[Xmca-l] Re: Language, mind and objectivity

[James Ma]

Andy, I can see your point. No theory is capable of telling the full story,
so synergism is perhaps a solution. I think in social sciences and
humanities there's no exactness or preciseness but approximation and
appropriation.
James


Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> 于 2019年1月25日周五 15:35写道：

> What you say about language, James, is equally true of History, Biology,
> Chemistry, Physics, Social Theory, Philosophy ... and perception, is it not?
>
> andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 26/01/2019 2:23 am, James Ma wrote:
>
> Hello Fellows,
>
> I'd like to resume early discussion on language, music and philosophy with
> a separate header to address the intersection of language, mind and
> objectivity.
>
> I now start by perusing Andy's message below. As it stands, his
> counterargument to mine is a little sloppy and, more to the point, barely
> scratches the surface. My argument centres on a position that there is no
> way to talk about language without using language. Any language is thus to
> be scrutinised through the medium of itself (or another language). In doing
> so, one can't escape from being insider of that language. I
> elaborate my position as below, which might serve as pointers for
> discussion or reflection:
>
> First, language faculty reduces to mind. In studying the mind, one needs
> to attend to the use of mind in two different senses: a mind as the object
> (that is being studied) and a mind as the subject (that is doing the study).
>
> Second, to understand how mind functions in the world, it is necessary to
> bring perception into focus. It seems to be a rather naive realistic view
> that "in speech and writing, language is objective and actual, so we can
> also observe it". This doesn't entirely qualify as a case of perceptual
> recognition in that it latches on sense-data out of which one makes
> inference, without taking into consideration an interaction of three
> relations in perception, i.e. sense-data, the object behind sense-data, and
> the subject (observer). There seems to be a missing subjective angle from
> which the object is viewed. Moreover, inference processing is not simply
> conscious or deliberate; it also sets free implicit, involuntary or even
> irrational dispositions of the mind. In short, perception is interpretative
> and subjective because it is participatory in nature. I believe that all
> claims to knowledge answer in the end to perception. Taking for example
> language teaching, it involves a human being working with another human
> being, in which case you have to consider the effect of consciousness and
> intersubjectivity. There is no thought-free perception or perception-free
> thought - what you get in the mind is not the same as what you perceive!
>
> Third, writing, which has the life of its own, can't be analysed without
> being impinged by the observer's own perception. Recent research in TESOL
> emphasises the role of learner identity in second language acquisition.
>
> Perhaps we should think that the world is already the best representation
> of itself, to which human beings have limited access. I found Thomas
> Nagel's explanation of objectivity an eye-opener and a mind-liberator!
>
> James
>
>
>> On Tue, 1 Jan 2019 at 22:54, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>>> It is clearly wrong to say that we can't study language objectively
>>> because we exist and think in it - in speech and writing, language is
>>> objective and actual, so we can also observe it. But to study language
>>> objectively, from "outside," requires the student to acquire a certain
>>> distance from it. Teaching grammar is one way of achieving that, even
>>> writing too, I guess, and anyone who learns a second language has a point
>>> from which to view their first language. Thus we can learn that "Je ne sais
>>> pas" is not necessarily a double negative. But is the interviewer who asks
>>> an artist to explain their painting failing to stand outside language to
>>> see that there is something else. Like the psychologists who ask subjects
>>> questions and take the answer to be what the person "really" thought. It's
>>> the old problem of Kant's supposed "thing-in-itself" beyond experience
>>> which (in my opinion) Hegel so thoroughly debunked
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 4:52 AM James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Andy, here're my thoughts with respect to your message:
>>>>>
>>>>> I think "default", as a state of the human mind, is intuitive and *a
>>>>> posteriori* rather than of something we get hung up on deliberately
>>>>> or voluntarily. This state of mind is also multifaceted, depending on the
>>>>> context in which we find ourselves. Perhaps there might be a prototype of
>>>>> default that is somehow intrinsic, but I'm not sure about that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, Saussure's structuralism is profoundly influential, without which
>>>>> post-Saussurean thought, including post-structuralism, wouldn't have
>>>>> existed. Seemingly, none of these theorists could have worked out their
>>>>> ideas without the inspiration and challenge of Saussure. Take for example
>>>>> the Russian linguist Jakobson, which I think would suffice (never mind
>>>>> those Francophone geniuses you might have referred to!). Jakobson extended
>>>>> and modified Saussure's signs, using communicative functions as the object
>>>>> of linguistic studies (instead of standardised rules of a given language,
>>>>> i.e. *langue* in Saussure's terms). He replaced langue with "code" to
>>>>> denote the goal-directedness of communicative functions. Each of the codes
>>>>> was thus associated with its own langue as a larger system.
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems to me that Saussure's semiology is not simply dualistic.
>>>>> There's more to it, e.g. the system of signification bridging between a
>>>>> concept (signified) and a sound image (signifier). Strictly speaking, the
>>>>> system of signification is not concerned with language but linguistics
>>>>> within which language lends itself to scrutiny and related concepts become
>>>>> valid. From Jakobson's viewpoint, this system is more than a normalised
>>>>> collective norm; it contains personal meanings not necessarily compatible
>>>>> with that norm. Saussure would say this norm is the *parole* that
>>>>> involves an individual's preference and creativity. I find Jakobson's code
>>>>> quite liberating - it helps explain the workings of Chinese dialects
>>>>> (different to dialects within the British English), e.g. the grammatical
>>>>> structure of Shanghainese, which is in many aspects at variance with
>>>>> Mandarin (the official language or predominant dialect).
>>>>>
>>>>> By the way, I don't think we can study a language objectively because
>>>>> we are already users of that language when studying it, i.e. we must remain
>>>>> insiders of that language in order to study it, plus the fact that we have
>>>>> the will to meaning, so to speak.
>>>>>
>>>>> James
>>>>> *_______________________________________________________*
>>>>>
>>>>> *James Ma  Independent Scholar *
>>>>> *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>>>>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>    *
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
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