[Xmca-l] Re: Imagination

[mike cole]

Andy- It was the Russians who pointed me toward Kant and they are doing
contemporary work in which they claim Vygotsky and his followers as an
inspiration. Some think that LSV was influenced by Hegel, so its of course
interesting to see those additional categories emerge.

19th Century psychological vocabulary, especially in translation, seems
awfully slippery territory to me. The word, "recollection" in this passage,
for example, is not a currently used term in counter distinction to
"memory."
Normal problems. There are serious problems in contemporary discourse
across languages as our explorations with out Russian colleagues have
illustrated.

That said, I feel as if I am learning something from theorists who clearly
influenced Vygotsky and early psychology -- when it was still possible to
include culture in it.

Ribot has a book called "Creative Imagination" which, interestingly links
imagination to both movement and the meaning of a "voluntary" act. Parts of
it are offputting, primitives thinking like children stuff that was also
"in the air" for example. But at present the concepts of creativity and
imagination are thoroughly entangled, so its curious to see that the two
concepts are linked.

Just cause its old doesn't mean its useless, he found himself writing.
mike


Its difficult, of course, to know the extent to which pretty old approaches
to a pesum

On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 4:39 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> I know we want to keep this relatively contemporary, but it may be worth
> noting that Hegel's Psychology also gave a prominent place to Imagination
> in the section on Representation, mediating between Recollection and
> Memory. He structured Imagination as (1) Reproductive Imagination, (2)
> Associative Imagination (3) Productive Imagination, which he says leads to
> the Sign, which he describes as Productive Memory. In other words, the
> transition from immediate sensation to Intellect is accomplished through
> these three grades of Imagination.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
>> Here are some questions I have after reading Strawson and Williams.
>>
>> Kant et al (including Russian developmentalists whose work i am trying to
>> mine for empirical
>> strategies and already-accumulated results) speak of productive
>> imagination. The Russians write that productive imagination develops.
>>
>> At first I thought that the use of productive implies that there must be a
>> kind of ​imagination called UNproductive imagination. But I learned that
>> instead the idea of RE-productive imagination appears and is linked to
>> memory.
>>
>> So, it seems that imagination is an ineluctable part of anticipation and
>> memory.
>> Imagine that!
>> mike
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 12:16 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Strawson provides a long view historically on imagination (starting with
>>> Hume and Kant), Williams a more contemporaneous look, and provides a
>>> space
>>> for imagination not afforded by the socio-cultural as fixed. This,
>>> coupled
>>> with Pelaprat and Cole on Gap/Imagination, gives me a ground to take part
>>> in the thread on imagination. Of course, I start with preconceptions:
>>> Vera
>>> on creative collaboration and the cognitive grammarian Langacker on
>>> symbolic assemblies in discourse and cognitive domains, particularly the
>>> temporal. Everyday discourse, it seems to me, is full of imagination and
>>> creativity. I am terribly interested in two aspects of temporality:
>>> sequence and rhythm (including tempo and rhythmic structure), which I
>>> think
>>> must both figure in imagination and creativity, for both individual and
>>> distributed construals of cognition and feeling.
>>> Henry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Dec 13, 2014, at 12:01 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Henry, Mike, and others interested in this topic.
>>>>
>>>> I too see the affinities with notions of the third *space* and the
>>>>
>>>>
>>> analogy
>>>
>>>
>>>> to *gap-filling*
>>>> I am on holiday so limited access to internet.
>>>> However, I wanted to mention Raymond Williams and his notion of
>>>>
>>>>
>>> "structures
>>>
>>>
>>>> of feeling" that David K references. This notion is explored under the
>>>> notion of historical *styles* that exist as a *set* of modalities that
>>>>
>>>>
>>> hang
>>>
>>>
>>>> together.  This notion suggests there is a form of knowing that is
>>>>
>>>>
>>> forming
>>>
>>>
>>>> but has not yet formed [but can be "felt" [perceived??] if we think
>>>> imaginatively.  Raymond explores the imaginal as *style*
>>>> Larry
>>>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 4:38 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Mike and Larry,
>>>>> I promise to read your profer, but just want to say how jazzed up I am
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> now
>>>
>>>
>>>> about this thread. My mind has been going wild, the mind as Larry
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> construes
>>>
>>>
>>>> it. I ended up just now with a triad, actually various triads, finally
>>>>> found my old friend Serpinski. Part now of my notebooks of the mind, as
>>>>> Vera would construe it. I’ll be back! Gap adentro, luega pa’ fuera.
>>>>> Fractally yours,
>>>>> Henry
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Dec 12, 2014, at 5:09 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For those interested in the imagination thread, attached are two
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> articles
>>>
>>>
>>>> by philosophers who have worried about the issue.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My current interest stems from the work of CHAT theorists like
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Zaporozhets
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> and his students who studied the development of imagination in a
>>>>>> manner
>>>>>> that, it turns out, goes back to Kant's notion of productive
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> imagination. I
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> am not advocating going back to Kant, and have no intention of doing
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> so.
>>>
>>>
>>>> But these ideas seem worth pursuing as explicated in the attached
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> texts.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Through reading the Russians and then these philosophers, I came upon
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> the
>>>
>>>
>>>> idea that perception and imagination are very closely linked at several
>>>>>> levels of analysis. This is what, in our naivete, Ettienne and I
>>>>>> argued
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> in
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> our paper on imagination sent around earlier as a means of access to
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> the
>>>
>>>
>>>> work of the blind-deaf psychologist, Alexander Suvorov. Moreover, such
>>>>>> views emphasize the future orientation of the perception/imagination
>>>>>> process. I believe that these views have direct relevance to Kris's
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> paper
>>>
>>>
>>>> to be found on the KrisRRQ thread, and also speak to concerns about the
>>>>>> role of different forms of symbolic play in development.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So here are the papers on the imagination thread. Perhaps they will
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> prove
>>>
>>>
>>>> useful for those interested.
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
>>>>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>>> <Imagination and Perception by P.F. Strawson.pdf>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

-- 
It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.