[Xmca-l] Re: Hegel on Action
David Kellogg
dkellogg60@gmail.com
Sun Jul 16 14:18:08 PDT 2017
In the Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin notes that the Aristotelian syllogism
still has a whiff of Platonism about it.
Precious metals don't rust.
Gold is a precious metal.
Therefore gold doesn't rust.
I gather that what he means is that in the syllogism it is concrete,
sensuous experience with a particular metal which comes dead last. But when
we look at human experience as historical activity, we notice that it comes
first: that it is thousands of years of experience with a particular metal,
from the ancient Egyptians and their obsession with uncorruptibility
onward, which leads to the valuation of gold and its exaptation as money,
and then generalization to silver. Lenin says that in its idealist form
the syllogism is a game: it is this which must be "turned on its head" to
see how the concept arises.
Today I'm attending a workshop in Wollongong with Clare Painter, who
replicated Halliday's Nigel studies with her own children. Clare is talking
about how kindy teachers in Australia use picture books. Her own approach
uses what she calls "visual grammar", which is a way of applying
metafunctional principles to both pictures and text (so for example a
picture can be said to be a text from the author, with "ideational" content
realized by the figures, and "intepersonal" content realized by the way in
which the characters are framed as distant or near, engaging with the child
or not).
But I'm also reading an essay by Ruqaiya Hasan with a different approach.
So then she traces the way in which kindy teachers in Australia teach it.
It goes something like this:
T (showing a picture of children at school): Where do you think they are?
Ss: Kindies, kindies....
T: Yes, they could be kindies, they could be first years. Why do we think
that?
Ss: The school.
T: Right. It's a school not a home. Homes don't have fences like that, do
they? Is it morning or afternoon?
Ss: Afternoon....
And the T notes the long shadows, and the children notice that the kindies
in the picture are facing away from the school building and not towards it.
The children are learning not only what the right answer is, but where
right answers come from, and what kinds of things constitute evidence for
them. And it is here that Ruqaiya takes us to Luria's findings in
Kazakhstan, and notes that even the statement "Precious metals do not rust"
needs to be built up from experienced examples, not only in ontogenesis but
even sociogenetically.
If Marx's remark to that effect was not helpful or clarifying, why do you
think Vygotsky and Luria (not to mention Lenin) were so taken with it?
David Kellogg
Macquarie University
On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 12:01 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> I meant specifically that the aphorism about Hegel having to be turned on
> his head is not useful.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> On 17/07/2017 12:16 AM, Haydi Zulfei wrote:
>
>> Andy, please just pay respect to the whole of what I have written. We
>> cannot forget our ideas because you have a strong background in this or
>> that. Any respectable learned fellow could come up with vague notions and
>> those who dare challenge them cannot be considered to be totally ignorant
>> or necessarily on the wrong track or worse uttering nonsense. What do you
>> mean by saying "No-one can ever explain what it means without talking
>> nonsense" . What is the reference for it? To say Hegel have been
>> considered 'idealist' , the last of the German idealists , grounding his
>> philosophy mostly on the Absolute Spirit (idea) reaching therefore to the
>> magnification and strengthening of the powers of the State and its
>> recognition of Civil Rights surrendering the oppressed and the innocent
>> ruled to those monopolistic and absolute rights rendering the innocent
>> accountable to what have come out of them not based on free will but
>> according to the codes of morality prefigured by the very State is
>> nonsensical ? I've been long involved in reading Ilyenko , The rise of the
>> abstract to the concrete in Marx's capital , The dialectical Logic , The
>> piece on Lenin's criticism of the Machists and Bogdanovians as positivists
>> and empirio-critics , The problem of the Ideal , The Universal , The idols
>> and the ideals and his other works . Do you really consider yourself among
>> those who cannot talk about 'it' without talking nonsense? What is the
>> reason behind this? Ilyenko deals with Hegel in brilliant discourse. My
>> talk was not groundless yet I do not claim legitimation . Dialogue is the
>> agenda not monologue disguised in dialogue. Shortly we have processes and
>> products . A concept is a product , the endpoint of a chain of thoughts and
>> actions ; it's neither activity itself nor a form of activity . I've
>> written the details ; you didn't want to go through. This kind of
>> refutation leaves no place for the learners.
>>
>> Regards
>> Haydi
>>
>> From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> Sent: Sunday, 16 July 2017, 14:42:47
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Hegel on Action
>> Haydi, I really don't see how "the interests of the
>> exploited and the oppressed" comes into this. I say nothing
>> of "corrections made by Marx on Hegel" though I make several
>> points of criticism of Hegel and my reading of Marx on Hegel
>> has certainly contributed to my views here. I just don't see
>> any value in quoting Marx in an article on Hegel. I have
>> found that the maxim about "turning Hegel on his head, or
>> rather back on his feet" unhelpful. I'm not saying it is
>> wrong, but it never helped me understand Hegel and has led
>> to a lot of misunderstanding of Hegel and Marx as well.
>> No-one can ever explain what it means without talking
>> nonsense. You say "you are quite right with your
>> understanding of concept not being activity itself" - you
>> misunderstand me. I am saying that a concept is a form of
>> activity.
>>
>> One of the participants in my weekly Hegel Reading Group
>> told me that the main thing he has learnt from the group is
>> to simply read what Hegel wrote. He said that all his life
>> as an Italian Marxist he just repeated what fellow Marxists
>> had told him about Hegel. Now that he has read Hegel he sees
>> how small the differences are. He now understands Marx a lot
>> better for having closely read Hegel.
