Mike, I am closely related to one Mr. H. Dumpty who assures me that I
can use a word any way I like to mean what ever I choose. But isn't that
the problem we all face in using an everyday word to circumscribe a
particular meaning? The container metaphor is very strong for the word
"context", as in "let's put that in context". Oh well, I'm happy to be
allied with Bateson in any context. He is one of my intellectual
heroes.
If you really want to confuse people, use the term "objective world" as
the medievalists used it. For them this term meant the world "as
experienced"!
I also confess to an assumption of a "real world". If I'm just making
this all up, I can't believe that I would actually create the notion
that tax cuts can balance the budget.
La di da, so it goes.......djc
Don Cunningham
Indiana University
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 5:07 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: umwelt and context
Hi Don--
The fact that you equate context and environment vis a vis standard
academic discourse places you among those like Mc Dermott (in the
Chaiklin
and Lave volume) who beat on the "context as container" metaphor and
the later Bateson who insists on relation understandings of context.
I believe I think of context more or less the way you use the term,
umwelt, although parts of your discussion vis a vis human raise flags
for me. The definition of culture seems pretty externalist, in that you
say
it has an impact on people.
And when you write: Words, pictures, bodily movements and the like
generate signs
for objects which need have no basis in the real world and which can be
manipulated independent of that world.
another flag goes off. Assumed real world and an organism whose signs
need
have no basis in it?
Am I wrong, Ana, in thinking that your way of thinking about context
is like Don's use of umwelt?
Pondering in So Cal where the sun has reappeared.
mike
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