[Xmca-l] Re: New book on Ilyenkov

[David Kellogg]

Huw...

So actually this is the bit of Bateson that I'm having trouble
understanding, and it's quite different from what I am failing to
understand in Ilyenkov. I can't really do what Andy suggests, becuse this
person has written a whole book about it, and as an author I always find it
rather rude when anybody writes to me to say that they don't have the time
and don't want to spend the money to get my book and they want me to just
clear up a few points for them and save them the trouble. Maybe I am just
over-sensitive.

So this Bateson is working with a world that is almost the opposite of the
one physicists work with. That is, it's a world where objects are
essentially unimportant ("feedback" is a structure that is quite
independent of whether we are talking about a microphone, a thermostadt, a
child, or a civilization). It's a world where only communication matters.
(There are some forms of physics which handle a world like this, but they
are precisely the realms of physics I don't really get.)

In this world, there is something called Learning Zero, or the Zero Degree
of Learning, which is essentially making responses that are
stimulus-specific. Then there is something called Learning One, which is
generalizing responses to a well-defined, closed set of stimuli. And then
there is Learning Two, which I think is what you mean by second order
cybernetics. That is what people like to call "learning to learn", but when
we say this, we are ignoring that the two uses of "learn" mean things that
are as different as Learning Zerio and Learning One, as different as
instinct and habit, as different as unconditioned and conditioned responses
to stimuli. This is being able to generalize the ability to generalize
responses to well defined stimuli, so that they operate not only within a
well-defined context but in a context of context.

Children do a lot of this. They learn language, first as Learning Zero and
then as Learning One. Then they have to learn how to learn THROUGH
language, treating language itself as context and not simply text. This
inevitably leads to a Learning Three, where language is itself the object
of learning--Halliday calls it learning ABOUT language.

Bateson is very disturbed by this, because he feels that Russell's paradox
is lurking behind all of these sets which both are and are not members of
themselves. I don't have any problem with it, because I think that
Russell's world is math and not language (I think of math as a kind of very
artificial form of language that only operates in very artificial worlds,
like those of physics and cybernetics).

Is this what you mean by the discontinuity of second order
cybernetics? Isn't it an artifact of imposing Russell's theory of logical
types and an artifact of the artificiality of the cybernetic world?



David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article:
Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without SELF: Vygotsky’s
pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s construalism in
understanding narratives by
Korean children, Language and Education, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663

Some e-prints available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663



On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 11:32 PM Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Quite possibly it was from a lack of recognising the continuity into
> second order cybernetics, which many of the founding members of cybernetics
> recognised.
>
> Huw
>
> On Sat, 18 May 2019 at 11:05, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Andy, Alfredo--
>>
>> The most intriguing thing about this book was the statement that Ilyenkov
>> fought against the introduction of ideas from cybernetics into psychology.
>> On the other side of the world, Gregory Bateson was fighting hard for their
>> inclusion.
>>
>> I read through "The Ideal in Human Activity" a couple of times (true,
>> without understanding much of it). But I didn't see anything against
>> cybernetics. Am I missing something?
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Article:
>> Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without SELF: Vygotsky’s
>> pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s construalism in
>> understanding narratives by
>> Korean children, Language and Education, DOI:
>> 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>> To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>>
>> Some e-prints available at:
>>
>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 6:22 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>>> https://realdemocracymovement.org/finding-evald-ilyenkov/
>>>
>>> In the era of alt-truth, disinformation and scepticism about the very
>>> possibility of knowledge, the work of a defiant Soviet thinker is
>>> attracting growing interest.
>>>
>>> Evald Ilyenkov’s dialectical approach to philosophy from Spinoza to
>>> Hegel and Marx made him a target for persecution by the bureaucratic
>>> Stalinist authorities of his day.
>>>
>>> The re-discovery of his original texts, suppressed or harshly redacted
>>> during his lifetime, is giving rise to an enhanced view of his contribution.
>>>
>>> *Finding Evald Ilyenkov* draws on the personal experiences of
>>> researchers in the UK, Denmark and Finland. It traces Ilyenkov’s impact on
>>> philosophy, psychology, politics and pedagogy and how it continues to be
>>> relevant in the light of today’s crises.
>>> --
>>> ------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>>
>>
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