seems to attribute an exaggerated artistic importance to the mechanical processes of making visible and audible. An imaginary picture is not a picture and is of an entirely different logical type because the work of producing a picture cannot be done or, at least, completed without physical labour. But the task of making up a poem or story or composing a tune may sometimes be over before these are spoken, sung or written down. Moreover, there seems to be no substantial difference between what is imagined and what is uttered, heard, written and read. I do not think these facts justify the conclusions of idealist aesthetic philosophers but they may give some excuse for them and do also show discrepancies between the works of different arts which are important for aesthetics. ... One who never exhibits his artistic skill is not a very "pure" artist but a fraud. Of a reputable author or composer, however, it might be sensible to ask whether all his works were known and there might be reason to believe they were not. I do not assert that we positively should add an imagined sonnet to the Shakespearean corpus but only that we might, rightly, hesitate and be inclined to do so as we should not hesitate to exclude an imagined statue from the works of Rodin. The hesitation would be due to a strong conflicting tendency to call works of art only certain public objects. This is, I am sure the primary use of the word for all and the sole use for some, works. Works of art are, primarily, public, perceptual objects made by someone using technical skill. There may be a distinction between artists and craftsmen, as Collingwood insisted, but the borderland is wide and all artists, as makers, are also craftsmen.
(pp. 209-212)
LeRoi Jones
Blues People
(1963)
The Western concept of the cultivation of the voice is foreign to African or Afro-American music. In the West, only the artifact can be beautiful, mere expression cannot be thought to be. It is only in the twentieth century that Western art has moved away from this concept and toward the non-Western modes of art-making, but the principle of the beautiful thing as opposed to the natural thing still makes itself felt. The tendency of white jazz musicians to play "softer" or with "cleaner, rounder tones" than their Negro counterparts is, I think, an insistence on the same Western artifact. Thus an alto saxophonist like Paul Desmond, who is white, produces a sound on his instrument that can almost be called legitimate, or classical, and the finest Negro alto saxophonist, Charlie Parker, produced a sound on the same instrument that was called by some "raucous and uncultivated." But Parker's sound was meant to be both those adjectives. Again, reference determines value. Parker also would literally imitate the human voice with his cries, swoops, squawks, and slurs, while Desmond always insists he is playing an instrument, that it is an artifact separate from himself. Parker did not admit that there was any separation between himself and the agent he had chosen as his means of self-expression.
(pp. 30-31)
Nicholas Epley, Adam Waytz, and John T. Cacioppo
"On Seeing Human: A Three-Factor Theory of Anthropomorphism"
(2007)
[864 (abstract)]
"... This article describes a theory to explain when people are likely to anthropomorphize and when they are not, focused on three psychological determinants—the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation). This theory predicts that people are more likely to anthropomorphize when anthropocentric knowledge is accessible and applicable, when motivated to be effective social agents, and when lacking a sense of social connection to other humans."...
[870]
"Developmental Influences: Acquisition of Alternate Theories...
...adults tend to show considerably weaker egocentric biases in judgment than do children, but this difference appears to arise because adults are more likely to correct an automatic egocentric interpretation of the world than are children rather than because adults are less likely to start with an egocentric interpretation to begin with."
...
[871]
"Effectance Motivation as a Determinant of Anthropomorphism...
Anthropomorphism provides an intuitive and readily accessible method for reducing uncertainty in contexts in which alternative nonanthropomorphic models of agency do not exist... Charles Darwin, for instance, advocated anthropomorphism as a necessary tool for understanding nonhuman agents. So too did Donald Hebb (1946),...who argued
[872]
for anthropomorphism as a procedural tool in his laboratory studies of chimpanzees as a practical aid to understanding:A thoroughgoing attempt to avoid anthropomorphic description in the study of temperament was made... All that resulted was an almost endless series of specific acts in which no order or meaning could be found. On the other hand, by the use of frankly anthropomorphic concepts of emotion and attitude one could quickly and easily describe the peculiarities of individual animals . . . .
"...Hebb’s experience suggests that anthropomorphism can aid understanding regardless of its accuracy by serving a more utilitarian function. This utilitarian function is perhaps best described by Dennett (1987) as the “intentional stance,” whereby clearly unintentional agents...are attributed humanlike intentions simply to increase the ease with which people can reason about those agents or communicate about them with others, and thereby interact with them more effectively. ..."
...
"These arguments suggest that anthropomorphism may be utilized to increase the predictability and comprehension of what would otherwise be an uncertain world, much in the way that egocentric knowledge about one’s own preferences can serve as a useful guide to another person’s preference in the absence of any additional information. ... This general motivation to “interact effectively with [one’s] environment” (White, 1959, p. 297) deemed effectance motivation by White,... ... induction itself has been conceptualized as satisfying one’s effectance motivation by including “all inferential processes that expand knowledge in the face of uncertainty”... Anthropomorphism, as a specialized process of induction, should therefore be influenced by one’s effectance motivation."
