[Xmca-l] Re: Philosophie des Geistes?

[WEBSTER, DAVID S.]

Going back even further than Spinoza and conatus is its origins in Aristotle's construction of energeia - entelecheia: between being-at-work [ergon] and being at-an-end [entelecheia]  or working to maintain one's proper identity i.e. being a human being.
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From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: 26 July 2020 19:49
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Philosophie des Geistes?

Hello,

My pace on this conversation is clearly out of step with the others on this thread, as such, I shall try to catch up. Please forgive my tardiness. Unfortunately to make up for the short email I must add this long one.

Something I had started to write became lost and now must start again. However as I recollect my main point had been I do not believe David has the proper understanding of Spinoza's concept of conatus.

Stage direction: And then they embarked upon an exercise of defining the word conatus

Conatus has its own history and development, and this is exactly why it is important to agree on the definition of terms, because words can be polysemantic, and the more nuanced the meaning, the more imperative it is to define the terms, if only so that people can know what you mean, but also if a word is mis-taken, this can change the entire argument, upon which the argument sits (on the word) as a conceptual foundation.

I asked the sage Wikipedia about the word "conatus" and it starts back with the Romans, the term being Latin, of course, to signify "endeavor."

However for Spinoza, this was a core concept for his worldview, and so it makes sense to be very precise about understanding what he meant when he uses the word to reflect his concept of it.

It doesn't make sense for Vygotsky to reject conatus, if conatus was the basis for Spinoza's philosophy. This is again lifting the cream, enjoying it, and simultaneously refuting the cow exists.

If we get the meaning of conatus wrong, then everything that sits upon its shoulders will be too. So we have to really be precise about what contatus means to fully appreciate Spinoza.

According to Sage Wiki, Spinoza states conatus is an innate property whereby "each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being" (Ethics, part 3, prop. 6).

This has nothing to do with sociability, but pertains to matters of existence and being. Of course some people do not feel that they exist unless they reside in a social context, or even that self-preservation depends upon others, which has some truth, but that is not what we are discussing, methinks.  Existence isn't political or social self-preservation. It's just being in the world. Given Spinoza was excommunicated and reviled, this makes a lot of sense.

Going down farther the page, Vico seems to use the word conatus in the way that you seem to use the word, David.

"Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) defined conatus as the essence of human society, and also, in a more traditional, hylozoistic sense, as the generating power of movement which pervades all of nature."

This word hylozoistic is interesting as it pertains to a living essence in all matter, but not of mind (which seems to be Cartesian in terms of a split between mind and body, even though this was pre-Cartesian that the word was coined). When referring to a worldview that sees mind in all matter, Sag Wiki says hylopsychism is the word, in a panpsychism sense. To me, [blank]-psychism is just anthropomorphizing "mind" and "mentality" upon non-human entities.

The ancient Greeks, where the concept of hylozoistic derives, in saying there is a living essence in all matter, did not mean that there was mind in all matter, but they did mean there was conscious-awareness in all matter (Same as for the ancient Vedics). They chose to say there were deities within matter, which is also projecting human qualities upon the non-human, something we are really good at doing without thinking much about it.

This is why it's important to distinguish consciousness from mind. Mind is human, in the sense

consciousness human = mind.

Consciousness is everywhere, it is not solely human. We are of it, it is not of us. Mind is the human flavor of consciousness, but there are other different forms of consciousness, and we see this in animals, and plants.

Still if we can have a little more objectivity (and allow mind to rest with humans and allow consciousness to express itself as it is where it is), we also see it in the earth in a gaia sense, and in the stars and heavens. So David, there can be relationships between the clouds and the lithosphere. Like consciousness, "relationship" isn't a word reserved for humans.

If we do not purchase a Cartesian worldview, and mind and body are one, then we have to sort out how we have a mind in the first place. If we are made of material, the same as everything else (such as water, minerals, etc), and we have minds, what makes us express mind the way we do? Why doesn't a rock have a mind as well?

Yet, if we can say the rock is alive (think magma), why can't we say rock is conscious in that it animates and how it organizes itself in nature? It doesn't have mind, but it is conscious. In that sense every rock on the earth is like a leaf dropped from the tree. The lithosphere is like the bark of the tree. It's all motion outside and beyond us, whether we are present or not.

If instead we say only humans are conscious, then where is the line between us and everything else that "isn't conscious?" You can't say language divides us, because animals have language, as do insects and reptiles, even if it may not be vocal or sound-based, it can be pheromones, it still communicates and it does so intelligently (if we can allow the word intelligent to be used in a non-human sense, as in the way "artificial intelligence" is used). Just because we can't understand a language doesn't mean it isn't a language. There could be languages that just do not express themselves as we express our language vocal or written.

