[Xmca-l] Re: Hegel's imagination

Tue Dec 8 11:53:14 PST 2015

Peter,
I will try to follow your request to focus on the transition in children's private speech conversations from fantasy narratives to problem solving narratives.
Also the transition from thinking in sentences to thinking in narratives as including the movement from topic to comment as implicated in perspective taking (as an imaginal process).

The focus on the quality of conversation that develops (coherence) which is acquired under certain conditions and not others. The criteria for coherence manifested when the conversation has a definite aim.

Peter, the assumption I am making is that the imaginal is not one aspect or part of coming to coherence. I am questioning if the imaginal is underlying the entirety of your project.
The imaginal not yoked to definite aims which direct and lead the imaginal into coherence.
Rather definite aims as having force have their source in the imaginal.
This in no way negates your questions and project but I suggest situates your project within images of moving from topic to comment and images of types of conversations leading to coherence.
Peter, I am implying we are both exploring (texts) and reading into shared activities can be imagined as text-like.
This may be going too far afield but I am suggesting that understanding moving from topic to comment is a type of reading process.
Understanding conversations with definite aims is a type of reading process.
Seeing activity as purposeful actions coming to awareness by stepping back and reading this process.
I am suggesting that underlying this awareness are images and these images travel over long durations.
We are now imagining images with historically deep roots.
Peter I would suggest you are painting a picture, or laying out a scene with roots that are implicated in historical consciousness. These images do not extend beyond time.
These images generate narratives as our human nature but the source is the images weaving into our conversations.
Focused conversations with definite aims may lead to coherence and may be. Necessary 
But the imaginal is not a mere hand maiden to this generative process. I would suggest that this movement of historical consciousness is reflective, is a text, and is imaginal.
Kant, Hegel, are examples of this movement. CHAT extends this type of aimed or directed conversation into lines of coherence.
I am suggesting there is always a remainder beyond the margins of coherence. We develop genealogical narratives. Foucault focused on the radical breaks in different genealogical narratives.
I imagine there is a coherence within this genealogical movement.
It is critical to understand the way I am using the concept of the imaginal supports your question how children come to shift from sentence level to narrative structures. I am only adding these questions make sense within cultural historical formations which emerge within the historical imaginal. I am hoping this shift of focus opens a place for realizing the emotional costs involved in the move from imaginal to representative models of psychology

-----Original Message-----
From: "Peter Feigenbaum [Staff]" <pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>
Sent: ‎2015-‎12-‎08 8:25 AM
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Hegel's imagination

Larry,

My feeble mind is having difficulty wrapping itself around the intricate
ideas you've expressed here. Please forgive me for focusing on just one of
these issues in an effort to achieve some clarity.

What I find particularly stimulating in this discussion about imagination
is the relation between the movement of thought and the movement of speech.
LSV describes this as the relation between the *psychological subject and
predicate* and the *linguistic subject and predicate*. As I understand it,
the movement from subject to predicate that is shared by both thought and
conversation is the movement from *topic* to *comment*. Although this
movement presumably exists at every stage in the development of verbal
thinking (word; phrase; sentence; narrative), my own research concentrates
on the transition from thinking in sentences to thinking in narratives. One
of the more interesting empirical findings I'm trying to understand and
explain is the transition (in children's *private speech* conversations)
from *fantasy* narratives to *problem-solving* narratives. That's why I was
particularly struck by the following passage from Hegel:

*Ordinary social conversation mostly rambles on from one idea to another in
a very external and contingent manner. It is only when the conversation has
a definite aim that it acquires a firmer coherence.*

Insofar as everyday conversation requires speakers to take their listeners'
perspective(s) into account (and listeners to takes the speaker's
perspective into account), the role of imagination is crucial. It is
critical to perspective-taking. What part the movement from topic to
comment plays in the process of imagining another person's perspective is
complicated and intriguing. But one that I believe can be examined
empirically.

Peter

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter as we become aware of the movement of the imaginal (and in
> particular the movement to imagine the imaginal as representational)
> Piaget was also profoundly in debt to Kant.
>
> Dewey, stepping back from Hegel   reflected on how Hegel imagined the
> workings of reason (through) history. Reason is (operative) AS contributing
> to more stable and understandable (structures).
> In dewey's own words outlining hegel's historical imaginal:
>
> (in intellectual and practical effect the IDEA of process ABOVE that of
> fixed origins and fixed ends, and PRESENTED the social and moral ORDER as
> well as the intellectual AS a (scene) of becoming ....)
>
> Becoming aware of the movement of the imaginal including towards
> impressive systematic, structural reason that becomes points of departure
> for representational presentations.
>
> I hope these fragments honour the movement of the representational
> including the structural, ordered, and systematic. I am suggesting they do
> (reveal) the movement of the imaginal. However, I notice how the imaginal
> does not come to rest in the images and ideas of models, structure, order,
> and systems of representation.
> There is a restless quality that sees this movement as a seeing (through)
> by stepping back from the structures, orders, and models.
> Acknowledging the necessity of structures and systems as the way the
> imaginal is (revealed) through time.
> However, not residing in these necessary structures and systems which
> reveal the way/movement of the imaginal.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Peter Feigenbaum [Staff]" <pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>
> Sent: ‎2015-‎12-‎08 6:32 AM
> To: "ablunden@mira.net" <ablunden@mira.net>; "eXtended Mind, Culture,
> Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Hegel's imagination
>
> Andy,
>
> What an amazing excerpt!  From this one passage alone I can see the strong
> influence that Hegel had upon Piaget.
>
> Thanks for bringing this section of The Subjective Spirit to attention.
> It's chock-full of interesting thoughts.
>
> Peter
>
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 11:53 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/suspirit.htm#SU455
> > Andy
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> > On 8/12/2015 3:47 PM, Annalisa Aguilar wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Andy,
> >>
> >>
> >> Would you post a link reference to texts where Hegel discusses
> >> imagination?
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >>
> >> Annalisa
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
> --
> Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
> Director,
> Office of Institutional Research
> <
> http://www.fordham.edu/academics/office_of_the_provos/office_of_institutio/index.asp
> >
> Fordham University
> Thebaud Hall-202
> Bronx, NY 10458
>
> Phone: (718) 817-2243
> Fax: (718) 817-3817
> email: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu
>

-- 
Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
Director,
Office of Institutional Research
<http://www.fordham.edu/academics/office_of_the_provos/office_of_institutio/index.asp>
Fordham University
Thebaud Hall-202
Bronx, NY 10458

Phone: (718) 817-2243
Fax: (718) 817-3817
email: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu