Don,
Pray tell me what do you pay them with? (Mr. Dumpty never explained that
part). See, the only reason He was able to use a word any way he liked was
because he "paid them well". I guess that has something to do with "tax cut
can balance the budget' part of your e-mail). ;-)
I think I use the world "context" in the similar -- or maybe virtually
"identical" way as you use "Umwelt": a human creation and a product of
semiotic activity -- it is not just a "ding an sich" (Kant's expression I
am not sure how to translate into English -- "thing in itself"??) but a
matter of a person's experience. AND it (Umwelt, context, culture) exists
in a form of semiotic meaning -- a kind of a shadowy unreal "welt" -- It's
material "reality" is acknowledged, but it is understood just as one of
it's aspects.
All of it gets even more complex with it's constant changing and moving,
creating it own history and branching, crossing itself and so forth.
One of Mike's questions was also:
Do you believe, and do you believe that LSV believed, these processes
to be universal? And in particular, do you believe that his account of
the role of play in development is universal?
Actually, I do think that LSV believed these processes to be universal. The
processes are universal -- but the cultures (contexts, umwelts, personal
trajectories) are so different that each person's development is different
from anybody else's. However, there is a lot in between the universal
processes-- or even better: patterns of processes -- and actual concrete
instance of any part of these interactive entities: person (individual,
subject), culture (context, umwelt, history(?)), environment (as something
that just exists independently if possible)...
We can say that development is not universal because it is part of variable
cultural-historical processes. But the statement "it is part of variable
cultural-historical processes" is meant as a universal statement. I don't
think that LSV meant "development is sometimes part of interpersonal and
larger social cultural historical processes, and sometimes it is not".
Ana
At 07:09 PM 6/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>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
----------
Ana Marjanovic-Shane
215-843-2909 (h)
267-334-2905 (m)
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