[Xmca-l] Re: Rationalism and Imagination

[Larry Purss]

Ed,
I will try to say how I approach this topic of living into an image and my way of [stepping back].
I question my own experience of being a self-defining subject as the center from which radiates by involvement in the world. I [play with] the category of [embodiment].   This notion of [playing with] and where to locate embodied experience. 
I have been thrown into a world [not merely worldview] that influenced me to grow up imagining I am embodied within the parameters of my own physical body.  
I would say that in this way of experiencing embodiment I am thoroughly a modern person locating my [self] my [subjectivity] within my own body. 
This is my phenomenological image of myself as a [self-defining] self.  I am modern.
However, I have throughout my life carried a doubt or skepticism [since age 16] that this modern version or  image of a self-defining self [which is the picture I do carry and which does embody my ongoing phenomenological  sense of who I am] is not an actual [fact]  because I suspect this is rather an image of an [encapsulated] self. 
However, to say this self-defining self is an [image] is not to discredit its [truth]. This is where the notion of [vo-obraz-zhenie] expresses that this self-identifying self [as an image] IS lived into. I am [imaging] I am vo-obraz-zhenie.  
This Russian term is usually translated as [perception] and [ideation].
I am suggesting the category of vo-obraz-zhenie can also be translated as [embodied] as an alternative translation.

Ed, I hope this gives a felt sense that I phenomenologically am thoroughly modern and I do experience my [self] as a self-identifying self. What I am doing is questioning the source of this particular sense [and meaning] of being embodied. This way of categorizing the self withdraws felt sense and felt meaning from the embodied world and re-locates this sense and meaning within the biological body.
In a way analogous to the way in the 1600’s a small minority of scholars where withdrawing from  a sense of the world being embodied in external ORDER [and being re-PLACED with locating the sense of self within this cognitively imaged ORDER]  I am imagining a small minority of persons re-experiencing the sense of being embodied not within the encapsulated self-identifying self but enacting this sense and meaning of the world being embodied and my [self] existing within this external embodied ORDER.
Not a return to the previous sense of ORDER that was theological but a re-figuring [once again] of the place of embodied enchantment through vo-obraz-zhenie.
This is an ideal of seeing through the self-identifying-self image not as false but as encapsulated. I, phenomenologically am on this quest to [see through] and [hear through] and [feel through] to the source in living into images. This notion of image includes narrative, text, meaningful action, projects. 
I would say it is an immanent critique. Honouring Kant as bringing to form this movement for his time and place but I am suggesting this imaging is a restless movement of [moving through].
I am moving through phenomenologically the notion of being a self-identifying self related to objective things. I would say this is an image.
 
 


Sent from Mail for Windows 10



From: Ed Wall
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2015 9:06 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Rationalism and Imagination


Larry

      I also am not sure if your connections are relevant to my questions. So let me pose a new one. You say "imagine representation.” Could you clarify, somewhat phenomenologically, what you mean by that. Perhaps, as I have tried to do, tell a story that captures your words.

