[Xmca-l] Re: Brandom Extended

[Lplarry]

A further comment that may link up with the Tomosella article on the species specific character of cooperation and joint attention gesturing toward *third* aspects that generate  (meaning). This generating meanings that take different perspectives or accounts into awareness and reflection.

My comment turns to how this character of joint attention affirmed within cooperation that generates multiple perspectives (which are meanings) can also generate *conflict* by turning to Hegel (as) literature.

Hegel explores the perceived *opposition* between beauty (schonheit) and the understanding (verstand).  This perceived contrast (conflict?) is *portrayed* (as if) this were a psychological drama. Hegel presents this portrayal as a poetic image of Beauty *hating* the Understanding for expecting of Beauty what Understanding (itself) cannot do.

But what is it precisely that Beauty cannot *do*?.  If we listen carefully to the language of the image (language of the imaginal) in this personified metaphorical *claim* then what Beauty cannot *do* is *tarry* (verweilen) – with the negative. 
In other words Beauty cannot endure the *self-dissolving character* of the human experience. Beauty cannot *tarry* within dis/integration and *death* as the proper function of Beauty is *resistance to* dis/integration and the creation of harmony and unity.

As Pippin points out this portrayal also implies and imposes limits on the part of the faculty of analytic understanding (dis/integration and death).

It is this notion of *tarrying* and how Geist *finds itself* within what Geist has also *torn apart* which is the focus of Hegel’s point of view (perspective).
This brings us back to joint attention as a species specific characteristic.

My fascination is in this theme of *tarrying* occurring within a notion of *systematic* understanding which occurs within an architecture (portrayal) of *literature*. This tarrying of the understanding which has a *limit* and Geist transcends this limit.

Larry


Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Larry Purss
Sent: April 18, 2016 11:32 PM
To: Greg Thompson; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: RE: [Xmca-l] Re: Brandom Extended

Greg,
Here is a copy of Pippin’s article which is chapter 7 in an edited book. The chapter is titled “Finite and Absolute Idealism” The book {The Transcendental Turn} is edited by Sebastian Gardner and Matthew Grist.
I went to Pippin’s  academic home page where he has a list of publications.

Pippin also has a paper titled “On Hegel’s Relation to Literature” which illuminates the sense of *I-We* in the phenomenology of spirit. 

Hegel wrote, “Lacking strength, Beauty hates the Understanding for asking her what it [Understanding] cannot do”

Pippin’s paper elaborates on this theme.


Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Greg Thompson
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2016 9:20 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Brandom Extended

David,
Can your "mopeds" replace "zopeds"?

Larry, I'd love to get a copy of the Pippin paper you mentioned.

