Re: [xmca] Antirecapitulationism and the Logical Impossiblity of Social Progress

From: Mike Cole <lchcmike who-is-at gmail.com>
Date: Mon Apr 07 2008 - 19:45:01 PDT

Very interesting etymological contributions. Corresponds exactly with what
LSV claims as, (I think) in Thinking and Speech.

mike

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 6:57 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> It's the same in English Leif, or more exactly, the Latin roots of the
> English word. Originally, in medieval English, "conscious" meant being "in
> the know", ie., being part of a group with access to an esoteric knowledge.
>
> From the Oxford English Dictionary Online:
>
> f. L. consci-us knowing something with others, knowing in oneself, privy
> to, conscious + -OUS. L. consci-us f. con- together + sci- knowing, as in
> scire to know: cf. nescius unknowing, pręscius foreknowing. There is no such
> word in F., which uses conscient in some of the senses (as did also Bacon);
> but It. has conscio privy, accessary, guilty, from 16th c.
>
>
> 1. Knowing, or sharing the knowledge of anything, together with another;
> privy to anything with another. Obs. [With quot. 1651, cf. L. alicui
> alicujus rei conscius.]
>
>
> Andy
>
>
>
> At 07:43 AM 7/04/2008 +0200, you wrote:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > Just a small note
> >
> > in my language the word consciousness is
> >
> > medvetande
> >
> > med+vetande
> > with+knowing
> > i.e. knowing with - another person
> >
> > Leif
> > Sweden
> > 7 apr 2008 kl. 00.33 skrev David Kellogg:
> >
> > No problem, Martin!
> > >
> > > In Halliday's 1992 essay "How do you mean?" (Collected Works,
> > > Vol. 1, p. 354) he says:
> > >
> > > "We have often pointed out that it takes two to mean; but we
> > > still tend to refer to consciousness as if it was an individual
> > > phenomenon, with the social as an add-on feature. I would prefer
> > > the Vygotskyan perspective, whereby consciousness is itself a
> > > social mode of being."
> > >
> > > I asked Halliday about this when I met him in Tokyo, and he said
> > > that he doesn't refer to Vygotsky much because he finds that when
> > > people do they do not mean what Vygotsky meant, but that he DOES
> > > mean what Vygotsky meant.
> > >
> > > The first page of the grammar is Halliday and Matthiessen,
> > > Introduction to Functional Grammar, third edition, p. 3, where he
> > > says the grammar purports to answer the question "Why does the text
> > > mean what it does (to me, or to anyone else)?" To me and to
> > > Widdowson, this suggests that a grammar, which necessarily
> > > decontextualizes language, can explain how texts mean.
> > >
> > > Widdowson criticizes this view at BOOK LENGTH in his 2004 work
> > > "Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis",
> > > which is essentially a reworking of his Ph.D. thesis. See
> > > especially 16-35, Chapter Two.
> > >
> > > David
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------
> > > You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> > > Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
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> > >
> >
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>
> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435, mobile 0409 358 651
>
>
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Received on Mon Apr 7 19:47 PDT 2008

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