We are too human-centric in our worldview. We see humans commit this sin over and over again (even to each other). We have a tendency to make ourselves the center of the universe and discount everything else.

Once we can start to accept consciousness being pervasive in the universe, then we can start to understand ourselves much better and our place in the universe, as well as see we are quite small in a much larger entity from which we spring.

So you are right David that Spinoza is not writing about an upkeep of a machine. He is talking about motivations and intentions that spring from within that are not mental per se. In the same wikipage, Bidney likens conatus to desire, but even Spinoza was explicit to distinguish conatus from desire and from affect:

"Between appetite and desire there is no difference, except that desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious of the appetite. So desire can be defined as appetite together with consciousness of the appetite." (Scholium of IIIP9 of the Ethics)

Let's think on that.

appetite = desire

however the equation might be better put this way:

desire = appetite x awarenesshuman

Conatus generates appetite. Conatus in all its expression derives from non-human awareness and the drive of life/existence. The conundrum is in a sense it is turtles all the way down.

appetite = conatus x awarenessnon-human

where

conatus = drive x awarenessnon-human

indeed

anything = anything x awarenessnon-human

because awareness/consciousness pervades all.

What is beautiful about conatus as a concept is that it provides a basis, instead of getting bogged down with turtles.

It is analogous to the story of the king with three sons. The king had 17 elephants and said upon his death the oldest son would get one half of the number of elephants, the second son would get a third, and the youngest would get a ninth. When the king died, the sons did not know how to divide from the number 17. So they pressed a sage to help them. The sage, glad to be of assistance, explained they could add his own white elephant to the number to make the division easier. In doing this, the eldest was provided 9 elephants (one-half of 18), the middle was given 6 (one-third of 18) and the youngest 2 (one-ninth of 18). This left the white elephant remaining, which of course belonged to the wise man, to which he asked for its return.

And everyone was happy.

That is why Vygotsky could object, I suppose, if he did object. Because, it seems slight of hand and unscientific. But there is everywhere in reality a variety illusions and appearances as such, that we have to accept them as they are without getting into why they appear as they do.

Like the setting sun, which in reality never sets.

Kind regards,

Annalisa
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From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2020 3:46 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Philosophie des Geistes?


  [EXTERNAL]

Thanks for that point, and even for its uncharacteristic succinctness, Annalisa. I should emulate it, but I as you can see I am not doing so because of Jakobson's conative function of language (what Halliday calls the interpersonal meta-function).

Vygotsky starts out by noticing that Lange (but not James) make an explicit appeal to Spinoza, on precisely this point: fight-or-flight reactions are essentially preservative in purpose, and the changes in the vasomotor system he puts at the root of all human feeling are therefore examples of what Spinoza calls conatus. Vygotsky rejects this. Spinoza is not writing about the upkeep of a machine: that's a Cartesian schtick. The Ethics is not Zen and the art of bipedal maintenance.

Spinoza's conatus is more like our sociability, the sense of togetherness that humans try to maintain in almost all their interactions. Yes, sociability is instinctive, but it's not just instinctive, is it? The conative functions of language (the functions which allow us to exchange goods and services and to share information) are something we all learn the hard way, something we have to create anew with every communicative act, and even, to a very large extent, something that was anathema to old Spinoza--free will.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tSrZohGcg$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SzPofQ6h21mdc6sSygodTQ2e4fCNsswBfkbVWtM7vNQCtLwz2k9zMc7-H4BHI46v2mfisQ$>
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
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On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 6:29 AM Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:
David,

But what of conatus? Isn't that something innate within all beings?

Kind regards,

Annalisa

P.S. This is likely the shortest post I've made in some lifetimes on this list. 🙂
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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 David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2020 3:01 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Philosophie des Geistes?


  [EXTERNAL]

Well, it's not me turning it around, of course. The James-Lange theory is what it is: you perceive something, your viscera or vasomotor muscles respond, and the emotion is the feeling of that happening to you. Lange, at any rate, seems to be thinking of the male sexual response.

I think that's why Dewey says that Hegel's anticipation of the theory is crude. Vygotsky wouldn't (and doesn't) agree that an emotion is "expressed". An emotion is not a mental state of affairs expressed in physiological changes in the viscera/vasomotor muscles or contrariwise a change in the visceral/vascular state of affairs expressed in a mental one. (For that very reason, I think that Vygotsky wouldn't agree with Andy's waving analogy....)

