Re: [xmca] Layers versus stages

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Mike
The image of the globe and COORDINATING perspectives and the emerging
capacity to FLEXIBLY move between the coordinates [North, south, east or
west] [generality, abstraction, concrete phenomenology] has an intuitive
sense.
This topic also must include reflections on the cultural imaginaries
[hermeneutic traditions] that "sediments this flexible coordinating capacity
into institutional structural forms of development.
The question becomes which LENSES [horizon of understanding as cultural
imaginaries] are constraining and constituiting our emerging accounts of
development.  When I as a person "move"  navigate and position [and am
positioned] within traditions  [as coordinates on the globe] the question of
"agency" as the capacity to "reflectively act to "take" a position rather
than reactively being placed in a position becomes a central  question of
development.
Stern's metaphor of layering supports this metaphor of the globe as an
expanding horizon of understanding which includes the previous ways of
coordinating sociality and the social situation of  development MAY support
the person in developing the flexibility in coordinating positions on the
globe IF the cultural imaginary facilitates this emerging capacity  to be
flexible in moving north, south, east, or west.
When our cultural imaginary constrains our notions of development into an
account of a journey to increasing individuation, differentiation,
reflective capacity, self mastery of "instinctual" emotions, cognitive
representations transcending undifferentiated symbiosis, and other notions
of "higher" stages" as increasing separation and "self-contained agency" it
limits our flexibility to move in ALL directions on the globe. Stern's
metaphor of layers of development shares the same bias as the metaphor of
the globe that all the previous ways of coordinating [negotiating] positions
continue to be viable ways to coordinate concrete phenomenology, cognitive
abstraction, and systems of generality.
It is the cultural imaginaries that place rigid constraints  [limit our
horizon of understandings] on what is "acceptable" or how we "should"
develop towards self mastery and abstraction.  I want to emphasize that the
capacity to reflect, make rational decisions, take the perspective of
others, coordinate and negotiate ruptures in communication are all
developing expansions of the globe [adding further layers].  However, the
notion of stages, where the earlier stages are "less developed" [more
immature and more undifferentiated and DEPENDENT, less individuated] may be
reflecting a particular cultural imaginary that imposes limits on accessing
these earlier ways we learned to coordinate positions on the coordinates.
I'm biased to see develop as the emerging capacity to BE AT HOME with
previous as well as new ways of coordinating positions on the globe. The
cultural surround resists this flexibility and asks us to limit our movement
on the globe. Agency [as the capacity to flexibly coordinate a variety
of positions including subjective phenomenology,  intersubjective
experience, and institutional structures, is a compatabilist notion that
sees development as moving from being determined to limited agentic self
determination.
This self determination includes the capacity to remain open to experiencing
the world as layered or as an expanding globe that the person becomes more
flexible in negotiating and coordinating. The person's lived experience
embraces comfortably moving north, south, east, or west.[ within the limits
of the cultural imaginary or traditions]

Larry




On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 1:56 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> I like Peirce's "The Mind is a concentrated group."
> a
>
>
> David Kellogg wrote:
>
>> Rod--
>>  Very true. My own private model of a mind is neither stage nor layer.
>> It's not a construction site or a heap of sand, and it's not exactly
>> substitutional nor precisely sublative. My own private model of a mind is a
>> semiotic object, or rather a semiotic process that leaves a number of traces
>> apparently one on top of the other though in reality side by side. My own
>> private model of a mind is a palimpsest.  It's a text that has been written
>> and overwritten and over-overwritten so that some of the old text is visible
>> and in some cases the earlier text can be reconstructed while in other cases
>> it is lost. So too the child's mature language, and the language making mind
>> too, is based on the signifying function overwrites the indicative language
>> based on concrete reference, which in turn overwrites ostension.  There are
>> (at least) two problems with this model. The first is that it assumes that
>> foot is the footprint. A real dialogue by real people is really NOT a text;
>> it's a discourse. A text is an interlacing double trail of footprints on a
>> wet beach. The footprints obscure each other, and the waves wash one, and
>> then the other, and finally both of them away.  But while they last we see
>> the footprints and we can follow them; we can imagine the walkers, and can
>> see them running and wading and splashing. We can even catch up to them and
>> take them by the hand. Yet the disembodied, imprinted, fleeting meanings we
>> find in text are never quite the embodied, ephemeral, corporeal sense we
>> find in discourse itself; the process of reconstruing the process from the
>> product is never quite the same as the process of producing it in the first
>> place.
>>  The second problem is that it assumes that the dance remains even when
>> the dancer stops dancing.  David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>>
>> --- On Sat, 6/19/10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>> Subject: RE: [xmca] Layers versus stages
>> To: "lchcmike@gmail.com" <lchcmike@gmail.com>, "eXtended Mind, Culture,
>> Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date: Saturday, June 19, 2010, 1:22 AM
>>
>>
>> I have never been happy with the construction site model of development
>> which buries the foundations and sees all development in terms of 'upward'
>> expansion, stage on stage. I prefer to think of development more in terms of
>> heaping - as sand forms a heap, getting higher but also spreading at the
>> base as our 'primary' or foundational capabilities continue to affect and
>>  be affected by our later experiences (not just rumbling and festering in
>> the basement!). One problem with the heap analogy is that the sand is
>> arriving from above and gravity ensures that the only movement is down but
>> then every model has to have its limitations!
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Rod
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf
>> Of mike cole [lchcmike@gmail.com]
>> Sent: 18 June 2010 22:15
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
>> Subject: [xmca] Layers versus stages
>>
>> Larry and others interested in attending to early infancy as part of a
>> discussion about development --
>>
>> Attached are a few pages early from Dan Stern's book to which Larry has
>> pointed us. I am curious about people's thought on the "layers vs. stages"
>> antinomy/contrast. A couple of questions:
>>
>> 1. Layering appears on the surface at least to deny any process of
>> sublation. Is this a reasonable interpretation?
>>
>> 2. Layering is specifically associated with the interpersonal sphere and
>> ideas about the primacy of sociality from the get go and seems contrasted
>> with the (non-human) object sphere; sort of like
>> relations and modes of production. So maybe the social sphere is layered
>> and
>> the object sphere undergoes stage-like transformations?
>>
>> But, the two are co-constituitive in human life, so would this mean that
>> ontogenetic change would have features of each?
>>
>> What think you?
>> mike
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> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
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