-greg


On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 3:44 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> Larry:
>
> It wasn't my metaphor, actually: it was Brandom's. Here's the context:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJXibuBSotc
>
> Brandom (not to be confused with Richard Bransom!) is pretty dense for me;
> I found it easier to print out Brandom's speech and read it:
>
>  http://lms.ff.uhk.cz/pool/download_14.pdf
>
> But that misses out on the Q & A which would also be worth reading. My
> complaint is that it's all a little bloodless: it doesn't give me the sense
> that cities are full of struggle, and that even the disagreements we have
> about what things are thus and so and why, the things which Brandom claims
> are "downtown", are often, when we look more closely, about how things WILL
> be or SHOULD be rather than how they actually are, and involve conflicts of
> material interests. It seems to me that if you want to get from the suburbs
> to downtown, that is the way to go. Brandom's "downtown" is really an ivory
> tower; a material walled city. Mine is more like the "downtown" of that
> moped song:
>
> She has her arms around your waist
> With a balance that could keep us safe
> Downtown, downtown
>
> It's all about getting from the suburbs (that is, the areas where language
> and non-language exists side by side, as in everyday conversation) into the
> downtown of language (where one is confronted by pure text, as in the case
> of this 'discussion' list) and back to the burbs, safely, and with the
> least possible expenditure of intellectual resources on the means of
> transportation so that you can expend at least some of that energy on your
> companions.
>
> And that brings me to your quote. As you can see, I'm really a painter and
> not an intellectual at all: I find it very hard to think in abstractions,
> and I can't even figure out the grammar of the first sentence: "Arguments
> for relativism and sometimes transcendental idealism often make the
> mistake, the mistake of thinking of thought or horizons of sense or modes
> of sense-making or conceptual schemes in this third person way *as if*
> something one can get trapped inside of unless something exogenous can
> *break* through it."
>
> This is the kind of thing that slows me down, Larry; when philosophers talk
> about language they really make no more sense than when linguists talk
> about philosophy. What does it mean to think of modes of sense making '"as
> if" (it is?) something one can get trapped inside of'? Isn't making sense
> precisely NOT being trapped inside of the mode of sense making? How can you
> make sense WITHOUT breaking  through to something or somebody "exogenous"
> (presumably this means exogenous to language, although it's pretty hard to
> tell)!
>
> Ruqaiya Hasan argues a lot for an "internal" view of language, where
> meaning is essentially within language itself and not a relation with
> material reality, including sapient minds and sentient meat. This
> internalist view too is a walled city to me; I can see no gate to its
> downtown that isn't triply portcullised. It is like saying that the meaning
> of a painting is in the paint (Jackson Pollack might have thought that was
> true, but he is dead and his paintings are now selling for millions of
> dollars to people who appear to completely disagree).
>
> I think I prefer to think of language as a moped, a means of communication
> that you can pedal (as when we use language in an ancillary way, to access
> goods and services which are not irreducibly language) or which pedals
> itself (as when we use language to exchange 'information' in the form of
> more language). Sure, most of us will use the motor most of the time;
> that's what modernity means these days, and besides that's the only way to
> access MY downtown, which is not how things are but rather how they would
> be and how they could be and how they should be. But it would
> nevertheless be a mistake to assume that the motor is all there is, because
> then there's no way to start the damn thing up.
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 1:54 AM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > David,
> > Your metaphor of downtown city and architecture not being picture frames
> I
> > found intriguing but I will require more con/text to follow in more than
> > an impressionistic way.
> >
> > I happen to be reading an article by Robert Pippin that is exploring
> > similar themes. Pippin says that he is making a case for a Hegelian
> > shareable *I-We* relation extending beyond Bransom’s *I-Thou* relation of
> > idiodects. Is this the contrast between dwelling within architectural
> > places rather than within picture frames?
> >
> > Now for the con/text in which this claim is embedded is this quote:
> > “ Arguments for relativism and sometimes transcendental idealism often
> > make the mistake, the mistake of thinking of thought or horizons of sense
> > or modes of sense-making or conceptual schemes in this third person way
> *as
> > if* something one can get trapped inside of unless something exogenous
> can
> > *break* through it.  As it has been put in many contemporary contexts,
> one
> > source of the confusion is the temptation to think in terms of conceptual
> > schemes and a separable, otherwise neutral, non-conceptual content that
> is
> > conceptualized by such a scheme. The temptation is to think of an in
> > principal neutral or indeterminate content or world in itself the
> > accessibility of which is a matter of applying a scheme to such a content
> > and so ending up with something *less* than the world in itself, but
> rather
> > the world only as so finitely appropriated.  Hegel is among the parties
> > denying such a scheme-content distinction, although he is certainly not
> > denying that there can be different, sometimes quite different, aspectual
> > takes on the world. The point of this self-negating language is to
> > distinguish this possible partiality of a *shape of spirit* from the idea
> > of some putatively radical, alternative conceptual scheme, and this view
> > about the *inherently* possible self-negating aspect of such a *shape* is
> > meant to stress what Gadamer calls the *openness* of linguistic horizons
> to
> > each other.”
> >
> > Pippin at this point adds a footnote # 7
> > “Besides being right (in my view anyway) about the set of Friedman,
> > Gadamer, and Davidson issues, McDowell also broaches the question of what
> > we need to say is *shareable* by a linguistic community in order for this
> > mutual intelligibility and integration to succeed and suggests the
> > beginning of what I would regard as a Hegelian case for the
> > indispensability of an *I-We* relation beyond the *I-Thou* priority
> argued
> > for by Bransom and, in effect, by Davidson on the priority of idiolects.”
> >
> > If asked I can send the article.
> > Larry
> >
> >
> > Sent from my Windows 10 phone
> >
> >
>



-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson