this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2026
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What is the definition of consciousness that dialectical materialism is referring to? (hexbear.net)
submitted 5 days ago by kugupu@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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This whole time I’ve been thinking that when people say something like “consciousness arises from matter but then can impact matter,” that they were referring to subjective experience, the internal world or qualia or whichever term. This made no sense to me because I don’t see how the experience of consciousness can affect matter. The more I read through this textbook on DM though, the more it seems like they might mean consciousness as in an intellectual understanding of existence and the environment, is that right? I wish they clarified what they meant by consciousness more in this book.

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[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Since it's a basic text I think it's safe to assume they mean a more colloquial use of the word, as in, human cognition. I wouldn't expect a book that isn't a Marxist text on phenomenology to try and be more specific.

[–] woodenghost@hexbear.net 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I wouldn't underestimate that book. It's compact, but it's meant to support university students who specialize in Marxist-Leninism. Some ambiguity might arise from translation and because those vietnamese students would already be familiar with the basic concepts unlike western readers, but that's why Luna Nguyen supplies really extensive translators notes and illustrations (almost half of the book).

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

My intention wasn't to underestimate the book, I've gone through it (not as thoroughly as I should've) and it is a very comprehensive and well written piece of theory. As you mentioned, translation artifacts and selecting certain terms over others is always going to lead to the text changing, to the point that many people usually recommend to read one translation over another because they're not seen as interchangeable, even if the original text is always the same. I just went over the digital copy of the book and the translation notes and footnotes are everywhere, which shows real work and care was put into translating the text.

That being said, OP's question felt more like something that should be addressed by a more specific text, one that concerns itself with explaining at length what the concept of consciousness is within a Marxist phenomenology, why it is so and what are the implications of this in the context of diamat or revolutionary politics. This by itself could be one or a series of books.

It's not that the textbook isn't good or complete, it's that it doesn't concern itself with defining every single philosophical term in it because it's not its purpose