[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

[David Kellogg]

I'm reading a lot of Spinoza, mostly because I want to know if it is true,
as Zavershneva and van der Veer argue in their footnotes to the chapter on
Spinoza in the selections from Vygotsky's notebooks, that no theory of
higher emotions is possible on the basis of Spinoza's work, despite what
Vygotsky thought and what Vygotsky manifestly proposed to do.

So I'm going to read this quotation almost entirely from Spinoza's point of
view, sentence by sentence. 이

> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials
> for acting with respect to it.


Descartes argues that emotions are simply what the body does with
sensations and perceptions. That gives him a structural taxonomy of
emotions, but it doesn't tell him what emotions do, what they are for. It
makes emotions into a kind of unwanted byproduct, a side-effect,  an
unintended consequence of perceiving. Spinoza, on the other hand, defines
emotions very functionally: they are affections of the body and the ideas
of those affections that serve to enhance or degrade a potential for
activity. So this statement is thoroughly Spinozan, and we can predict on
its basis that the next sentence will have nothing to do with sensation or
perception, and approach the problem from the "top down" (from society to
biology) rather than the "bottom up" (from biology to society).


> At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently.


And such a prediction would be completely right--to see differently is to
enhance or degrade the intellectual potential for play. One child sees a
bunch of black pieces and has fun putting the black pieces on the black
squares and the white pieces on the white ones. Another child sees a pair
of horsies, black and white, and constructs an imaginary chariot for the
king. But another child sees that the black knight threatens a white pawn,
and, playing white, takes defensive action.



> By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential
> for new relationships with it.


All three children are generalizing--the one generalizes the color, the
other generalizes the shape, the third child generalizes the abstract
relationship between pieces. Only the third acquires the potential for new
abstract relations later in the game, .e.g.  advancing and converting the
white pawn to a queen and capturing the black knight. The first two
children are responding to their perceptions. The third child is
experiencing an emotion that is focused on changing the environment rather
than responding to it.


> To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the
> general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I
> remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An
> isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or
> abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness –
> understood as generalization – leads directly to mastery.



 The process of activity has become a rule of activity. But in order to
convert a process into a rule, the process is decontextualized and made
into text (as when chess moves are notated and published in newspapers, as
when cooking moves are written down and handed around as recipes). What is
notated or written down is, ipso facto, an object of consciousness, just as
the notation and writing is an act of isolation and of awareness. This is
why Spinoza includes not only the affections of the body but also the ideas
of affections. In isolation and in generalization, the idea becomes a
surrogate for the affection.


> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or
> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*.
> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a
> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through
> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of
> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific
> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and
> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of
> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can – like any
> structure – be transferred without training to all remaining domains of
> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate
> opened up by the scientific concept*."


Spinoza argues that the idea of the body is not the body, and the idea of
the idea of the body is neither the body nor the idea of the body. All
these ideas form a hierarchy that allows us to locate concepts when we need
them, just as using folders on your computer allows you to locate documents
when you need them more easily than just storing everything on "Desktop"
and using the icons and shortcuts. Mastery of that hierarchy is conscious
awareness--as Spinoza shows, it is not simply confined to scientific
concepts, and it does have profound ethical implications (for example, it
allows Spinoza to formulate Kant's categorical imperative more than a
century before Kant did....)

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
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On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 6:25 AM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Hi Anthony
>
> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved
> scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.
>
> What am I missing?
> Mike
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Good afternoon,
>>
>> This is a question -- and an invitation:
>>
>> First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the
>> bottom of this email) to mean?*
>>
>> Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video
>> form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also
>> helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the
>> question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbk9gWfQsA$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RbTsEBrr1M-JQ2E0Cza-8aoA440vsBAtR7DQicuejOZvYN1AOyytgVid7plmKnYKHKx2jw$>
>> )
>>
>> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit
>> from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With
>> permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list
>> of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbna7qc0JA$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RbTsEBrr1M-JQ2E0Cza-8aoA440vsBAtR7DQicuejOZvYN1AOyytgVid7plmKnayu3KfOQ$>
>> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism
>> here; it's mostly for fun.
>>
>> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6,
>> pp. 190-1:
>>
>>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new
>>> potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see
>>> differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity
>>> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak
>>> crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general
>>> activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I
>>> make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises
>>> here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its
>>> object. This is why conscious awareness – understood as generalization –
>>> leads directly to mastery.
>>>
>>
>>
>>> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or
>>> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*.
>>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a
>>> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through
>>> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of
>>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific
>>> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and
>>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of
>>> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can – like any
>>> structure – be transferred without training to all remaining domains of
>>> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the
>>> gate opened up by the scientific concept*."
>>
>>
>> What do you understand this passage to mean?
>>
>> Thanks 😎
>>
>> Anthony Barra
>>
>> P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult,
>> even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor.
>> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a
>> definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really
>> so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be
>> similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So
>> thank you again to anyone interested in participating.
>>
>>
>> --
>
> I[image: Angelus Novus]
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelus_Novus__;!!Mih3wA!TggWICG1J2w02_x0SWKzYW-4ftmVOZbkZFfs4G9fjlQAO_5Rcb22DdO_08zpANlVawtVtw$>The
> Angel's View of History
>
> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism,
> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be
> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of
> the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means,
> only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844).
> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbkSfTlkxA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TggWICG1J2w02_x0SWKzYW-4ftmVOZbkZFfs4G9fjlQAO_5Rcb22DdO_08zpANlZapN6Hg$>
> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://re-generatingchat.com__;!!Mih3wA!TggWICG1J2w02_x0SWKzYW-4ftmVOZbkZFfs4G9fjlQAO_5Rcb22DdO_08zpANnwRjh-9A$>
> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu.
> Narrative history of LCHC:  lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>
>
>
>
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