[Xmca-l] Re: Parts and wholes

Sat Sep 3 18:19:04 PDT 2016

Alfredo, 
It has been awhile since I engaged with Bateson and his radical transformation of the meaning of *mind* 

I was approaching epistemology (ways of knowing)  from my biased location  immersed in reading through the logic of M-P’s  institution.
Mind in the way Bateson or Buddhism express this phenomena as you say are transforming the very meaning of (mind). 
When you mention the Bostonian perspective i am unfamiliar with this reference.

The term *meaning* is core to M-P’s exploration of institution and his  focus on the inseparability of the instituting & instituted subject *dwelling* within meaning.

Meaning is also core to the exploration of perezhivanie and that is what drew me to Kym’s article. In her article she references a key moment in M-P’s Institution and Passivity that focuses on the centrality of meaning cores that develop and animate life & are inherently overcome. 
M-P speaks of a subject who: 
Invests itself, I.e., animates itself with another meaning, transforms itself ..., I.e., succeeds in making a meaning which is transcendent to him *dwell* in his I think, and (dwells) in his body AS a meaning dwells in the book and dwells in the cultural object.

M-P is attempting to develop a language to express the way thinking, the body, books, and cultural objects all *dwell* within meaning & also the way the meaning the person realizes always *exceeds* the person.
Rein mentions the tearing down and rebuilding of the temple every 20 years that is NOT a copy but expresses the continuation of the living form.
There may be something relevant in these ways of expression that will add to our exploration of (perezhivanie).

Bateson’s wider expression of epistemology seems to share a sense that may align with the notion of meaning that is being worked out in the notions of perezhivanie and institution
My turn in this direction is pursuing a hunch that I share with our community of learners. 

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
Sent: September 3, 2016 1:21 PM
To: lpscholar2@gmail.com; Greg Thompson; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Parts and wholes

Rein, Larry,

when I cite "Mind in the widest sense of the word" I should have inserted a direct reference to Bateson's Mind and Nature (1979), where Epistemology is defined as the science of the mind in the sense of the world of in-formation. In both your comments, you seem to discuss epistemology as an issue of a knowing subject with respect to an known object. In that realm of thought, yes, you distinguish between ontology and epistemology, but you should be aware that that is well within a dualism perspective. From the Bostonian perspective that I pursue here, Epistemology, knowing, in-formation, is not a matter of (individual, mentalistic) subject-mind, but a matter of pattern and relationships that make a difference. Building on Jung, he distinguishes between Pleroma, the world of physical forces and laws, and Creatura, the world of descriptions, of information, where relations between wholes and parts are very different as they are in the case of the atoms that compose the stone, or the physical laws that keep the bridge straight. This world includes not just humans, but more generally life, human consciousness being one of its aspects. There is no dualism here between matter and ideas in a Cartesian sense: everything in Creatura is made of Pleroma stuff. 

Alfredo

From: lpscholar2@gmail.com <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Sent: 03 September 2016 19:56
To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; Greg Thompson; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: RE: [Xmca-l] Re: Parts and wholes 

Alfredo,
I read epistemology as ways of *knowing* including knowing *being*.
I hear ontology focused on *being* as more accurately depicted as *becoming* or *arising* into being.
To *know* or to have knowledge of this arising phenomena (becoming moving into being as a particular ontology or working ontology) is not primary but is more retrospective/ reflective occurring after the event that *then* becomes realized consciously.
The entre deux is *inserting* a 3rd aspect into the relational meshwork. This insertion may be *mediation* that is bi-directional.
Rein refers to *ity* and the relation of subjectiv/ITY & objectiv/ITY are in Buddhist terms co-dependent arisings.
For M-P the institution of both subjectiv/ity and objectivity move through repetition (but not repetition of the same or identical copies). The repetition is bi-directional regression to crystallized institutional knowing & the tendency for all forms to overcome their boundary demarcations transforming *beyond* the realm of conscious *knowing*. The logic of institution for M-P is a subterranean movement of embodied expression (gesture, inclination) through environments that precedes *knowing*.
The relation of both epistemology and ontology shift with this new organ of sense *developing* through co-dependent arising. 
The word *passivity* will need to be inserted at some point but enough for one post

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
Sent: September 3, 2016 9:51 AM
To: Greg Thompson; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Parts and wholes

Greg, Rein, Larry

is it not that Rein was talking about *working ontologies*, but that institution and constitution are about epistemology? about how Mind ("in the widest sense of the word") goes about?