...
[874]
"Cultural influences: Uncertainty avoidance. ... Uncertainty avoidance represents “the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations” and is tightly linked to effectance motivation. This cross-cultural variable should therefore influence anthropomorphism in the same manner that need for closure influences individual-level responses. ...
"Findings at least consistent with this hypothesis come from differences in the religious traditions... Cultures high in uncertainty avoidance, for instance, tend to believe more strongly in the theological concept of immanence—the extent to which a god is “incorporated, is immanent, in persons, organizations, or various objects in the natural world”...
[875]
...immanence is explicitly endorsed by Catholicism but not by Protestantism, and all 20 of the Christian countries above the median in uncertainty avoidance in Hofstede’s (2001) analysis were predominantly Catholic. In contrast, all but 3 of the low uncertainty avoidant Christian countries in Hofstede’s analysis were predominantly Protestant or mixed. ...
"... American scientists...have criticized Japanese researchers for their highly anthropomorphic descriptions of primates. Although these differences may arise for a variety of reasons, it is at least possible that cultural differences in uncertainty avoidance between these two groups of sciences were playing an important role,..."
...
[877]
"Developmental Differences: Attachment. ...
"Although research has not investigated this hypothesis directly, existing research suggests that those with insecure attachment styles seek compensatory relationships from parasocial or nonhuman agents (especially religious agents). Those with insecure-anxious attachment styles, for instance, are more likely than those with secure attachment styles to form perceived social bonds with television characters (Cole & Leets, 1999) and are more likely to report an increase in religious belief over a given time period than those with secure attachment styles. Those with insecure–avoidant attachment styles—those who have insecure attachments and actively avoid social contact—generally report stronger religious beliefs, report a stronger relationship with God, and are more likely to report sudden religious conversions later in life. Those with insecure attachment styles appear to actively seek social surrogates to form the basis of more secure social relationships, and anthropomorphizing non-human agents is one potentially successful strategy
for obtaining such relationships."
Jean-Luc Jucker and Justin L. Barrett
Cognitive Constraints on the Visual Arts: An Empirical Study of the Role of Perceived Intentions in Appreciation Judgements
(2011)
[115]"From infancy babies automatically represent artefacts partly in relation to how they might be manipulated, apparently as a way to conceptualize their possible use or function. Similarly, adults assess artefacts partly according to their function. This springboard from manipulability to functional utility is absent from most works of art however, as it is for printed text or signs. Typically, works of art
[116]
cannot be readily manipulated, and are neither created nor used to achieve purely practical goals,... In other words, although perceived as intentionally created by human agents, the purpose of works of art is not clear, and cries out for an explanation."
...
"To clarify, let us contrast a tool with a work of art. A tool will be recognized as such if it carries out a specific function; and if this tool carries out this function, we directly infer that its maker intended it to do so. This tool, then, may be assessed without speculation regarding the maker’s intention; recognizing its function is sufficient to categorize it and use it. For a work of art, the contrary is true: as it carries out no obvious precise function, it cannot be assessed without speculation about the artist’s intention. In other words, a work of art would be assumed to communicate something, which would have to be inferred from the artist’s intention."
...
[117]"On the basis of an art theory (Levinson, 1979, 1993), Bloom (1996)...proposed a new theory of artefact categorization, in which the decisive factor is claimed to be the intention of the artefact’s maker. According to this theory, an artefact actually is categorized as belonging to a kind X if, and only if, its maker intended it to belong to that kind (or, more precisely, if it is recognized that its maker intended it to belong to that kind). This does not mean, of course, that considerations of form and function play no role in artefact categorization; most of the time, form and function actually constitute good indicators of what the intention of the artefact’s maker was... More simply, it means that taking into account the intention of the artefact’s maker allows one to avoid some problems with classic approaches to artefact categorization. ...similarity of form and function are not sufficient for artefact categorization, because two objects may be dissimilar in form, but belong to the same kind, and two objects may be similar in potential function, but belong to different kinds. If one considers the intention of the artefact’s maker, categorization appears to be less problematic: two things may be dissimilar in form, but made with the same intention (and therefore considered as belonging to the same kind), and two things may be similar in function, but made with different intentions (and therefore considered as belonging to different kinds).
"...experimental studies that support the idea that intention plays an important role in artefact categorization and appreciation. ...children were asked to draw objects similar in form, such as a balloon and a lollipop; after another task, they had to name their drawings. Given the age of the participants (3–4-year-old), the drawings were very simple, and so similar that it was impossible to distinguish them on the only basis of form. However, a
[118]
significant percentage of the participants named the drawings correctly, suggesting that children distinguished their creations by reference to what they intended to represent."
...
"Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory of CommunicationBloom’s (1996) theory of artefact categorization suggests that intention plays an important role in intuitive judgements about artefacts, especially when their form, function, or mode of production is ambiguous. From this point of view, works of art that our approach targets typically are ambiguous. Being human-made objects, works of art activate intuitive cognition for artefacts, but at the same time frustrate functional expectations associated with artefacts; the creator’s intended function for his or her creation cannot be simply “read off” of the work of art. How, then, are works of art represented by
[119]
human minds? We suggest that they are considered as acts of non-verbal symbolic communication, in which case Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995) Relevance Theory might be a useful theoretical framework to approach them.
...
"According to Relevance Theory, to communicate is to make explicit an intention (the intention to communicate, and the intention to communicate something in particular), and successful communication occurs when this intention is correctly inferred from the evidence, that is, from the utterance or behaviour in question. However, as most of the time a number of different inferences may be drawn from the evidence, communication is also constrained by the Principle of Relevance. According to the Principle of Relevance, communicating goes along with an expectation of relevance: people pay attention only to information which may have an effect in a given context or, in cognitive terms, to information which is “worth processing”. Furthermore, according to Sperber and Wilson, there are degrees of relevance, and these may be described in terms of a cost-benefit relationship: the most relevant propositions in a given discourse are those that (1) have the greatest cognitive impact in the context and (2) are the easiest to process. In Sperber and Wilson’s words, relevance is geared to “the processing of information which is likely to bring about the greatest contribution to the mind’s general cognitive goals at the smallest processing cost” (1995: 48).
"We propose to apply Relevance Theory to art appreciation. First of all, we suggest that works of art, much like utterances, are intuitively assessed as acts of symbolic communication: these particular artefacts, being intentionally created through human agency, but lacking ordinary functionality, would be thought to “mean something”. According to Relevance Theory, human communication carries an expectation of relevance; in our domain of interest, that would mean that works of art are expected to communicate something that is relevant or, in other words, worth processing. Furthermore, according to Relevance Theory, successful communication occurs when the speaker’s intention is correctly inferred from the utterance. Understanding the artist’s intention would, thus, be a crucial factor in assessing the relevance of a work of art."
...
[120]"Human products that appear to have required a lot of effort and skill to produce seem to be naturally admired by people. In the visual arts, it makes a difference to know that a painting was not achieved in one day, but that it required several months of hard work."
[footnote to above:]
"Kruger et al. (2001, p. 91) argued that “[perceived] effort is used as a heuristic for quality”. In one study, two abstract paintings were considered better when they were thought to have required more time when created (Kruger et al., 2004, Experiment 2)."
...
[121]"From our point of view, the effort and skill that went into a work of art do not only trigger respect and admiration. More importantly, they constitute indicators and clarifiers of intentionality."
...
[124]"A few pilot raters reported “embarrassment” with assessing the effort and skill that went into a work of art, and during the actual survey this was a general trend among visual arts specialists."
...
[132]"Conclusion
...
[133]
... intentionalism in art appreciation – or the idea that considering the artist’s intention is necessary to understand and judge a work of art – has been criticized by art theorists (e.g., Wimsatt and Beardsley, 1946/1999). We think however that understanding the artist’s intention is at the core of art appreciation, as far as one does not misread what we mean by this. For example, we do not pretend that all art is meaningful (what is the “meaning” of a Rothko’s multiform painting?), and many contemporary artists would deny that their works convey a precise “message” that would need to be “understood”. All we say is that works of art, because they cannot be approached in terms of practical use or function, will be automatically assessed as acts of symbolic communication and, therefore, will trigger speculations about the artist’s intention (“Why did he or she make that?”) – whether speculating about the artist’s intention is justified or not, and whether the artist actually intended to communicate something or not."
Frank L. Schmidt
A General Theoretical Integrative Model of Individual Differences in Interests, Abilities, Personality Traits, and Academic and Occupational Achievement: A Commentary on Four Recent Articles
(2014)
[211]Valla and Ceci (2011): Sex Differences
in STEM Interests and AbilitiesValla and Ceci critiqued the evidence in the literature supporting brain organization theory. This theory holds that developmental events during gestation... create sex differences in brain lateralization... Interestingly, they presented no evidence that any of these forms of spatial ability contribute to success in STEM areas over and above the effects of general mental ability (GMA; intelligence) or other abilities. I have also never been able to locate such evidence. ...
Valla and Ceci stated that some studies indicate that prenatal testosterone exposure may affect interests and preferences much more than it affects abilities:...
...evidence “suggests that the influence of sex differences due to prenatal testosterone exposure is not directly on ability, but emerges as a function of interest”...
... A much larger percentage of males are interested in inanimate things (i.e., physical phenomena) rather than people or other living things, and a much larger percentage of females are interested in people and other living beings rather than inanimate things. As shown in a major meta-analysis, this difference is quite large—almost 1 standard deviation... This difference in interests is much larger than the largest sex difference in the ability domain:...
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