[Xmca-l] Re: Imagination

[Vera John-Steiner]

What I find particularly interesting about metaphor is that it combines a source and a target domain. While perception is rooted in one domain, metaphor, as so many aspects of imagination, is a synthesis. Vygotsky reminds us that creative imagination is a synthesis of emotion and thinking. It is this feature of imagination that helps to lead us to something new.  Children often make up a story relying on past experiences,  current wishes, unexpected combinations of the known, metaphors, analogies and fantasy. I see imagination as a complex process,although we all have flashes of imagination at times. My main point is the emphasis on synthesis embedded in  social and cultural domains with all the resources they have to offer to the individual.
Vera  

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2014 6:25 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Imagination

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.
>