Re: [xmca] Death and dying

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

This passage from Steps addresses the problem in a way that has always
impressed me. (quoted from ch5 of a book on cultural psych):

Gregory Bateson, who can be considered an expert on the topic, commented on
the difficulty of thinking relationally about context:

Let me say that I don't know how to think that way. Intellectually I can
stand here and give you a reasoned exposition of this matter; but if I am
cutting down a tree, I still think, ""Gregory Bateson is cutting down the
tree. *I* am cutting down the tree. "Myself" is to me still an excessively
concrete object, different from the rest of what I have been calling "mind."
The step to realizing, to making habitual, the other way of thinking, so
that one naturally thinks that way when one reaches for a glass of water or
cuts down a tree- that step is not an easy one. (1972, p. 462).

And maybe not a possible one. After all, it might be a world where no
differences make a difference.

mike
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 3:36 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Why didn't he just give himself an electric shock each time he spoke the
> word 'mind'? It shouldn't have been a struggle at all!
>
> Martin
>
> On Feb 6, 2012, at 5:59 PM, David H Kirshner wrote:
>
> > A few years ago, Eva Ekeblad sent me a paper she had mentioned on XMCA
> > about Skinner's struggle to purge his own language of mentalist
> > assumptions. Seems like a nice counterpart to Bateson's efforts to avoid
> > the language of separateness.
> > David
> > Ekeblad, E. (1996). A lifetime of verbal discipline. Revision of a paper
> > presented to the Nordic Association of Education Research, 1994.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > On Behalf Of Christine Schweighart
> > Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 4:47 PM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Death and dying
> >
> > Apologies Greg,
> > It was Bateson speaking and not von Glaserfeld!
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTsY3TosVX0&feature=related
> >
> >
> > This aside I wondered if you might be interested to consider the
> > aesthetic of Garcia Lorca writing on the social meaning of death in
> > Spanish culture, it seems quite relevant to your topic.
> > Christine.
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 7:38 PM, Greg Thompson
> > <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> There is a flipside to "gaps" that suggests that a gapless world. This
> >
> >> position is nicely captured by Gregory Bateson (please forgive my
> >> transcription by intonation unit - Bateson's prose is hard to capture,
> >
> >> but see link below for original):
> >>
> >> "The nature of
> >>
> >> the world in which I live
> >>
> >> and in which I wish you lived -
> >>
> >> all of you -
> >>
> >> and all the time -
> >>
> >> but even I don't live in it all the time.
> >>
> >> (solemnly) There are times,
> >>
> >> when I catch myself believing
> >>
> >> that there is such a thing as something
> >>
> >> which is separate from something else."
> >>
> >> And linking back to General Semantics (and Corey Anton is both
> >> affiliated with General Semantics and has written much on Bateson),
> >> Bateson was influenced by Korzybski (see Bateson's Korzybski memorial
> > lecture at:
> >>
> >> http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/gsb-37-bate
> >> son.pdf
> >> and
> >> Bateson's quote above is taken from a blog announcing the new
> >> biographical movie of GB by Nora Bateson, the website can be seen at:
> >> http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/emind.html).
> >> And linking further back to Korzybski's view of why things go wrong in
> >
> >> the world, Bateson writes that:
> >>
> >> "The major problems in the world are the result of the difference
> >> between how nature works and the way people think."
> >>
> >> It would seem that Bateson is pointing to gap-filling as the problem
> >> that creates the mismatch between word and world. Does that seem about
> >
> >> right to others? Is there a tension here between the gap filling that
> >> Etienne and Mike describe as something that we do all the time and
> >> what Bateson seems to be suggesting about a (preferred) gapless world?
> >
> >> Am I headed in endless circles here or is there an interesting
> >> question at this particular intersection? Or is my way of linking both
> >
> >> of these positions filling in (or not) too many gaps?
> >>
> >> Thoughts?
> >> -greg
> >>
> >> p.s. C.S. Peirce, may have articulated a fuller conception in his
> >> notion of "synechism," but Bateson's is certainly more comprehensible
> > and artful.
> >> Peirce's vision is a lot more difficult to take in. But I'd add that
> >> he has a wonderful notion of "self" that extends beyond the body and
> > beyond life.
> >> We are "vicinities" "neighborhoods" rather than discretely bounded
> > bodies.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:47 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Anthony
> >>>
> >>> The topic of death and the social formation of mind seems to be the
> >>> ultimate form of "gap & gap filling" which gives meaning to life.
> >>> I'm reading an article by Corey Anton titled "Beyond Theoretical
> > Ethics:
> >>> Bakhtinian Anti-Theoreticism" [in Human Studies volume 24, pages
> >>> 211-225; 2001] This is what Corey has to say about death and our
> >>> unique once-occurant dwelling in the world.
> >>>
> >>> "The position that I am trying to make clear is that the human 'in
> >> general'
> >>> does not factually exist and that ethical considerations commonly
> >>> posit a general human: they posit a 'someone' who is ACTUALLY no
> >>> one.  In this regard, their universality implicitly suggets that
> >>> people are basically interchangeable or not non-replaceable - not
> >>> uniquely held by their place in existence.  The 'theoretical world
> >>> is obtained through an essential
> >> and
> >>> fundamental abstraction from the factor of my unique being and from
> >>> the moral sense of that fact - AS IF I did not exist' (Bahktin).
> >>> This theoretical world can deeply mislead, for I never do not exist
> >>> in my
> >> life;
> >>> I am never unnecessary or irrelevant, and it is only theoretical
> >>> positing that can make this seem to be so. (Leder) suggests that
> >>> one's lived body
> >> '
> >>> is never just an object in the world but that very medium whereby
> >>> our
> >> world
> >>> comes into being.'  Thus, I may, in one sense, be simply one person
> >>> among other persons in the world that will go on without me AFTER MY
> > DEATH.
> >> And
> >>> yet, I am, for me, that person who is never not there, that person
> >>> who somehow is ALWAYS co-given along with the world, and that person
> >
> >>> whose world falls out of existence WITH MY DEATH. [page 215]
> >>>
> >>> Anthony, Corey is pointing to death as the ulimate "gap" and our
> >> humanness
> >>> as the process of gap-filling within our once-occurent unique
> >>> cultural historical existence.  The social formation of mind
> >>> develops through differentiation and distanciation [gaps] AND the
> >>> integrating
> >> [gap-filling]
> >>> ACTS (including theoretical acts)  of our humanness.
> >>>
> >>> Larry
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 5:45 AM, ANTHONY M BARRA
> >>> <tub80742@temple.edu>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Thanks for the resources, Huw and Andy.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Nektarios Alexi
> >>>> <NEKTARIOS.ALEXI@cdu.edu.au>wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Thats an excellent book Huw!
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Huw Lloyd
> >>>>> Sent: Wed 2/1/2012 9:43 PM
> >>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Death and dying
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Bakhtin's "Dostoevsky's Poetics" has a few indexed references.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Huw
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 31 January 2012 16:46, ANTHONY M BARRA <tub80742@temple.edu>
> >> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I'm looking for Vygostky's, or Vygotskian, words on death and
> >> dying,
> >>>>>> especially terms of (but not limited to) "the social formation
> >
> >>>>>> of
> >>>> mind,"
> >>>>>> and "mind extending beyond the skin."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Thanks for any direction or help...
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Anthony
> >>>>>> __________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> >> Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar Department of Communication
> >> University of California, San Diego
> >> __________________________________________
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