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

[Andy Blunden]

Can I just vouch for Anthony's project. He does a fine job 
of editing and I think his collection of tiny videos make a 
real contribution to Vygotsky's legacy. A diversity of 
voices help, so please! someone else stump up to join 
Anthony's crew.

Andy

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*Andy Blunden*
Hegel for Social Movements <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!Spj7ybW_LUoFXDv2iVA1TKJKPAjhKyftAGi76oylQzObUE6aRnFXF53u2cffhj_WKhBqiw$ >
Home Page <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!Spj7ybW_LUoFXDv2iVA1TKJKPAjhKyftAGi76oylQzObUE6aRnFXF53u2cffhj_9df2EcQ$ >
On 12/08/2020 6:03 am, Anthony Barra wrote:
> 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!Spj7ybW_LUoFXDv2iVA1TKJKPAjhKyftAGi76oylQzObUE6aRnFXF53u2cffhj_yZYcw4w$  
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RbTsEBrr1M-JQ2E0Cza-8aoA440vsBAtR7DQicuejOZvYN1AOyytgVid7plmKnYKHKx2jw$>)
>
> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- 
> would benefit from answers to this question, preferably 
> multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and 
> add your response to this growing list of 
> asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Spj7ybW_LUoFXDv2iVA1TKJKPAjhKyftAGi76oylQzObUE6aRnFXF53u2cffhj9suyMHeg$  
> <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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