[Xmca-l] Re: Imagination

Mon Dec 15 16:21:41 PST 2014

I have been reading Modell (Thank you, Bob Lake!) and Ribot (I can’t remember or find who proferred Ribot, but thank you!). 

-Modell is a psychoanalyst who talks only, as far as I can tell, about individual trauma. Could that be extended to collective trauma? 

-Ribot (NOT ROBOT!) finds creative imagination to be rooted in movement. How felicitous is that for activity theory? 

Henry

> On Dec 14, 2014, at 6:41 PM, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi Annalisa,
> You are not alone in suggesting the role of  metaphoric process in
> generative imagination (which can take us
> beyond reflective imagination).  To illustrate the difference between these
> two aspects, I think about  how the early Bob Dylan sounded and looked like
> Woody Guthrie, but after he wrote songs like* Blowin in the Wind*  and*
> Positively 4th Street  he was "in his own house"  *to quote Neil Young
> describing Jimi Hendrix. Consider the origin of the word metaphor itself:
> Late 15th century: from French *métaphore*, via Latin from Greek *metaphora*,
> from* metapherein* ‘to transfer.’
> As Vera stated, metaphor unites disparate images, bridges  old concepts in
> ways that create newly fashioned ones.
> 
> 
> I have not posted anything since I posed a question about the role of
> subconscious or even unconscious processes in higher levels of
> consciousness. I know that Henry S. might have been worried that I was a
> follower of Jungian collective racial memory or some such thing. Not really
> but I do think that imagination and  creative problem solving can occur at
> times in subconscious metaphoric processes. Consider the chapter linked
> here from Arnold Modell's *Imagination and the Meaningful Brain.* He quotes
> from the Einstein and his colleague Hadamard and a few others to support
> his suggestions.
> 
> http://www.bostonneuropsa.net/PDF%20Files/Imagination%20and%20the%20Meaningful%20Brain%20-%20A.%20Modell%20-%20Chapter%202.pdf
> 
> 
> *Robert Lake*
> 
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 7:54 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Esteemed discussants,
>> 
>> Having finished the paper, and considering Mike's comments, I might
>> suggest that metaphorical reasoning is an essential engine to imagination,
>> and I wonder if I say that because impressions taken of the perceived
>> object as it presents itself to me (the Big Dipper) is the identical to
>> taking the object as a product of seeing-as (a star constellation as a Big
>> Dipper), is the identical to taking the object to represent something else
>> entirely (such as Wittgenstein's triangle as a mountain, as an arrow, etc.,
>> or a flag to represent a nation).
>> 
>> In other words, that imagination begins as a perceptual process which then
>> develops into metaphorical reasoning and perhaps continues on to more
>> complex forms of imagining and conceptual renderings. There is definitely a
>> dynamic relationship to perception and imagination.
>> 
>> If metaphor isn't THE essential engine, it must serve as a priming process
>> (arising from embodied experience in the world), possibly in the same way
>> the gesture manifests into the word and its meaning. At least that's how I
>> see it at the moment...even though I'm only looking at pixels on my screen
>> as I write this...
>> 
>> (Thinking out loud, but I hope not too loud).
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> Annalisa
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
>> Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2014 2:02 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Imagination
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.*Associate Professor
> Social Foundations of Education
> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> Georgia Southern University
> Secretary/Treasurer-AERA- Paulo Freire Special Interest Group
> P. O. Box 8144
> Phone: (912) 478-0355
> Fax: (912) 478-5382
> Statesboro, GA  30460