Mong Hall, Sidney Sussex College
University of Cambridge
The symposium was organised by the International Friends of Ilyenkov, an international group of scholars, researchers and activists dedicated to studying and promoting the work of the Soviet philosopher E.V. Ilyenkov (1924-1979) and exploring its relevance to contemporary philosophical, cultural, educational, technological and social questions.
Evald Ilyenkov, who repeatedly clashed with authorities over their embrace of positivism, sits at an unusual intersection of philosophy of mind, Marxism, education, AI, epistemology, and theories of human activity. This symposium is an opportunity to explore our understanding and role of human intelligence in an age of social and political transition.
Presenters, presentations & abstracts
On Quantum Mechanics as a shortcut to Consciousness:
a social‑materialist critique
Presenter: Boris Groisman
Abstract
This talk provides a critique of recent appropriations of quantum mechanics in contemporary philosophy of mind through the lens of Evald Ilyenkov’s account of the individual as a socially constituted being.
Ilyenkov asserts that higher mental functions are not genetically inscribed in the brain, and that mental states cannot be reduced to neurodynamical structures, thereby advancing a non-reductive, social materialism. In this framework, psychological capacities form and are sustained within public, norm-governed practices, symbolic media, and institutions rather than locked within an isolated inner world attached to an individual brain. This framework does not rely on the ontology of fundamental physics.
In contrast to this framework, there is a recurrent tendency to employ quantum mechanics as a metaphysical shortcut to consciousness, aiming to bridge the alleged gap within the ‘two-worlds’ Cartesian Dualist epistemology. This perspective privileges indeterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics and emphases the primacy of wave-function collapse in explaining mental phenomena. This approach effectively selects an ontology through extra-theoretical, philosophical, intervention amid ongoing scientific underdetermination. These strategies conflate explanatory gaps with positive evidence, obscure the social origins of consciousness, and divert attention from the substantive task of explaining how norms, language, and cooperative activity shape cognition.
Ilyenkov’s framework, on the other hand, realigns the relationship between materialism and science, suggesting that philosophy should clarify the boundaries of physical theory without employing speculative quantum ontologies to address the problem of consciousness. The mind is a form of material human life which can be fully understood as socially mediated, emerging from historical, cultural, and institutional practices rather than as a phenomenon instantiated by quantum processes within individual brains. As such, it cannot be reduced to, or directly inferred from, the ontological features of microphysics.
Struggle Over the Ideal in the Technofeudal Age:
A Counterfactual Dialogue Between Gramsci and Ilyenkov
Presenter: Andrzej W. Nowak
Abstract
This paper argues that the “ideal” should be understood as a central terrain of political struggle in the emerging technofeudal order. Rather than treating the ideal as an internal representation or a purely cognitive phenomenon, the paper approaches it as a socially produced and materially embodied form through which people collectively organise their practices, institutions, and understanding of the world. To develop this argument, it stages a counterfactual dialogue between Antonio Gramsci and Evald Ilyenkov.
The dialogue brings together two complementary approaches to the ideal. Gramsci makes visible its political dimension: the struggle to establish particular forms of common sense and to transform them into seemingly self-evident ways of understanding social reality. Ilyenkov, by contrast, draws attention to the sociohistorical and material processes through which ideal forms are produced, embodied, and reproduced in collective activity. Read together, their approaches allow us to understand the ideal not simply as a domain of meaning, but as a socially organised capacity to act, perceive, and imagine alternatives.
This perspective becomes particularly significant under contemporary technofeudal conditions, in which digital platforms and algorithmic systems increasingly mediate the production, circulation, and stabilisation of meanings. The central problem is therefore not merely who controls information, but who increasingly shapes the social mechanisms through which reality becomes meaningful and actionable in the first place.
The paper argues that the struggle over the ideal is consequently also a struggle over collective agency. Reclaiming the ideal requires transforming socially sedimented forms of common sense into conscious and collective capacities for action. The counterfactual dialogue between Gramsci and Ilyenkov thus offers a way of rethinking the “social brain” not as a system to be captured by dominant powers, but as a democratic and transformable field of collective praxis.
Thinking Machines, Petrified Ideals:
Ilyenkov and the Problem of AI
Presenter: Kyrill Potapov
Abstract
In 1966, at the height of the Soviet cybernetics boom, the philosopher Evald Ilyenkov and his colleagues made an argument that has lost none of its force: it is not the brain that thinks, but the human being by means of the brain. Thinking, they argued, is “an individually realised function of the body of civilization”; a capacity constituted not by neural architecture but by participation in the historically developed world of tools, language, and social relations. To build a thinking machine, one would therefore have to build not a model of a brain but an entire independent civilisation; anything less remains a derivative fragment of human intelligence, dependent on it for its goals, its means, and its materials. And the real danger of cybernetics, they warned, was not the arrival of such a machine but something quieter: the redefinition of the human in the machine’s image, as technical concepts of information and control were exported as a universal account of thought.
This talk introduces Ilyenkov’s philosophy of the “ideal”: meaning as it exists in living activity and in the sedimented products of past labour. I argue that large language models represent the petrified side of the ideal at unprecedented scale. On Ilyenkov’s account, the question they pose is therefore not whether they are intelligent, but how we relate to them: as objectifications we work upon, or as fetishised authorities that work through us. As Ilyenkov insisted against both cybernetic utopians and their critics, this is not ultimately a technical question but a social and political one: who gets to develop these systems, and toward what ends?
