[Xmca-l] Re: Bateson on thinking relatively

[Wolff-Michael Roth]

We could also point to the works of Dewey, e.g.,

Much subjectivism is
only a statement of the logical consequences of the doctrine
sponsored by psychological "science" of the monop-
olistic possession of mental phenomena by a self; or,
after the idea of an underlying spiritual substance became
shaky, of the doctrine that mental events as such constitute
all there is to selfhood. (Dewey, 1929, Experience & Nature, pp.234–235)

m

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 6:38 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Darned if I did not find that Bateson passage online! Amazing.
> Here it is from *Steps to an Ecology of Mind.*
>
> mike
> --------------\
>
> Consider a tree and a man and an axe. We observe that the axe flies through
> the air and makes certain gashes in a pre-existing cut in the side of the
> tree. If we now want to explain this set of phenomena, we shall be
> concerned with differences in the cut face of the tree, differences in the
> retina of the man, differences in the central nervous system, differences
> in his different neural messages, differences in the behaviour of his
> muscles, difference in how the axe flies, to the differences which the axe
> then makes on the face of the tree. Our explanation will go round and round
> that circuit. If you want to explain or understand anything in human
> behaviour, you are always dealing with total circuits, completed circuits.
> (Bateson, 1972, p. 433)
>
>
>
> Later in the same paper he writes about how difficult it is to adopt this
> epistemology:
>
>
>
> I can stand here and I can give you a reasoned exposition of this matter;
> but if I am cutting down a tree, I still think ‘Gregory Bateson’ is cutting
> down a tree. I am cutting down the tree. ‘Myself’ is to me still an
> excessively concrete object, different from the rest of what I have been
> calling ‘mind’.
>
>
>
> The step to realizing – to making habitual – the other way of thinking – so
> that one naturally thinks that way when one reaches out for a glass of
> water or cuts down a tree – that step is not an easy one.
>
>
> .... Once we have made this shift, our perspective fundamentally changes.
> We firstly start focusing on relationships, flows and patterns; and
> secondly realize that we are part of any field we are studying.
>