[Xmca-l] Re: Bateson on thinking relatively

[Wolff-Michael Roth]

Just to add to the preceding point, and to David W's message. here a quote
from Dewey, *Logic: The Theory of Inquiry*:

With differentiation of interactions comes the need of maintaining
a balance among them; or, in objective terms, a unified environment.
The balance has to be maintained by a mechanism
that responds both to variations that occur within the organism and
in surroundings. (1938: 26)

Michael



On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 7:26 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:

> But Gibson is not transactional in the way Bateson is. For Bateson (or
> Dewey or others), there is no "natural" affordance. In other words, the
> human also would be the affordance to the door knob, not merely the door
> knob an affordance to humans. The door knob "selects" humans over other
> animals... The environment "samples" the individual as much as the
> individual "samples" the environment...
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 7:14 AM, WEBSTER, DAVID S. <
> d.s.webster@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> The perception-action cycle has been a topic of debate in the Gibsonian
>> literature since the early -mid  1980s i.e. just after Gibson died in 1979
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman
>> .ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Martin Packer
>> Sent: 31 January 2018 14:56
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Bateson on thinking relatively
>>
>> I’m struck by the similarity between Bateson’s description and the notion
>> floating around in neuroscience of a “perception-action cycle,” in which
>> brain, body, and environment are each components in a circular process.
>>
>> The perception-action cycle is a circular cybernetic flow of information
>> processing between the organism and its environment in a sequence of
>> goal-directed actions. An action of the organism causes an environmental
>> change that will be processed by sensory systems, which will produce
>> signals to inform the next action, and so on. The perception-action cycle
>> is of prime importance for the adaptive success of a temporally extended
>> gestalt of behavior, where each action is contingent on the effects of the
>> previous one. The perception-action cycle operates at all levels of the
>> central nervous system. Simple, automatic, and well rehearsed behaviors
>> engage only the lower levels of the perception-action cycle, whereas, for
>> sensorimotor integration, the cycle runs through the spinal cord and
>> subcortical structures.
>>
>> To the extent that deliberate, reflexive planning becomes part of the
>> cycle on its highest levels, the sense of being the initiator of action can
>> be hard to resist. But it’s just the walnut on the cupcake.
>>
>> Here’s a diagram, though it’ll be probably be removed, so here’s the link
>> too…
>>
>> <http://willcov.com/bio-consciousness/sidebars/Perception--
>> Action%20Cycle_files/image295.jpg>
>>
>>
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Jan 31, 2018, at 9:38 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> > Darned if I did not find that Bateson passage online! Amazing.
>> > Here it is from *Steps to an Ecology of Mind.*
>> >
>> > mike
>> > --------------\
>> >
>> > Consider a tree and a man and an axe. We observe that the axe flies
>> > through the air and makes certain gashes in a pre-existing cut in the
>> > side of the tree. If we now want to explain this set of phenomena, we
>> > shall be concerned with differences in the cut face of the tree,
>> > differences in the retina of the man, differences in the central
>> > nervous system, differences in his different neural messages,
>> > differences in the behaviour of his muscles, difference in how the axe
>> > flies, to the differences which the axe then makes on the face of the
>> > tree. Our explanation will go round and round that circuit. If you
>> > want to explain or understand anything in human behaviour, you are
>> always dealing with total circuits, completed circuits.
>> > (Bateson, 1972, p. 433)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Later in the same paper he writes about how difficult it is to adopt
>> > this
>> > epistemology:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I can stand here and I can give you a reasoned exposition of this
>> > matter; but if I am cutting down a tree, I still think ‘Gregory
>> > Bateson’ is cutting down a tree. I am cutting down the tree. ‘Myself’
>> > is to me still an excessively concrete object, different from the rest
>> > of what I have been calling ‘mind’.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > The step to realizing – to making habitual – the other way of thinking
>> > – so that one naturally thinks that way when one reaches out for a
>> > glass of water or cuts down a tree – that step is not an easy one.
>> >
>> >
>> > .... Once we have made this shift, our perspective fundamentally
>> changes.
>> > We firstly start focusing on relationships, flows and patterns; and
>> > secondly realize that we are part of any field we are studying.
>>
>>
>>
>