[Xmca-l] Re: The mirror has two candles

[Martin John Packer]

Hi Michael,

Our discussion has *not* gone off on a tangent! On the contrary, it's right on target:

The central question has been, was ANL correct to charge LSV with being an idealist?

Was LSV an idealist because he was studying consciousness?

To me the answer is clear: No!  LSV was not an idealist; he was a Plump Materialist.

I, too, aim to be a Plump Materialist. 

As well as a Clumsy Poster.

Martin


On Oct 19, 2014, at 9:20 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu> wrote:

> Hi Larry,
> 
> I renamed this thread because it seems to be taking a tangent from the very rich discussion on LSV and ANL, but perhaps it might circle back.  Anyway, I thought Martin's very interesting illustration deserves a moment of fame.  I wonder if memory is the right word in current circumstance.  In U.S. psychology memory is very often viewed as a storehouse of information where you send your messages back to retrieve information when needed to apply to the current situation.  Do you think Pierce would see the overall process this way (did he actually talk about memory?)  For him it seems it would be part of a more active process of establishing relationships of that which came before with that which is currently being explored.
> 
> Michael
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] on behalf of lpscholar2@gmail.com [lpscholar2@gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2014 6:40 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis? LSV versus ANL
> 
> Michael Glassman and Martin and How
> 
> 
> I want to ex-tend the exploration of *models* and *memories* and *contextualism* as linked in Michael’s rejoinder to Martin.
> 
> 
> Michael wrote “if ALL you can *see* [perceive] is what is IN the mirror [metaphor of reflection AS mirroring] how do you “know” there IS a mirror
> 
> The IF IMPLIED is the ‘ALL’ .
> 
> 
> However, is that “all there IS” in *seeing*?
> 
> 
> IS “memory* also existent as an existent IN seeing?
> 
> In other words, do *interpretants* ACTUALLY exist IN FACT? [as such]
> 
> 
> Umberto Eco suggests there is both ORPHIC knowing/seeing [when Picasso paints THAT PARTICULAR yellow shoe in a painting the SINGULARITY of THAT experience IS “orphic”
> 
> POETS and artists are “biased” to privilege THIS WAY of knowing [Peirce's secondness as orphic and possibly orphaned]
> 
> 
> HOWEVER, Umberto Eco suggests that this orphic “knowing* is also *indicative* [indexical] of further *interpreting* AND THIS TYPE of *knowing* EX-TENDS Orphic knowing. [Peirce's tiredness]
> 
> Now in Peirce's metaphysics THIS interpreting creating interpretants also is EXISTING as facts.
> 
> Is this transforming orphic [what IS present] TO forming *interpretants* AS *something* that actually exists {through the interpreting process}  INCLUDE memory but that IS NOT ALL.
> 
> 
> IS creative imagining potentially existent?  that goes BEYOND memory?
> 
> 
> I believe Umberto Eco’s question of a deeper knowing than orphic/orphan knowing *things-in-themselves* EX-tending BEYOND the orphic [secondness] to INCLUDE interpreting and forming actual *interpretants* [tiredness] must be considered within the memory process.
> 
> This returns to *models* that are necessary but NOT ALL there *is*.
> 
> 
> The *relation* between *orphic* knowing and *interpreting* knowing seems a KEY question [and may ex-tend back into metaphysics?
> 
> 
> Larry
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from Windows Mail
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Glassman, Michael
> Sent: ‎Saturday‎, ‎October‎ ‎18‎, ‎2014 ‎5‎:‎18‎ ‎PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Martin,
> 
> That's a very interesting metaphor, but let me see if I can take it a step further.  Basically you seem to be saying that Vygotsky is making a mechanistic argument - I'm not talking about the more colloquial expression of mechanistic but the one that Pepper talks about in World Hypothesis.  You are looking into the mirror and seeing the reflection of a candle - but you are making the assumption that there must be a mechanism that is causing the reflection of the candle.  You cannot know this mechanism itself - it is too difficult to reach - but you can build models that bring us closer to understanding. This I think is almost exactly how Pepper discusses this root metaphor.  Our goal as scientists is to find the mediate description of the underlying mechanism.  This Pragmatists/Conextualists would say this is dualism - not the dualism you get from Formism where you depend on your mind to bring you closer to a known but unreachable ideal, but in the sense that there is this mechanism that exists that is somehow separate from and causing the reflection in the mirror.  So the Contextualist asks, if all you can see is what is in the mirror how do you know there is a mirror.  That is the only information you have and you have to base all interpretation of the world on that information - to suggest you are looking at a reflection is an assumption based on a belief system that there must be causing what you are seeing.  I think you are right, Vygotsky wants to assume the mirror, but in the end doesn't that suggest a dualism to his thinking.
> 
> Michael
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] on behalf of Martin John Packer [mpacker@uniandes.edu.co]
> Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2014 6:38 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis? LSV versus ANL
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> LSV points out that no proper science sets out to study appearances. Every science studies entities that exist, in order to *explain*  appearance. One of his examples is from the science of optics. When we place a burning candle in front of a mirror there *appears* to be a second candle burning behind the mirror, or 'in' the mirror. The scientist doesn't study that second candle. What he or she studies is the first candle, and the mirror, in order to discover principles by which to explain why an 'image' of a second candle appears, apparently located 'in' the mirror.
> 
> It's the same with the mind. It *appears* to us (at least to those of us raised in western, scientific cultures) that our thoughts and feelings exist in a special, internal, subjective, hidden place that we call "the mind."  A scientific psychology, says LSV, needs to try to explain how that appearance is possible. It's not too difficult, in fact: our verbal thoughts, our private subvocal speech, is possible, first, because we can use vocal speech to direct our own actions and second, because a fibre bundle called the arcuate fasciculus forms between Broca's area and Wernicke's area (to considerably simply the neuroanatomy and neurofunctioning).  The appearance of a "mind in the head" is a *folk* psychology: it is simply one way, among several, in which people try to make sense of an experience that they have; it is the way our own psychological processes *appear* to us. Scientific psychology cannot study the mind, any more than it can study the second candle. It can, however, set out to *explain* the mind, and that is part of what LSV did.
> 
> Martin
> 
> On Oct 18, 2014, at 8:11 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu> wrote:
> 
>> I sort of feel like (at this point) Vygotsky did open himself up for being critiqued for going inside the head.  It was a choice, I don't think he was willing to give up the idea of individual development (which I think you have to do if you are going to escape dualism - because what develops if you can't say there is something inside the head that develops (remember I am suggesting individual development here).
>