Consciousness, Values, and Beliefs - Essay Example

How Do We Know The relationship between thought and consciousness has intrigued human beings from the times of the earliest civilisations and forms the foundation of self-consciousness. Socrates expressed the unsettling idea that the only thing we can certainly know is that we know nothing. This was unsettling because our relationship to the world is determined by our knowledge of it: not being able to know anything has disastrous implications for our ability to act. Altered states of consciousness: for example dreams and trances and the consciousness of children or the insane: are disturbing because 1) these forms of consciousness arise from the same physical reality as more normal consciousness; and 2) they form an alternative construct wherein to understand physical reality. This is disturbing only if we assume that states of consciousness are mutually exclusive. Insofar as the same subject can experience different forms of consciousness (dreams and waking reality) they need not be mutually exclusive; rather, the fear is that a totally different worldview, and therefore a totally different mode of operating in the world, may be appropriate. For example, it would be unsettling if someone managed to convince us that feudalism is the correct worldview and therefore the correct modus operandi. Our defence of the current worldview (industrial capitalism) would be motivated not only by apprehensions of the alteration in our individual condition (from factory-owner to serf) but perhaps even more by our belief in the props (e.g. belief in free speech and free enterprise) of the current worldview. Our values and beliefs are ultimately determined by our social existence; our knowledge of the world is based on our social relations and conditions. The thesis he posited in contradistinction to Rene Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" and which is central to Karl Marx's body of work is that "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness" (Critique of Political Economy 2). Existence itself does not depend on consciousness, much less on meta- consciousness; neither does life or productivity depend on consciousness. Rather, given a certain social structure and an individual's relations to it, subjective consciousness arises from physical reality. Physical reality encompasses everyday material activity (Burke 3), which is determined by the configuration of the individual or socioeconomic class in the current relations of production. An early 21st century American farmer's consciousness arises from the sum of all the activities and relationships he enters as a farmer (planting with a seed-drill, selling his grain to a corporate miller, buying seeds from a transnational biotechnology giant); it is different from the consciousness of the miller or the biotech company, and also from that of a farmer in Soviet Russia. It is different and unique not only because of his position in a salient mode of production (industrial capitalism versus socialism), but also, and equally importantly, because of the non-economic institutions that reflect and propagate that mode of production. Thus the early 21st century American farmer's consciousness is determined also by the media, the church, the system of education, the family - in short, by all that can be summed up as 'culture.' Althusser calls these cultural institutions the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) - in contrast to the Repressive State Apparatuses (Althusser 3) which operate by direct force (law, police, army). The ISAs grow up on the base of the mode of production, reflect it, and reinforce it; they represent the ideology of the dominant mode of production. This is true of every human society under every mode or production: it can be understood, not as a conspiracy (Burke 4), but as reflections in ideology of the mode of production. By reflecting the mode of production, ideology also propagates it: every time the status quo is mirrored in culture (e.g. in advertisements or poetry) the status quo appears, not as the product of historical forces (e.g. democracy as the product of a series of class struggles including the French Revolution) and as itself a stage in class struggle (according to Marx, capitalism is a stage en route to socialism) - but rather as the inevitable, natural, and desirable state of things. Thus ideology makes invisible the class struggle being enacted within any mode of production (Althusser 3), makes invisible the fact that the current mode of production arose as a result of the victory of the current dominant class. Instead, in the same way the dominant class (dominant because it overcame the previous dominant class) ordered the current mode of production, it also orders the ideology of any given society. And out of ideology consciousness arises (Critique of Political Economy 6). Ideology may be understood as the sum of all the ideas, beliefs, skills, etc that characterise any given society (ibid 2). A fundamental aspect of the way in which ideology operates is commonsense, a sociological term for the set of beliefs and values so deeply ingrained in individuals that they become axiomatic in a society. That "democracy is desirable" and "mass production is good" are apparently self-evident truths in democratic industrial societies; they are apparently as self-evident as that "the sun rises in the east." The first two statements are examples of commonsense arising from the dominant ideology. Democracy and mass production are most desirable to those whom democracy and capitalism most visibly empower: political leaders and large-scale capitalists. Democracy and mass production may also be desirable to other sections of society; but these two statements are self-evident only through hegemony, the process by which the ideology of the dominant class in the mode of production becomes the dominant ideology of society. It is on commonsense that subjective consciousness is erected. Commonsense is manufactured by the mode of production in the same way as labour and goods are manufactured by it; commonsense helps to represent the interests of the dominant class as the interests of society as a whole (Althusser 12). The material conditions of life give rise to consciousness, and to the mistaken (in all except socialist societies, according to Marx) belief in self-determination. I believe that I choose to purchase Maybelline lipstick, rather than choose another brand, or a generic, or no lipstick at all; in fact my 'choice' is determined by the ideology arising from my conditions of life: ideology which seems so inevitable to me that I may even deny it while continuing to operate on it (e.g. the belief that women must be attractive, that women are objects of the sexual gaze, that branded products are better). This is an example of what Marxists have termed false consciousness: the material conditions of life, arising from the mode of production, lead to needs (e.g. the need for romance leading to family life and procreation) which, like the current mode of production, seem inevitable but are in fact historically produced (the value of the family being produced by a social structure wherein the family is the unit of economic production and socialisation). The need to earn more than my neighbour and to own a car and not needs in the physical, biological sense, but needs created by my false consciousness of the world and my relation to the mode of production. This consciousness is false because it arises from ideology that represents itself as natural and inevitable but is neither. It is false consciousness inasmuch as it prevents individuals - the dominant as well as the dominated class (The German Ideology 5) - from perceiving their true relations (e.g. as exploited and exploiter); but this is nevertheless the consciousness within which individuals operate in real life. The fact that I do not realise that my 'need' for Maybelline lipstick is dictated by ideology of which I am a victim (and of which men and capitalists are also victims) does not alter the fact that I purchase and wear lipstick. Marx proposed that the 'human essence' is not some 'abstraction inherent in every individual' (Theses on Feuerbach 3) but the 'ensemble of social relations.' Consciousness cannot arise without being; and being is determined by social relations. Sensory experience of the material world is organised into knowledge within the framework of commonsense which originates in ideology. The fact that I receive a rap on the knuckles for failing to memorise Latin verbs makes me understand that learning Latin is important - a conclusion reflected in my society, where knowledge of Latin is important for the welfare of the dominant class by whom and in whose interests the educational system has been set up. Consciousness is determined by the material conditions of life insofar as material conditions determine what experiences we are exposed to, as well as the ideology within which we understand these experiences. Subjective consciousness tends to be shaped in such a way as to support the dominant ideology (which is the most abundant and most accessible source from which subjective consciousness arises) and thus also support the mode of production. Our social existence, relations, and conditions determine our values and beliefs and our knowledge of the world. Works Cited Althusser, Louis. Essays on Ideology. Verso Books. Paris 1984 Burke, Barry. "Karl Marx and Informal Education." The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education. 2000 McCarney, Joseph. Ideology and False Consciousness. Marx Myths and Legends. April 2005 Marx, Karl. Theses on Feuerbach. 1845. Progress Publishers, Moscow from Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume I p 13-15 Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. 1846. Progress Publishers, Moscow Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 1859. Progress Publishers, Moscow Read More