[Xmca-l] Re: Bateson on thinking relatively

[Wolff-Michael Roth]

Martin, I think English translation tend to leave the word *Gestaltkreis*,
where the second part is "circle" not "cycle"

Also, von Weizsäcker relates perception and movement, but he does not say
that there is a cycle or circle of perception and movement. instead, he
writes "Perception ... *is *self-movement" (von Weizsäcker, 1973, p. 50)

von Weizsäcker, V. (1973). *Der Gestaltkreis*. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp.

Michael

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 7:34 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:

> Interesting point, David. I hadn’t traced its history. Googling around I
> found this summary by Fuster:
>
> Such a cybernetic cycle has been given various names: Weizsacker (1950)
> called it the Gestaltkreis (“gestalt cycle”) and Neisser (1976) the
> “perception cycle”; Arbib (1981) and I (1989) have called it, respectively,
> the “action-perception” and the “perception-action’’ cycle.
>
> Martin
>
>
>
> > On Jan 31, 2018, at 10:14 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.
> >
> >
>
>