Ed

> On Dec 11, 2015, at  11:21 PM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ed, I am not sure if my (connections) are relevant to your question if stable representations drains our imaging of affectiveness in the process of becoming understood as (representations).
> My focus is exploring more  the cultural historical movement of the imaginal becoming understood as representational.
> I am suggesting that this movement has profound implications for how we come to understand ourselves and how we understand our (self).
> The desire to make (present) the fundamental order of knowledge imaged as (presenting) a fundamental unity or ground underlying our knowledge. There is a presumption which involves (reference) as an (idea)..
> The idea is that there exists an ideal object of desire. This desire is the search for certainty, first principles. The Kantian (thing in itself).
> This (thing in itself) as an ideal includes transcendental conditions which means this (thing-in-itself) is presumed to stand outside (or independent of) the linguistic categories.
> Understanding and interpretation  are presumed to (re-present) or mediate the thing which has the status of (thing-in-itself).
> Knowledge imaged this way assumes that through (self-evident) transcendental first principles the ORDER that exists primordially is revealed (presented) as self-evident order and then (re-presented) in our cultural historical narratives.
> Ed I would suggest this relation to knowledge assumes this (self) HAS knowledge and as a possession I (have) there is a different affective relation to re-presented knowledge.
> Now my interest is in the movement of this way of reflecting on knowledge.
> Are there more intimate ways of understanding our desire for certainty that embrace no self-evident (thing-in-itself). This is one  possibleway to understand (nothingness) as (no-thing-ness).
> I am asking if this movement of how we imagine representation profoundly shifts not only our relation to knowledge but shifts our relation to (ourselves) and our relation to what we imagine as our (self).
> At the heart of this movement is the continuing desire for (absolute) knowledge.
> I am proposing this desire is a deep part of our inheritance.
> I am not saying universal or (natural) but this desire does traverse the onto- theological, the romantic, the modern notions of psychology and is a yearning for grounded bedrock foundations.
> I understand this imaginal movement as the (sharing) of voices.
> Dilthey understood creating connections (the notion of zusammenhang) in the phrase
> (life exists everywhere only as zusammenhang).
> 
> This contrasts with the desire for presenting (self-evident) order which exists a priori and only  brought into language as self-evident presentations being re-presented through our transcendental categories.
> I experience the imaginal in this movement whatever side one represents.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Ed Wall" <ewall@umich.edu>
> Sent: ‎2015-‎12-‎11 9:28 AM
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Rationalism and Imagination
> 
> Larry
> 
>       I took Mike to mean in the sentence I quoted that forming a stable representation via a sort of rationalism could be problematic; i.e.
> 
>>>> "the connection between rationalism and the way that imagining gets
>>>> drained of its affectiveness in the process of becoming something stable
>>>> enough to call a representation”
> 
> and I was musing as to whether my ‘stories’ were indicative of what he was pointing at (I have read the article by the way); i.e. a draining of affectation in the process of becoming something stable. You seem to be going off in other directions. Perhaps you could take a moment to, so to speak, connect the dots.
> 
> Ed
> 
> 
>> On Dec 11, 2015, at  12:21 AM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Ed,
>> I'll  focus then on the question of a stable image and its relation to how one feels as this image is (representated).
>> I wonder how this relates to mike's example that he had a stable representation of the concept (kraut) which he had emotionally formed and was attached to as a youth reading war stories. (which he loved and was immersed in). These meaningful experiences  formed his stable images and other alternative images of (kraut) became unavailable as this image had such stability (and emotionality).
>> I want to return to the article sent by mike on  December 5  by A V Suvorov focusing on  representation in deak-blind children
>> On page 17 he focuses on two principles.
>> * the holistic principle that first is the image as a whole (that becomes lived into.)
>> *the principle of emotionality. The image must be intrinsically interesting and motivating.
>> 
>> On page 16 Sukorov adds that (games) must develop out of our communicative situation. The teacher just begins the play and the children are taking part before they know it. In other words the image of the game is forming before a conscious decision to join the game. 
>> The child by living into the game is living into the image. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: "Ed Wall" <ewall@umich.edu>
>> Sent: ‎2015-‎12-‎10 5:35 PM
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Rationalism and Imagination
>> 
>> Larry
>> 
>>     I may misunderstand what you are saying, but it wasn’t the same story on the radio although it was a series with the same name. Also the experiences weren’t less or more moving. It was that I was faced with a ‘stable’ representation - i.e. visual images of characters and situations - that precluded the imagination I had brought to the radio. My inclination  is say that this has little to do with the condensing of experience and much to do with Mike’s insight.
>> 
>> Ed
>> 
>>> On Dec 10, 2015, at  7:22 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Ed
>>> The aspect of your hearing the story first on radio and then comparing to less [moving] experiences when seeing the narrative unfold.
>>> Is there a quality of {condensing} of experience. Vygotsky’s metaphor of [precipitation] as the condensing into droplets.
>>> This seems a quality that {moves} the person and I wonder if a similar quality {moves} cultural narratives.
>>> It cam apply to any of the 5 senses and other types of sense.
>>> 
>>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Huw Lloyd
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2015 5:04 PM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Rationalism and Imagination
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi Ed,
>>> 
>>> Re your unknown book.  I would expect that there are web sites dedicated to
>>> that sort of thing by now.
>>> 
>>> Its not my cup of tea but I thought I'd put the idea here anyway:
>>> 
>>> How many 'chain-emails' would have to be forwarded before your book was
>>> found, would that be an index of its obscurity?  Would this be an
>>> interesting contrast between google search and facebook search?
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Huw
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 10 December 2015 at 18:54, Ed Wall <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Mike
>>>> 
>>>>   You wrote, reflecting on something Larry had written, about seeing
>>>> how "the connection between rationalism and the way that imagining gets
>>>> drained of its affectiveness in the process of becoming something stable
>>>> enough to call a representation. In musing about this, I thought of perhaps
>>>> some examples that might or might not illustrate what you are pointing at
>>>> and would be interested in your reaction:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. I grew up with radio and as a boy would listen spellbound to stories
>>>> and adventure programs. As I think back about it, this probably required
>>>> more than a bit of imagination. As time passed, my family finally got a
>>>> television. After my first viewing of a TV program that purported to be
>>>> identical in content with one of those radio programs I so loved, I,
>>>> underwhelmed, never again watched that program as seeing the characters ‘
>>>> finally’ ‘rationally' interpreted was unpleasant (and I really didn’t
>>>> imagine them on radio as having some sort of fixed image). I have had the
>>>> same experience, by the way, when seeing a movie that follows closely a
>>>> book I have read. Somehow, one might say, my imagination was stifled by
>>>> fixedness of those visual representations. I, to this day, still find TV,
>>>> for the most part, stifling in regards to imagination.
>>>> 
>>>> 2. A number of years ago I came across a web summary of book in somewhat
>>>> diary form written by a mathematician writing about the education of his
>>>> son - I have tried again and gain to locate that book (I seem to remember
>>>> the mathematician was either French or Polish) so if by some chance anybody
>>>> has run across the same let me know! One passage in particular stood out.
>>>> The mathematician was talking about his son struggling with some sort of
>>>> mathematics problem. He noted that he took the time to sit down with his
>>>> son and show him how to solve the problem. The mathematician continues in
>>>> his diary that he then reflected on how, in this early intervention, he had
>>>> ruined the pleasure of doing mathematics - perhaps forever - for his son.
>>>> [As a side note, as part of a research team of mathematics educators we
>>>> often traded mathematics problems around - abilities were varied from those
>>>> with, one might say, little mathematics to those who were well known
>>>> research mathematicians. - so the problems were doable by most.  A rule,
>>>> which I follow to this day, is you don’t spoil a problem for another by
>>>> telling them the solution. Research mathematicians are very bad about this
>>>> - mainly because they get excited - and I remember scolding one (smile)!]
>>>> 
>>>> Ed
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>