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Re: [xmca] "Inner Form" of Word, Symmetry, Ivanov Bateson?



Apologies for sticking my nose into a discussion just before I leave on a trip and leave my computer behind for a couple weeks, but some statements in your recent message, David, seem to point toward the heart of the matter, so I thought I'd speak up.
I think Martin is on the right track when he differentiates the ideal  
and the psychological.  Much work still needs to be done on this, in  
my view.  It is by no means a resolved question.
When you say "I think that for real people, it is only through  
interpersonal meaning-making that social relations become real" I find  
myself thinking that the opposite relation needs to be emphasized -  
that it is only through social relations that interpersonal meaning- 
making becomes possible and real.
When you say  " 'mean' really means intentionality" I find myself  
thinking that this statement reduces meaning to only acts of  
individual consciousness and will, whereas meaning is created by human  
activity in all its forms.
- Steve


On Jun 5, 2011, at 8:27 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

ANL equates "meaning" with some ideal representational form. Psychology, on the other hand, is this set of "social relations" apparently unmediated by meaning. (Ha! I'd like to see how THAT works!)
ANL: "In other words, meanings represent an ideal form of the  
existence of the objective world..."
So! My name represents an ideal form of me, not my tangible,  
material self. Words like "this"and "that" and "the apple" and so on  
do not represent literary fictions and not actual objects.  
Obviously, the development of word meaning, from real to ideal and  
back again, is not possible.
ANL: "...its properties, connections, and relationships, disclosed  
by cooperative social practice, transformed and hidden in the  
material of language."
What "social practice" discloses, language covers up again. Sorry,  
the MATERIAL of language covers it up again. In other words,  
pronunciation and bad handwriting are the means by which we are held  
in thrall, the method by which the properties, (non-relational)  
connections and (non-connective) relationships (sic) are transformed  
and hidden.
"For this reason meanings in themselves, that is, in abstraction  
from their functioning in individual consciousness, are not so  
“psychological” as the socially recognized reality that lies behind  
them."
What the devil is a meaning in abstraction from its functioning in  
an individual consciousness? Is it like a dictionary that no  
individual consciousness ever cracks open and actually reads?
I think what ANL is trying to say is that meaning is not  
psychological because it's this ideal representation standing in  
front of real stuff, while "social relations" (apparently unmediated  
by meaning) is the real McCoy.  That strikes me as utterly false.  
ANL has somehow transformed "meaning" from a demiurge to a demon.
I think that for real people, it is only through interpersonal  
meaning-making that social relations become real. After all, "mean"  
really suggests intentionality--it says I want something to stand  
for (not in front of) something else. I have no idea why that makes  
it somehow less psychological; it seems to me it makes it rather  
more so.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Sun, 6/5/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:


From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] "Inner Form" of Word, Symmetry, Ivanov Bateson?
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, June 5, 2011, 7:45 PM


But why should we equate the ideal with the psychological, David? I read ANL as saying the practices make word meaning just as practices make use value. Both are ideal but neither is psychological. That's precisely the trap that it's easy to fall into, to think that anything ideal is in the individual mind. Word meaning obscures the practices that produced it in the same way the the value of the commodity obscures the labor that produced it. Bourgeois economists and linguists are cut from the same cloth.
Isn't that a more likely reading?

Martin

On Jun 5, 2011, at 8:38 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

Yes, I really HATE that quote. Let me count the ways.

1) I really LIKE the word "demiurge" as a description for the role of language, not just with respect to meaning but also with respect to mind. A demiurge isn't really a deity, you know. It's a kind of CRAFTSMAN, a DESIGNER, an ARCHITECT which in the final analysis (but only in the final analysis) is consubstantial with the thing that it makes.
2) Then ANL sets up a layer of social "operations" (or maybe  
actions) which stands BEHIND meaning. So meaning isn't a social  
operation at all, huh? Why not? Well, it appears that one is REAL,  
that is to say, sociological, and the other is IDEAL, that is to  
say, psychological. Oh, no! Here we go again....
3) ANL then says that the MAIN problem is something called the  
contradiction between the sociological and the logical. Why do I  
feel that the two things are completely consubstantial? Why do I  
feel that this is really a profoundly TRIVIAL problem, compared to  
(for example) the contradiction between the sociologically  
ideological and the interpersonally emotional?
I think you once pointed out to me that Vygotsky's theory of  
consciousness is semiotic (that is, NON-representational) except  
for its final layer of thinking, where we do appear to need some  
kind of representation of the self, some from of the "will" or the  
"consciousness" or the "volition", some species of demiurge, some  
kind of "role model".
Children don't have to believe that roles are real in order to use  
them. Vygotsky describes thinking as a cloud and inner speech as a  
downpour, but I don't leave the house with an umbrella lest I be  
overtaken by a sudden fit of inner speech on my way to class. I  
don't see why I can't think of demiurge, or for that matter  
"language", or even "mind", in exactly the same way.
By defining language as that thing that stands in front of  
objective social relations, obscuring and mystifying them, ANL is  
starting off with a very clear distinction between the objective,  
constative and the subjective, evaluative functions of speech.  
Sometimes things are so very clear and so very transparent that you  
could swear they are actually non-existent.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Sun, 6/5/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:


From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] "Inner Form" of Word, Symmetry, Ivanov Bateson?
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, June 5, 2011, 2:58 PM


I just stumbled across this, in chapter 4 of Leontiev's Activity, Consciousness, and Personality. Available on Andy's site, at <http://marxists.org/archive/leontev/works/1978/index.htm >
"Thus meanings interpret the world in the consciousness of man.  
Although language appears to be the carrier of meaning, yet  
language is not its demiurge. Behind linguistic meanings hide  
socially developed methods of action (operations) in the process of  
which people change and perceive objective reality. In other words,  
meanings represent an ideal form of the existence of the objective  
world, its properties, connections, and relationships, disclosed by  
cooperative social practice, transformed and hidden in the material  
of language. For this reason meanings in themselves, that is, in  
abstraction from their functioning in individual consciousness, are  
not so “psychological” as the socially recognized reality that lies  
behind them.
"Meanings constitute the subject matter for study in linguistics,  
semiotics, and logic. Also, as one of the 'formers' of individual  
consciousness, meanings necessarily enter into the circle of  
problems of psychology. The main difficulty of the psychological  
problem of meaning is that in meaning arise all of those  
contradictions that confront the broader problem of the  
relationship of the logical and the psychological in thought, in  
logic, and in the psychology of comprehension."
Seems to me that Leontiev too considered meaning to be first  
something public and social, even material (in their ideality, of  
course) and only later psychological.
Martin

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