Re: [xmca] Consciousness, Piaget

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Haydi-- Animals are conscious, but human consciousness, by my interpretation
(you read the paper arguing for the tripartate nature of
human consciousness that accompanied my note?) human consciousness, being
culturally mediated, has an "extra layer" of constraints and associated
affordances.

Interesting about elephants and the mirror test, Tony.

So we can argue that elephants have self recognition. Is this
self-consciousness? Do they experience false consciousness? I am not
intrigued enough to add to my stack of books as i prepare to teach history
of the discipline (sic!) of communication and an integrative senior seminar.
Enough that i just completed *Daniel Doronda*, but now must turn to the zo
zerious matters of academe as my colleagues plot
strikes aimed at restoring Univ of California to its pre-reagan glory.
mike

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> check this out:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Edge-Animals-Teach-Humanity/dp/0300127316/
>
>
> On Fri, 4 Sep 2009, Haydi Zulfei wrote:
>
>  Hi
>>
>> And what about animals' mind-activities , lacking a consciousness ? or do
>> they have just brains ?
>>
>> Haydi
>>
>> --- On Fri, 9/4/09, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Consciousness, Piaget
>> To: "Carol Macdonald" <carolmacdon@gmail.com>
>> Cc: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date: Friday, September 4, 2009, 3:21 PM
>>
>>
>> Carol-- You mean it is outside of the brain? It IS mind-activity.
>> mike
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com
>> >wrote:
>>
>>  Carol  Macdonald says
>>> Many years ago (in 1976 exactly) when I read Piaget's theory of
>>> perception,  he put consciousness between the subject and object. It is
>>> outside of the mind.  Much later I wondered whether this conception would
>>> somehow fit with  LVS's perception of mind. Can anybody comment on this
>>> primitive perception?
>>>
>>>
>>> 2009/9/4 Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>>>
>>> Your multi-lingualism, as always, David, is very helpful, along with your
>>>
>>>> broad and close readings.
>>>>
>>>> I am a very late comer to the issues of consciousness, having been
>>>> raised
>>>> in
>>>> the era when the term
>>>> was exorcized by American psychology. You can find my first halting
>>>> steps
>>>> at
>>>> coming to grips with
>>>> the idea in *Cultural Psychology, *in the chapter where I describe the
>>>> analysis of question-asking reading that Peg  Griffin invented and which
>>>> I
>>>> still work with as a  teaching tool. There we replace the solid triangle
>>>> with a triangle that is "open at the front end" putting time along the
>>>> bottom line and having a gap
>>>> between the mediated and direct connections between subject and object.
>>>> That
>>>> process of filling that
>>>> gap is the process of consciousness. This idea appears in a different
>>>> nascent form in analysis of
>>>> fixed images on the retina that can be found at
>>>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/People/MCole/PHYSIO326.pdf
>>>> The fixed image data make clear that tripartate nature of HUMAN
>>>> consiousness, where discoordination is constituitive of consciousness.
>>>> elsewhere i have written about taking the russian term,
>>>> voobrazhenie  into-image-making as THE fundamental cognitive act.
>>>>
>>>> All of these involve, I believe,
>>>> a) awareness
>>>> b) noticing
>>>> c) selection
>>>> d) potential anticipation
>>>>
>>>> But there are so many more and many different ways of thinking of the
>>>> matter. False consciousness is a term I worry about a lot.
>>>>
>>>> Color me self conscious.
>>>> mike
>>>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 4:03 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
>>>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  Tony, Mike:
>>>>>
>>>>> We translated Piaget's "prise de conscience" as "seizure of
>>>>>
>>>> consciousness",
>>>>
>>>>> except that in Korean the verbal noun has the more psychological sense
>>>>>
>>>> of
>>>>
>>>>> "grasping" as when you grasp a meaning that you didn't really
>>>>> understand
>>>>>
>>>> in
>>>>
>>>>> a phrase that you have heard many times. So, to nominalize, the "prise
>>>>>
>>>> de
>>>>
>>>>> conscience" is the "graspture of awareness" or the "rapture of
>>>>>
>>>> awareness".
>>>>
>>>>> Every child is an awareness raptor.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that one important thing to grasp here is that "conscience" in
>>>>> French is not really the homuncular "consciousness" we have in English,
>>>>>
>>>> any
>>>>
>>>>> more than it is the obvious false friend, the meaning of a moral
>>>>> "conscience" that we find in English writings on ethics. It has a
>>>>> number
>>>>>
>>>> of
>>>>
>>>>> OTHER meanings that attracted Vygotsky to Piaget, to wit:
>>>>>
>>>>> a) awareness
>>>>>
>>>>> b) noticing
>>>>>
>>>>> c) selection
>>>>>
>>>>> d) potential anticipation
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems to me that all of these can be conceptualized as moments in
>>>>> the
>>>>> passing of the child from a relatively passive, reactive state to a
>>>>> much
>>>>> more voluntary, volitional one.
>>>>>
>>>>> Last night, I was re-reading Engestrom's old book "Learning by
>>>>>
>>>> Expanding",
>>>>
>>>>> which some of our teachers are busy translating into Korean. In Chapter
>>>>>
>>>> Five
>>>>
>>>>> he does try to tackle the question that I think gives the "prise de
>>>>> conscience" its real importance, which is the question of whether and
>>>>> at
>>>>> what point learning is REVERSIBLE--at what point the laying down of
>>>>> socioculturally accumulated experience becomes the creation of new
>>>>>
>>>> content
>>>>
>>>>> for the next phase of sociocultural progress.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think Engestrom sees Vygotsky's preliminary considerations of history
>>>>> (which he describes, it seems to me incorrectly, as phenomenological),
>>>>>
>>>> his
>>>>
>>>>> laboratory experiments (what Paula and Carol replicated), his empirical
>>>>> classroom observations (Chapter Six of T&S) and his theorizing as
>>>>>
>>>> moments of
>>>>
>>>>> a single process which can be REVERSED in order to yield the next,
>>>>>
>>>> higher
>>>>
>>>>> phase of expansion. The first process works from outside in, and the
>>>>>
>>>> second
>>>>
>>>>> from inside out.
>>>>>
>>>>> The problem, it seems to me, is the crisis. the "prise de conscience"
>>>>> is
>>>>> really a crisis par excellence, and a crisis is by definition NOT
>>>>> reversible. For example, awareness is not simply the end point of
>>>>>
>>>> noticing
>>>>
>>>>> done backwards, nor is noticing the endpoint of attentional selection
>>>>> in
>>>>> reverse. Obviously, active anticipation requires awareness, noticing,
>>>>> and attentional selection, but not vice versa.
>>>>>
>>>>> So the crisis obeys different laws, and we can also expect
>>>>> post-critical
>>>>> development to be different from precritical development in important
>>>>>
>>>> ways.
>>>>
>>>>> In physics, a shock wave cannot, by definition, be understood with the
>>>>>
>>>> same
>>>>
>>>>> mathematics we use to describe continuous phenomenon. And the shock
>>>>> reverberates: if a crisis is generally restructuring, we have to expect
>>>>>
>>>> that
>>>>
>>>>> the laws of the next phase of social progress are going to be in some
>>>>>
>>>> way
>>>>
>>>>> fundamentally different.
>>>>>
>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>> Seoul National University of Education
>>>>>
>>>>> ---
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>
>>>>>  _______________________________________________
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Visiting Researcher,
>>> Wits School of Education
>>> 6 Andover Road
>>> Westdene
>>> Johannesburg 2092
>>> 011 673 9265  082 562 1050
>>>
>>>
>>>  _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK  DE  19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
>  are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
>                  -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca