[Xmca-l] "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

[Anthony Barra]

Good afternoon,

This is a question -- and an invitation:

First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the
bottom of this email) to mean?*

Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video
form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also
helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the
question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RbTsEBrr1M-JQ2E0Cza-8aoA440vsBAtR7DQicuejOZvYN1AOyytgVid7plmKnYKHKx2jw$ )

I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from
answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I
will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of
asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RbTsEBrr1M-JQ2E0Cza-8aoA440vsBAtR7DQicuejOZvYN1AOyytgVid7plmKnayu3KfOQ$   Thanks for considering
it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for
fun.

*Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp.
190-1:

> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials
> for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to
> play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire
> the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if
> this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness.
> I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the
> object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any
> generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious
> awareness – understood as generalization – leads directly to mastery.
>


> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or
> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*.
> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a
> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through
> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of
> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific
> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and
> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of
> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can – like any
> structure – be transferred without training to all remaining domains of
> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate
> opened up by the scientific concept*."


What do you understand this passage to mean?

Thanks 😎

Anthony Barra

P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, even
with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully,
three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a
definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really
so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be
similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So
thank you again to anyone interested in participating.
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