in Forwarding mode
Eva
>Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 16:18:22 pst
>From: pyaple who-is-at weber (Peter Yaple)
>To: xlchc who-is-at sdcc12
>Subject: Bateson on Lamarck: tap, tap, tap; bow wow.
>
>
>At Mike Cole's request, I am sending out Bateson's example (quoted
>by C.Goodwin and S. Duranti) of the problem in describing a unit of
>the mind as part of the larger effort to understand evolution. It
>was to understand Mind, as Bateson pointed out, that was the real
>interest for Lamarck.
>
>"But what about 'me'? Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick. I
>go tap, tap, tap. Where do I start? Is my mental system bounded at
>the handle of the stick? Is it bounded by my skin? Does it start
>halfway up the stick? Does it start at the tip of the stick? But
>these are nonsensense questions. The stick is a pathway along which
>transforms of difference are being transmitted. The way to delineate
>the system is to draw the limiting line in such a way that you do
>not cut any of these pathways in ways which leave things
>inexplicable. If what you are trying to explain is a given piece of
>behavior, such as the locomotion of the blind man, then, for this
>purpose, you will need the street, the stick, the man; the street,
>the stick, and so on, round and round."
>
>But when the blind man sits down to eat his lunch, his stick and its
>messages will no longer be relevant--if it is his eating that you
>want to understand." (Bateson, G. (1972). STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF THE
>MIND. New York: Ballantine. p.459)
>
>Mike asks: how would the substitution of a seeing-eye dog for the
>stick affect the blind man's mental system?
>
>py for mc
At 10:57:41 -0600 98-11-07, Kevin Leander wrote:
>
>This is just an short illustration I thought might be of interest to some
>on the list, and doesn't directly respond to any recent threads that I'm
>aware of.
>
>I often reflect on how our understanding of mediation is tied up not with
>theory in some abstract way, but with "concrete abstractions"--particular
>examples and metaphors that continually shape our understandings. There
>are many such metaphors and illustrations. (Maybe certain interactions are
>so commonplace in writing and research that we'll eventually just refer to
>them by number?)
>
>One commonplace is Bateson's (1972) illustration of the blind man with the
>stick. Where is the mental system bounded by the blind man tapping along
>with the stick? Bateson responds, "The way to delineate the system is to
>draw a limiting line in such a way that you do not cut any of these
>pathways in ways which leave things inexplicable" (p. 459). So, if we are
>explaining locomotion, then we need the "street, the stick, the man," while
>if we are explaining eating, the stick is no longer relevant.
>
>As Duranti and Goodwin remark, however, one of the limitations of such a
>metaphor is that Bateson poses a world that is relatively fixed and
>immuatable (1992, p. 5), whereas context is shaped, interactive,
>intersubjective. This gets to my illustration--a "simple" experience while
>walking across the campus yesterday:
>
>A blind student is with his seeing eye dog into a three-sided courtyard
>amidst a few buildings. The dog is stalling, seems confused, or perhaps
>even playfully resistant. The student is scolding the dog loudly: "How
>many times have we been to Dr. X's office and you've taken me there? Huh?
>How many? (striking dog on back). Now, take me there, right now! You
>take me there!" (pushing dog with foot from behind). Dog cowering, looking
>about, moving forward toward one building, then shifting directions,
>traversing the courtyard at an angle on the sidewalk, student following
>along, continuing to talk to dog. Trees, bushes, chain along the sidewalk,
>me and another student looking from opposite corners, then looking at each
>other, I'm wondering what to do or if to do anything.
>
>So how do we delineate and understand the system, when the stick is a dog?
>
>Kevin Leander
>Doctoral Student, Curriculum & Instruction
>University of Illinois
>http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/k-leand/homepage/index.html