Investigations into the Origin of Language and Consciousness

Trân Duc Thao (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

244 Seiten

2011 | Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1984
Springer (Verlag)
978-94-009-6238-5 (ISBN)

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Tran Duc Thao, a wise and learned scientist and an eminent Marxist philoso pher, begins this treatise on the origins of language and consciousness with a question: "One of the principal difficulties of the problem of the origin of consciousness is the exact determination of its beginnings. Precisely where must one draw the line between the sensori-motor psychism of animals and the conscious psychism that we see developing in man?" And then he cites Karl Marx's famous passage about 'the bee and the architect' from Capital: ... what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in the imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement. (Capital, Vol. I, p. 178, tr. Moore and Aveling) Thao follows this immediately with a second question: "But is this the most elementary form of consciousness?" Thus the conundrum concerning the origins of consciousness is posed as a circle: if human consciousness pre supposes representation (of the external reality, of mental awareness, of actions, of what it may), and if this consciousness emerges first with the activity of production using tools, and if the production of tools itself pre supposes representation - that is, with an image of what is to be produced in the mind of the producer - then the conditions for the origins of human

First Investigation.- The Indicative Gesture as the Original Form of Consciousness.- Second Investigation.- Syncretic Language.- Third Investigation.- Marxism and Psychoanalysis — The Origins of the Oedipal Crisis.- Notes.- Index of Names.

Erscheint lt. Verlag	2.11.2011
Reihe/Serie	Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ; 44
Übersetzer	Daniel L. Herman, Robert L. Armstrong
Zusatzinfo	2 Illustrations, black and white; 244 p. 2 illus.
Verlagsort	Dordrecht
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Lexikon / Chroniken
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Sprachphilosophie
	Naturwissenschaften
ISBN-10	94-009-6238-X / 940096238X
ISBN-13	978-94-009-6238-5 / 9789400962385
Zustand	Neuware