[Xmca-l] Re: Language, mind and objectivity

Fri Jan 25 08:07:04 PST 2019

Andy,
I don't want to get into epistemological discussions, of which there are no
end, but I think it is with considering how distantly the object of study
study of different fields exists apart from systems of human meaning.  I
think it is an error to homogenize them all, even though all disciplines
and forms of human inquiry are human made.

So the "objective materials" of language (that is, the stuff outside of
ourselves that can be viewed apart from their relation to meanings
attributed by human minds are air compressions, reverberating media,
inscribed marks, etc. It is naive to take language as meaning, used,
understood, etc. to be objective in the sense of being apart from
projection of human meaning.

True all those subjects you mention also engage human minds and are systems
of meaning. In a way they can all be considered and studied as particular
uses of language (Indeed that is one way of describing much of my scholarly
inquiry).
 However, the objects of study of some of these disciplines and the
evidence that can be inscribed by various means (though humanly organized)
exist at a distance from human minds can have more substantial status apart
from the minds and meaning attributions of the users. So biological
creatures, movement of particles, chemicals all exist apart from humans
(unless you want to take a radical solipsistic view epistemology) --even
though it takes human perception to notice them and language or other
symbol-making to make meaning of them.  Some of the other disciplines
however are more inextricably tied to human meaning-making and our
symbols--philosophy, history (relying on archival texts), important aspects
of sociology, etc.
This question then gets to the nature and status of appropriate data and
evidence in these various fields.
Chuck
----
די פאַרייניקטע שטאַטן איז אַ פאָלק פון ימאַגראַנץ
The U.S. is a nation of immigrants.
History will judge.
https://bazerman.education.ucsb.edu/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Charles_Bazerman
http://www.isawr.org
https://dailydoublespeak.com/

On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 7:35 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> What you say about language, James, is equally true of History, Biology,
> Chemistry, Physics, Social Theory, Philosophy ... and perception, is it not?
>
> andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 26/01/2019 2:23 am, James Ma wrote:
>
> Hello Fellows,
>
> I'd like to resume early discussion on language, music and philosophy with
> a separate header to address the intersection of language, mind and
> objectivity.
>
> I now start by perusing Andy's message below. As it stands, his
> counterargument to mine is a little sloppy and, more to the point, barely
> scratches the surface. My argument centres on a position that there is no
> way to talk about language without using language. Any language is thus to
> be scrutinised through the medium of itself (or another language). In doing
> so, one can't escape from being insider of that language. I
> elaborate my position as below, which might serve as pointers for
> discussion or reflection:
>
> First, language faculty reduces to mind. In studying the mind, one needs
> to attend to the use of mind in two different senses: a mind as the object
> (that is being studied) and a mind as the subject (that is doing the study).
>
> Second, to understand how mind functions in the world, it is necessary to
> bring perception into focus. It seems to be a rather naive realistic view
> that "in speech and writing, language is objective and actual, so we can
> also observe it". This doesn't entirely qualify as a case of perceptual
> recognition in that it latches on sense-data out of which one makes
> inference, without taking into consideration an interaction of three
> relations in perception, i.e. sense-data, the object behind sense-data, and
> the subject (observer). There seems to be a missing subjective angle from
> which the object is viewed. Moreover, inference processing is not simply
> conscious or deliberate; it also sets free implicit, involuntary or even
> irrational dispositions of the mind. In short, perception is interpretative
> and subjective because it is participatory in nature. I believe that all
> claims to knowledge answer in the end to perception. Taking for example
> language teaching, it involves a human being working with another human
> being, in which case you have to consider the effect of consciousness and
> intersubjectivity. There is no thought-free perception or perception-free
> thought - what you get in the mind is not the same as what you perceive!
>
> Third, writing, which has the life of its own, can't be analysed without
> being impinged by the observer's own perception. Recent research in TESOL
> emphasises the role of learner identity in second language acquisition.
>
> Perhaps we should think that the world is already the best representation
> of itself, to which human beings have limited access. I found Thomas
> Nagel's explanation of objectivity an eye-opener and a mind-liberator!
>
> James
>
>
>> On Tue, 1 Jan 2019 at 22:54, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>>> It is clearly wrong to say that we can't study language objectively
>>> because we exist and think in it - in speech and writing, language is
>>> objective and actual, so we can also observe it. But to study language
>>> objectively, from "outside," requires the student to acquire a certain
>>> distance from it. Teaching grammar is one way of achieving that, even
>>> writing too, I guess, and anyone who learns a second language has a point
>>> from which to view their first language. Thus we can learn that "Je ne sais
>>> pas" is not necessarily a double negative. But is the interviewer who asks
>>> an artist to explain their painting failing to stand outside language to
>>> see that there is something else. Like the psychologists who ask subjects
>>> questions and take the answer to be what the person "really" thought. It's
>>> the old problem of Kant's supposed "thing-in-itself" beyond experience
>>> which (in my opinion) Hegel so thoroughly debunked
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 4:52 AM James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Andy, here're my thoughts with respect to your message:
>>>>>
>>>>> I think "default", as a state of the human mind, is intuitive and *a
>>>>> posteriori* rather than of something we get hung up on deliberately
>>>>> or voluntarily. This state of mind is also multifaceted, depending on the
>>>>> context in which we find ourselves. Perhaps there might be a prototype of
>>>>> default that is somehow intrinsic, but I'm not sure about that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, Saussure's structuralism is profoundly influential, without which
>>>>> post-Saussurean thought, including post-structuralism, wouldn't have
>>>>> existed. Seemingly, none of these theorists could have worked out their
>>>>> ideas without the inspiration and challenge of Saussure. Take for example
>>>>> the Russian linguist Jakobson, which I think would suffice (never mind
>>>>> those Francophone geniuses you might have referred to!). Jakobson extended
>>>>> and modified Saussure's signs, using communicative functions as the object
>>>>> of linguistic studies (instead of standardised rules of a given language,
>>>>> i.e. *langue* in Saussure's terms). He replaced langue with "code" to
>>>>> denote the goal-directedness of communicative functions. Each of the codes
>>>>> was thus associated with its own langue as a larger system.
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems to me that Saussure's semiology is not simply dualistic.
>>>>> There's more to it, e.g. the system of signification bridging between a
>>>>> concept (signified) and a sound image (signifier). Strictly speaking, the
>>>>> system of signification is not concerned with language but linguistics
>>>>> within which language lends itself to scrutiny and related concepts become
>>>>> valid. From Jakobson's viewpoint, this system is more than a normalised
>>>>> collective norm; it contains personal meanings not necessarily compatible
>>>>> with that norm. Saussure would say this norm is the *parole* that
>>>>> involves an individual's preference and creativity. I find Jakobson's code
>>>>> quite liberating - it helps explain the workings of Chinese dialects
>>>>> (different to dialects within the British English), e.g. the grammatical
>>>>> structure of Shanghainese, which is in many aspects at variance with
>>>>> Mandarin (the official language or predominant dialect).
>>>>>
>>>>> By the way, I don't think we can study a language objectively because
>>>>> we are already users of that language when studying it, i.e. we must remain
>>>>> insiders of that language in order to study it, plus the fact that we have
>>>>> the will to meaning, so to speak.
>>>>>
>>>>> James
>>>>> *_______________________________________________________*
>>>>>
>>>>> *James Ma  Independent Scholar *
>>>>> *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>>>>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>    *
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20190125/a98d112a/attachment.html 