[Xmca-l] Re: Imagination

[HENRY SHONERD]

I am totally with Annalisa on the generatively of metaphor. Metaphor as an essential engine of imagination is itself a metaphor, right? One might argue that all scientific models are themselves metaphors, rooted in sensation, embodied. I was struck not long ago by Vygotsky’s use of the stage metaphor (as in being on stage) in explicating dialog. I can’t remember the publication, but I am sure it is there. Langacker uses the same" on stage" metaphor in his efforts to use Cognitive Grammar in analyzing discourse. 
Henry
  
> On Dec 13, 2014, at 5:54 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
> 
> Esteemed discussants,
> 
> Having finished the paper, and considering Mike's comments, I might suggest that metaphorical reasoning is an essential engine to imagination, and I wonder if I say that because impressions taken of the perceived object as it presents itself to me (the Big Dipper) is the identical to taking the object as a product of seeing-as (a star constellation as a Big Dipper), is the identical to taking the object to represent something else entirely (such as Wittgenstein's triangle as a mountain, as an arrow, etc., or a flag to represent a nation).
> 
> In other words, that imagination begins as a perceptual process which then develops into metaphorical reasoning and perhaps continues on to more complex forms of imagining and conceptual renderings. There is definitely a dynamic relationship to perception and imagination.
> 
> If metaphor isn't THE essential engine, it must serve as a priming process (arising from embodied experience in the world), possibly in the same way the gesture manifests into the word and its meaning. At least that's how I see it at the moment...even though I'm only looking at pixels on my screen as I write this...
> 
> (Thinking out loud, but I hope not too loud).
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Annalisa
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2014 2:02 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Imagination
> 
> Here are some questions I have after reading Strawson and Williams.
> 
> Kant et al (including Russian developmentalists whose work i am trying to
> mine for empirical
> strategies and already-accumulated results) speak of productive
> imagination. The Russians write that productive imagination develops.
> 
> At first I thought that the use of productive implies that there must be a
> kind of ​imagination called UNproductive imagination. But I learned that
> instead the idea of RE-productive imagination appears and is linked to
> memory.
> 
> So, it seems that imagination is an ineluctable part of anticipation and
> memory.
> Imagine that!
> mike
> 
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 12:16 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Strawson provides a long view historically on imagination (starting with
>> Hume and Kant), Williams a more contemporaneous look, and provides a space
>> for imagination not afforded by the socio-cultural as fixed. This, coupled
>> with Pelaprat and Cole on Gap/Imagination, gives me a ground to take part
>> in the thread on imagination. Of course, I start with preconceptions: Vera
>> on creative collaboration and the cognitive grammarian Langacker on
>> symbolic assemblies in discourse and cognitive domains, particularly the
>> temporal. Everyday discourse, it seems to me, is full of imagination and
>> creativity. I am terribly interested in two aspects of temporality:
>> sequence and rhythm (including tempo and rhythmic structure), which I think
>> must both figure in imagination and creativity, for both individual and
>> distributed construals of cognition and feeling.
>> Henry
>> 
>>> On Dec 13, 2014, at 12:01 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Henry, Mike, and others interested in this topic.
>>> 
>>> I too see the affinities with notions of the third *space* and the
>> analogy
>>> to *gap-filling*
>>> I am on holiday so limited access to internet.
>>> However, I wanted to mention Raymond Williams and his notion of
>> "structures
>>> of feeling" that David K references. This notion is explored under the
>>> notion of historical *styles* that exist as a *set* of modalities that
>> hang
>>> together.  This notion suggests there is a form of knowing that is
>> forming
>>> but has not yet formed [but can be "felt" [perceived??] if we think
>>> imaginatively.  Raymond explores the imaginal as *style*
>>> Larry
>>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 4:38 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Mike and Larry,
>>>> I promise to read your profer, but just want to say how jazzed up I am
>> now
>>>> about this thread. My mind has been going wild, the mind as Larry
>> construes
>>>> it. I ended up just now with a triad, actually various triads, finally
>>>> found my old friend Serpinski. Part now of my notebooks of the mind, as
>>>> Vera would construe it. I’ll be back! Gap adentro, luega pa’ fuera.
>>>> Fractally yours,
>>>> Henry
>>>> 
>>>>> On Dec 12, 2014, at 5:09 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> For those interested in the imagination thread, attached are two
>> articles
>>>>> by philosophers who have worried about the issue.
>>>>> 
>>>>> My current interest stems from the work of CHAT theorists like
>>>> Zaporozhets
>>>>> and his students who studied the development of imagination in a manner
>>>>> that, it turns out, goes back to Kant's notion of productive
>>>> imagination. I
>>>>> am not advocating going back to Kant, and have no intention of doing
>> so.
>>>>> But these ideas seem worth pursuing as explicated in the attached
>> texts.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Through reading the Russians and then these philosophers, I came upon
>> the
>>>>> idea that perception and imagination are very closely linked at several
>>>>> levels of analysis. This is what, in our naivete, Ettienne and I argued
>>>> in
>>>>> our paper on imagination sent around earlier as a means of access to
>> the
>>>>> work of the blind-deaf psychologist, Alexander Suvorov. Moreover, such
>>>>> views emphasize the future orientation of the perception/imagination
>>>>> process. I believe that these views have direct relevance to Kris's
>> paper
>>>>> to be found on the KrisRRQ thread, and also speak to concerns about the
>>>>> role of different forms of symbolic play in development.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So here are the papers on the imagination thread. Perhaps they will
>> prove
>>>>> useful for those interested.
>>>>> mike
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
>>>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>> <Imagination and Perception by P.F. Strawson.pdf>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> --
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>