>>
>> Hope that clarifies a little.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> On 16/07/2017 7:55 PM, Haydi Zulfei wrote:
>>
>>> ....
>>>
>>> If I'm not mistaken in understanding Andy , he , on
>>> Hegel's lenses , equals 'goal-oriented material activity'
>>> with sharing in 'intention' or at times , fusion of
>>> intention and activity which is not so productive as to
>>> the interests of the exploited and the oppressed . He does
>>> say nothing of the corrections made by Marx on Hegel ,
>>> that is , that Hegel's theory is headlong or upside down ;
>>> that it should be switched in a way that it should look
>>> upright erected quite firm on its feet. I think you are
>>> quite right with your understanding of concept not being
>>> activity itself .
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Haydi
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *From:* Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>> *To:* "ablunden@mira.net" <ablunden@mira.net>; "eXtended
>>> Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> *Sent:* Saturday, 15 July 2017, 18:22:24
>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Hegel on Action
>>>
>>> Andy,
>>> Thanks for this article ‘Hegel on Action’
>>> The paragraph on (logical concepts) was clarifying in the
>>> mutual way we are inclined to take the word itself AS IF
>>> the word were the material concept and not take the
>>> concept AS activity (itself).
>>> I hope I am representing this (reading this) in the way
>>> you intended.
>>>
>>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>>>
>>> From: Andy Blunden
>>> Sent: July 15, 2017 5:30 AM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Hegel on Action
>>>
>>> James, I think you're using "material" in some specific
>>> sense which is unknown to me. It seems to me to be something
>>> to do with body language as opposed to speech, maybe
>>> practical consciousness rather than discursive
>>> consciousness. "Material" understood as meaning "made of
>>> matter" would simply be the opposite of "in my imagination".
>>> I find it difficult to get my head around the idea of a
>>> "sign in the mind" and if "mind" was some place other than
>>> the material world where a sign could be located. I'm sure
>>> what you are talking about is perfectly good, but I can't
>>> relate it to the absolutely basic ontological issue which
>>> you raised out of my paper about action.
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>
>>> On 15/07/2017 8:15 PM, James Ma wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks for such helpful explanation, Andy.
>>>> Regarding my last question, I mean one's feeling or sense
>>>> perception involved in social practice in a social context
>>>> possesses the material quality of a psychic image (a sign
>>>> in the mind). This material quality can be one's facial
>>>> expression or bodily movement connected with a particular
>>>> feeling.
>>>>
>>>> James
>>>>
>>>> /_____________________________________/
>>>>
>>>> */James Ma/*///https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 15 July 2017 at 09:42, Andy Blunden
>>>>
>>> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>
>>>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> James, the meaning for words such as "material" and to
>>>> a lesser extent the other words in your message have
>>>> meanings which are extremely context (or discourse)
>>>> dependent. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
>>>> doesn't have a definition of Matter, considering it
>>>> only in relation to Form, but their definition of
>>>> Substance will do the trick. I follow Lenin and
>>>> Vygotsky in my understanding of matter. (Hegel didn't
>>>> like to use the word, because he took it as too linked
>>>> to Atomism. Marx used "material" in a very specific
>>>> way to do with reproduction of the means of life.)
>>>>
>>>> As to the philosophical meaning of "matter" I think I
>>>> said it in the paper as succinctly as possible. If
>>>> it's in the mind then it is not material. I can't make
>>>> sense of your last question.
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>>>
>>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy><http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>>>
>>>> On 15/07/2017 6:28 PM, James Ma wrote:
>>>>
>>>> This is interesting to me, Andy. Do you rule out
>>>> anything that has material quality but is actually
>>>> associated with a mental sign (a sign in the mind,
>>>> as Peirce would say)? Do you consider social
>>>> practice (you mentioned earlier) to be tinted with
>>>> the intrapsychological within oneself?
>>>>
>>>> James
>>>>
>>>> /_____________________________________/
>>>>
>>>> */James
>>>> Ma/*///https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa/
>>>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa/>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 15 July 2017 at 07:11, Andy Blunden
>>>> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>>>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> No, it would be spreading confusion, Greg.
>>>>
>>>> "Matter" in this context is everything outside
>>>> of my
>>>> consciousness. "Activity" in this context is
>>>> human,
>>>> social practice. Moving attention to the
>>>> sub-atomic
>>>> level, a field where we have no common sense,
>>>> sensuous
>>>> knowledge, does not help.
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>>
>>>
>>>> On 15/07/2017 2:31 PM, Greg Thompson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Andy,
>>>> Just musing here but I'm wondering if
>>>> "matter" is
>>>> anything more than activity, particularly
>>>>
>>> when
>>>
>>>> considered at the sub-atomic level.
>>>> At that level, matter seems a lot more
>>>> like the
>>>> holding of relations in some activity (not so
>>>> different from the Notion?).
>>>> Or would that be taking things too far?
>>>> -greg
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jul 14, 2017 at 10:12 PM, Andy
>>>>
>>> Blunden
>>>
>>>> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>
>>>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>>
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Anyone who got interested in that
>>>> material about
>>>> "Hegel on Action", here is my
>>>> contribution.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action
>>>> <https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action>
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action
>>>> <https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action>>
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action
>>>> <https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action>
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action
>>>> <https://www.academia.edu/33887830/Hegel_on_Action>>>
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>> >>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 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
>>>> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson>
>>>> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>>> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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