Re: coining phrases

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Sat, 9 May 1998 17:27:55 -0700 (PDT)

Ah, Dianne, you provide an opportunity to continue the discussion. I
was heeding Naoki and remaining silent.

Let me connect your comments to those of Dewey and Martin and ......
re constructivism in its various shades. You are making the point
that there is a process of imagination (in Russian, literally,
into-image-making) in all human experience). We see the TV screen
before us, and objects in the world generally, as "continuously there"
while we are watching them. But in physical fact saccadic eye movements
assure DISCOORDINATION with the world as a precondition of seeing it
at all! If we fix the image with respect to the world, the retinal
image goes grey.

The process of making the discontinuous seem subjectively continuous
is the process of constructing the world. It is culturally mediated
from before birth, but the functional systems of mediation change in
dynamic ways over the life of the person, the group, etc.

The relationship to the philosophers you name is not accidently, altough
I am trained as a mathematical psychologist, not a philosopher, so I
don't pretend to know the affinities and contradictions well.
mike