Ontology, seems to me, has not much to do with life, but with a particular epistemology that concerns itself with either things or with life, but not with their relation (which is what epistemology is about). And in my way of seeing it, the interesting discussion is about epistemology. I hear Larry's comments on the bi-directionality of part and whole, as well as those comments from Greg about humanly constructed or naturally constructed, as being about epistemology, about History, about how things become, not just how they are. This is not to say that it is not important to be clear about what one refers to when saying part, whole, or entity, or function, etc, but that these questions are interesting as per how they make our epistemologies better or worst. From an epistemological point of view, that relations between stones rather than stones in themselves are mental (of the type of ideas) is not a comment about what they are in themselves (as opposed to what stones are in themselves) but about their *genetical* function with regard to Mind. A focus on stones alone did not allow the concept of arch to ascend to the concrete in the  sense Andy and David were commenting, to develop into a new cultural form of building bridges. Attending to the arch-like properties of some arrangements of stones (bridges) did. In that sense, Rein comments on the difference between treating stones as entities or as characters of a formula are interesting, in my view, not in that they better or worse describe the world as it is, but in that they describe two possible ways in which we may go about stones and bridges in development of forms of (human) life. Institution and constitution are, in my view, elements of an epistemology, not of an ontology.

Alfredo

________________________________
From: Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
Sent: 03 September 2016 16:27
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Cc: Alfredo Jornet Gil; David Kellogg
Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Parts and wholes

Rein,

I'm confused about the ontological distinction between the stone and the arch. Seems like the stone is just a collection of relations between parts in the same way that the arch is a relation between parts of stones. The stone is made up of molecular relations that are subsequently made up of atomic relations. If you look at the atomic and molecular scale of the stone, it looks something like a bridge - a bundle of relations that are held together in time.

And if you look across long enough scales of time, you could watch the relations of molecules begin to fall apart as the stones turn to dust.

Thus if we look across longer timescales or smaller spacescales, the relational nature of the stone is no more "closed and implicit" than the arch of the bridge.

It seems like the important difference between the two has to do with "humanly-constructed" vs. "naturally constructed"?  One was constructed (instituted) by human ideas, the other by natural ones...

This seems less of an ontological matter and more of a practical matter of "how it's made".

But, perhaps I've misunderstood the proposed ontological distinction?

-greg

On Sat, Sep 3, 2016 at 7:21 AM, <lpscholar2@gmail.com<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
Alfredo, I notice you referred to the “mental” in scare quotes. This reminds me of an earlier post where we explored the notion of the “mental” as an aspect of our “folk” psychology.
In the background I also hear David Kellogg moving from material problems of existential problems with flooding bridges, abstracting and going deeper, and then re/turning to the concrete.
Question?
Does the language of *parts and wholes* express this bi-directional movement adequately?

I also hear in the background Merleau-Panty's notion of developing “new organs of sense”.
The word “repetition* in relation to same/difference seems critical.  To repeat the (identical) may be technology, mechanical, scientism, but something is lacking?
Reading the movement of *repetition* not as (identical) or the (same) but as bidirectional *back and forth* through questions and answers, and through regression to the known and  anticipation of *something* new seems to be a  particular notion of movement, moving towards developing *new organs of sense*?

In anticipation of discussing the meaning of perezhivanie it seems we may be *setting the table* for a lovely chat by opening a clearing
Possibly, could be.

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Alfredo Jornet Gil

--
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

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