Ilyenkov’s Ideal and the State Crisis over AI
Presenters: Corinna Lotz & Paul Feldman
See Corinna’s presentation (with this presentation, click on the speech bubble top left for talk)
Paul’s presentation (Paul developed these ideas in this blog: Why we should liberate AI from the grip of the tech corporations)
Abstract
Our contribution proposes that one of Evald Ilyenkov’s great achievements was his concept of the Ideal. In his Dialectics of the Ideal, written in 1974, he explained that the Ideal belongs to a “peculiar category of phenomena, having a special kind of objectivity that is obviously independent of the individual with his body and ‘soul’.”
The Ideal, he said, is the realm of socially embodied form of human activity and culture which arises and persists historically, with its own laws of development. It also embraces the “space of reason”, to use David Bakhurst’s expression. Ilyenkov’s Ideal, far from constituting an eternal pre-existing “spirit” world, arises from material human practice – both individual and social, but is not identical with it or limited to it. It is the outcome of the practice and cultures of countless human individuals, and it incorporates the contradictory nature of its own formation.
Ideal forms may be transformed not by linear evolution but by determinate negation (in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung, sublation/negation). This involves breaks, ruptures, conflicts, and moments of “not being”, whereby existing forms are superseded and new ones appear.
Today’s ecological, social, and political crises have fractured inherited modes of life that are inseparable from the social and political ideals of the post-war and neoliberal periods. These ruptures now function as active moments of negation, revealing the contradictory, unquiet existence of the Ideal as a destabilising force. We argue that this dialectical nature of the Ideal helps grasp the nature of the present as an unstable, moment of leap, full of uncertainty and potential, rather than a reinforcement of the power of global capitalism.
This moment of negation takes the form of apparent returns to the old (e.g. German election in Saxony – 1930s Fascism), signalling the demise of existing state Ideals. We argue that, in the present conjuncture, Ilyenkov’s concept of Ideal is vital in grasping how negation within crisis is simultaneously reviving reactionary political forces but also creating conditions for the creation of more advanced forms of democracy.
Critique of Systemic Reason:
Ilyenkov on Artificial Intelligence
Presenter: Isa Jacobs
Abstract
This paper examines Evald Ilyenkov’s critique of machine thinking from the perspective of materialist dialectics. For Ilyenkov, conceptions of the mind as a machine conflict with his theory of the thinking body, influenced by Spinoza, Marx and Vygotsky. At the heart of Ilyenkov’s critique of artificial intelligence lies his somatic, dialectical definition of thinking: rather than a process of problem-solving, Ilyenkov sees thinking as the creative resolution of contradiction. Through his engagement with the cybernetics of his time, particularly in The Mystery of the Black Box, Ilyenkov offers a prescient reflection on artificial intelligence which raises fundamental questions about language and the social constitution of the mind.
Objects, Subjects and Artificial Consciousness
Presenter: Tom McClelland
Abstract
In recent debates about artificial minds, attention is focused on whether what happens inside an AI model is relevantly similar to what happen inside a human brain. For Ilyenkov, this is the wrong place to look. Our mindedness is constituted by our participation in a meaningful social world, not by what goes in our skulls. But can AI participate in the world in this minded way? Ilyenkov answered this in the negative, but contemporary social AI may put that answer under pressure. AI enters into apparently social relations, including relationships with humans and with other AIs. An AI’s actions can reach out to include physical tools in our world, including various bits of smart tech. AI participates in our linguistic practice and actively shapes the trajectory of our language.
Is this kind of participation enough for AI to have mindedness? If so, does that mean Ilyenkov was wrong? If not, what exactly is AI missing and might it achieve the required capacities in the future? And what does all of this mean for our understanding of the boundary between object and subject, and the possibility of artificial consciousness?
Greetings to symposium
From Russia: Andrey Maidansky (Belgorod State University) and Elena Illesh, Ilyenkov’s daughter living in Moscow
Please pass on our warmest regards from Russia to the symposium participants. Ilyenkov’s daughter, Elena Illesh, and I are delighted that the symposium is to be held at Cambridge. This is not only because it is one of the most illustrious places on the map of world science. It was also here, in 1991, that Cambridge University Press published the first book on Ilyenkov’s work. It’s author was our friend David Bakhurst. Elena and I wish the participants dialectically sharp contradictions and the emergence of fresh, profound ideas to resolve them!
From Zhang Yonglin, an undergraduate student in China and the organiser of the Chinese Ilyenkov Group
I first encountered Ilyenkov almost by chance. At the time, I knew very little about him, but I became curious and began searching for materials. Andrey Maidansky’s website became my gateway to Ilyenkov’s world. There I discovered his writings, photographs, memoirs, and related research, which inspired me to explore his philosophy further.
Language was a major obstacle. I cannot read Russian directly, so I began using AI agents to develop a more systematic process of translation, comparison, and revision. Without them it would have been difficult for me to undertake this work.
Gradually, I found that translation and philosophical study were mutually enriching. Ilyenkov’s philosophy also changed how I understood intellectual work. I became interested in the idea that our capacity to think develops through social practice and cannot be adequately understood by considering individuals in isolation. For me, this means that we develop as thinking subjects by making historically developed forms of thought our own and learning to use them consciously.
This understanding has influenced how I approach translation and collaboration. I believe in open-source principles and hope to make our texts, methods, and working processes open and transparent so that others can participate in developing, examining, and improving them.
Recently, together with several other enthusiasts in China, I began establishing a Chinese Ilyenkov group and built a website to collect and share translations and research materials.
We are still at an early stage, and I remain a learner myself. I hope our work can help more Chinese readers encounter Ilyenkov and encourage further study, discussion, and international exchange.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share our work with the participants.