Spinoza uses the term "affect" or "affection" instead. It means more or less what it sounds like: the way in which a body is affected by the environment and vice versa. This can either increase or decrease the potential for a body for activity. The problem is that in order to make this a theory of specifically human emotions, this activity has to include the "activity" of making meanings, and Spinoza can't seem to address THAT issue without slipping into psycho-physical parallelism. (Halliday can, though....)
:
David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tSrZohGcg$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!QLEoxL29F3RatvgkaIG1vsUhEgaWkdE-vCDs0vMv8gD5JVN33eCV8_ZTlPUZ5zPbYeeQHQ$>
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tTBY6-flQ$ 
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On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 8:19 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org<mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:

No, don't turn it around. The point is that organs are subordinate parts of the whole organism. The emotion is the state of a whole organism, in particular, a mental state. Like a hand expresses a feeling when we wave to someone.

andy

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Andy Blunden
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On 23/07/2020 8:55 pm, David Kellogg wrote:
Thanks, Andy--this is it!

"In physiology the viscera and the organs are treated merely as parts subservient to the animal organism; but they form at the same time a physical system for the expression of mental states, and in this way they get quite another interpretation."

The only problem is the word "expression". In the James-Lange theory, the mental states are the expression of the viscera and the organs. But perhaps that's what Hegel really means here: the viscera and organs are a system that expresses a state which we interpret as an emotion.

(I remember a dear friend of mine getting a messy divorce and remarking, when I worried that he was losing a lot of weight, that it wasn't his heart that was broken but his stomach....)


David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
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New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
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On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 5:19 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org<mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:

If you're interested in s. 401, then you'll probably be interested in 402 as well.

One other possibility: The "official" way of citing Hegel nowadays is to cite the page no. in the authoritative version of Hegel Werke. The German word for "page" is Seite, so you would say "S. 401" of the Enc, This turns out also to be an interesting passage of the Subjective Spirit, on Self-consciousness, concerned with the infamous Master-Slave dialectic, though in a much reduced form, not like in the Phenomenology of Spirit.

See p. 401 in the other attachment, ENZYKl3.PDF, in German. English translation is here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/suconsci.htm*SU428__;Iw!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tTQw_IwdQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/suconsci.htm*SU428__;Iw!!Mih3wA!V5yS3WiqsE4SSOtcY1SJElXpnzzhFH035NnO1lZ49z3QJYH4kQO68Wccu2Y86C642xXiTQ$>

Andy

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On 23/07/2020 5:47 pm, Andy Blunden wrote:

The Philosophy of Spirit is the Third Part of the Encyclopaedia, itself composed of three parts:

  *   Subjective Spirit, which is commonly taken as Psychology
  *   Objective Spirit, which is commonly taken as Social Theory, and
  *   Absolute Spirit, which covers Art, religion, Science and Philosophy.

The Encyclopaedia has numbered paragraphs. These do vary between 2 or  editions, but these will be limited probably by those translated into English,

I would start with the 1930 version" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/susoul.htm*SU401__;Iw!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tTCuX872A$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/susoul.htm*SU401__;Iw!!Mih3wA!UcUFXSCRfRh-5aW0-7m25WJ_9mWTvjd1a6nOCEuF7RAbpt35sEPbx38XfvY3Rj0va8zujw$> - a very early stage in the development of mental life, or.

The 1817 version has https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/sspirit.htm*SS399__;Iw!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tRwbEtELA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/sspirit.htm*SS399__;Iw!!Mih3wA!UcUFXSCRfRh-5aW0-7m25WJ_9mWTvjd1a6nOCEuF7RAbpt35sEPbx38XfvY3Rj24gIDBAA$> - this version puts s. 401 at the beginning of a version of Objective Spirit.

The 1830 one, above, has a long Note to it written by his students on the basis of Hegel's lectures which is a long discourse on the development of thinking from sensation. I am thinking this is what you mean. I will photocopy it and send it on.

Andy

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On 23/07/2020 5:09 pm, David Kellogg wrote:
We are trying to turn Vygotsky's "Teaching on Emotion" into one of those cartoon books that are so popular here in Korea (e.g. the "Why?" series). It's not Vygotsky for dummies, but it will have a lot of pictures with questions and answers alongside Vygotsky's rather difficult text.

We've got to figure out the text first. For example, what does John Dewey mean when he says:

"On the historical side, it may be worth noting that a crude anticipation of James' theory is found in Hegel's Philosophie des Geistes, 401."?

Did Hegel ever write a Philosophie des Geistes? If so, does the number refer to a page number or a section or what?

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Dewey/Dewey_1895.html__;!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tRYaO7btQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Dewey/Dewey_1895.html__;!!Mih3wA!RLGVUv48gomTR2KJ99jcR-ruYcur4TKLR3u-7WeR_HhShIfYJpHP0U7EwICkluTj4uvZOA$>

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
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New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Q-EXNTA_bXSuvNkKDpIEnTZKMSTrnx0llRALPZ1JZ68pfpzOY4PfjDrsONxJ0tTBY6-flQ$ 
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