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

Thu Aug 13 22:21:32 PDT 2020

Hi Andy, Henry and vo's

Thank you for your reply Andy, but I think that what you are talking about is attention, not awareness. Like Henry explains, attention has a focus. That isn't "conscious awareness," for the very reason on cannot say "unconscious awareness" or "conscious unawareness" these states do not exist.

The examples you bring to the table have to do with the autonomic nervous system which aids walking, balance, and so on, which are not outside of awareness, but  can be outside of attention. The sympathetic system is the fight or flight response so there is not necessarily a "consciousness awareness" that propels the person to prevent a fall, but something that is automatic and reflexive; it is instinctual. I don't think that that is "conscious awareness."

As you can see it is a problematic phrase.

Also what is the consciousness of a whale, or a dolphin, that mediates between physiology and behavior? Sleeping or awake?

I maintain that what you are describing is attentional, not "conscious awareness."

This child directs her attention to steps that chunk the activity of tying shoes, (as you illustrated), that eventually becomes an automatic motorskill and becomes smooth, and with practice doesn't require attentional focus once it does become automatic.

Tying my shoes I am not thinking about tying my shoes, but I could tomorrow have attentional focus about tying my shoes whether I know how to do it or not. But the stance of "conscious awareness" means that the child doesn't require it at some point, but the child also doesn't consider, "I am aware that I am learning to tie my shoes." Nor "I am aware that if I tie my shoes I will be proud of myself." These states of mind do not create mastery of tying of shoes.

The glaring flaw in this conceptual construct of "conscious awareness" is that it "falls away" after mastery, but where does it go and when does it end? And how does it start when it starts?

What is the genesis of "conscious awareness?"

Learning about anything is about internalizing subjectively what maps to/reflects the external world faithfully. How you learned to tie your shoes may be different than how I did, than perhaps someone who suffered a brain injury and had to re-learn the task.  In all cases there is no one way to master tying of shoes, but there does come a common goal of internalizing the knowledge required to tie ones shoes, and once it is known, it is known/

Actually it is the ignorance of shoe-tying that has been fully removed because no one learns to tie her shoes in a vacuum, but from someone else, a knowledgeable other, by sharing attention to the task.

The problem of the phrase "conscious awareness" shows its glaring flaw were I to ask you to please tell me the exact time you fell asleep last night. No matter how many times you practice, you will never be able to do it. Does that mean you will never be able to master falling asleep because you didn't go out the gate with conscious awareness? If anything, such a task might keep you from sleeping.

If you say, sleeping doesn't count. Well, you did say "consciousness" mediates between physiology and behavior, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, sleeping or awake.

Kind egads!

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 7:37 PM
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

  [EXTERNAL]

Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake.

"Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc.
On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ...  that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ...  grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery.

OK?

Andy

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On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote:
Hello conscious and venerable others,

Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term.

I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky?

It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it?

I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness?

"Conscious awareness"  is sort of like saying "wet water,"

No, actually? it is like saying "watery water."

If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"?

What does that look like?

Can we say "conscious unawareness"?

I don't think so.

Awareness is awareness.

I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop.

It's just the sea, see?

However, you can't parse a drop of awareness.

If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness.

Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger."

The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc.

"Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too.

This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes.

Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness.

That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake?

Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer.

There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant.

To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident.

If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box.

Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively.

If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident.

When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion."

Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic.

In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them?

It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound.

Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?)

I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism?

Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria?

Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops?

Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"?

If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific?

I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about.

Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural.

My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns.

A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure.

Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function).

The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz).

I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment.

I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??)

When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc).

On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens?

Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today?

I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu><mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

  [EXTERNAL]

Hi Anthony

I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.

What am I missing?
Mike

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com<mailto:anthonymbarra@gmail.com>> 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!UkmxyLumaA3IH7w7A5i-MXIsC7jGXgirYVrv4N1ZFkB-Epwg97ND0sviDAB_ZAu0AWq9wA$ <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!UkmxyLumaA3IH7w7A5i-MXIsC7jGXgirYVrv4N1ZFkB-Epwg97ND0sviDAB_ZAvt2Sz_NA$ <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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