[lbo-talk] A Crisis of Neo-liberalism or a Crisis of Captialism?" by Christopher Carrico

[// ravi]

On Dec 14, 2011, at 6:46 AM, Julio Huato wrote:
> You can say terrible things about Marxists, but whatever you may make
> out of it Marxists do have a compelling answer to this question:
> Mental structures reflect (how adequately, how distortedly, etc. is
> another issue) the structures of the physical (and social) world.  And
> they do so because the mental structures themselves (call them
> "ideas") reside or are emerging properties of evolving physical
> structures (our brains, our books, our cultural products, our wealth
> altogether).

I am not sure I understand the above. Substituting “ideas” for “mental structures” (as you suggest above), I get the following: [mental] ideas reflect the structure of the physical (and social) world. This is so because ideas reside or emerge from our brain, books, etc.

But brains and books are different, no? Brains are internal to the cognitive system (the human being) and the physical basis of mental activity which attempts to process and make sense of the external world of books, cultural products, etc. If our head comes pre-equipped with some sort of “cognitive framework”, how do we construct one “out of nothing”, and one that seems to mirror the structures of the physical world?

	—ravi