Thanks Ben, that is very helpful. It seems like we need a third (or
more) choice than realism and idealism when working this out. And I
don't think that this third choice has to lie "between" realism and
idealism. It should entail something quite different.....djc
Don Cunningham
Indiana University
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Reshef family [mailto:victor@kfar-hanassi.org.il]
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 6:04 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: umwelt and context
Don,
"Man is born free but everywhere in chains," Yep, you can use words any
way
you like, but don't be surprised if the discourse loses all semblence to
your intentions.
You've pretty much touched the central issue here with your discussion
of
the relationships or lack of them between context umwelt, and
objectivity.
One of the least digestible parts of the Hegelian/Marxist contribution
to
social theory, at least for those of us raised in the European
philosophical
tradition (tradition as used in Peruvian archaeology), is the
unification of
theory and practice, body and soul etc. etc. Even when we are sure that
we've firmly integrated the unification of theory and practice into our
worldview, the distinction often comes creeping back in some other
subtle
form. For example, even fairly sophisticated Marxist theoreticians
(especially of the old school) used the term, objective, in a fashion
more
akin to that of medieval scholarship, "the world as experienced," than
in
the Hegelian sense. This is not really the place to go into the reasons
for
this, though I suspect that it has much to do with a lingering sense of
the
special elevated role of theoretical thinking that still characterizes
the
intellectual culture of our educational institutions and related social
and
cultural bodies.
So, while it is not surprising that the issue of whether or not LSV was
or
was not a contextualist can become a subject of concern for we thinkers,
it
is probably not really relevant to the main body of Vygotskean research
and
theory. After all, Vygotsky was not only a Marxist but also a
forerunner of
the Dialectical faction that so criticized the positivist and pragmatist
tenedencies of the official ideologues of the CPSU in the 1960's and
'70s.
Vygotsky and Ilyenkov (the best known and, probably the most advanced
member
of the Dialectical faction of the '60's and '70's) both made it very
clear
that while there could be no doubt that the only kind of information
available to the thinking organism was his subjective apperception of
the
material world, the selection and formation of that information could
only
be a product of learning, i.e. his social milieu. If context is thought
to
be some sort of characteristic of the subjective sensing of the material
world, than it is formless and meaningless and therefore not a subject
for
discourse. On the other hand, i f context is to be understood to have
form
and meanining, then it is an integral part of cultural life and
indistinguishable from the performance of the thinking organism.
It seems to me that "context" may have some relevance to this way of
thinking in the very limited sense of the contrast between culturally
mediated, subjective experience of temporal world states and the
generalization of world conditions esconced in the tools (speech,
gestures,
graphic and plastic representations and so on) that mediate those
experiences. It may be argued that the mediated subjective experience is
relatively more rooted in the "context" than are, say, the
generalizations
that serve to give subjective experience form and meaning. At some
point or
other I played with the idea of regarding the means whereby subjective
experience acquires form and meaning as decontextualized experience, but
eventually rejected it as borderline idealism and as not very helpful
for
understanding social processes.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cunningham, Donald James" <cunningh@indiana.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 2:09 AM
Subject: RE: umwelt and context
> 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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