Re: [xmca] More on Martin: Consciousness vs knowledge?

I was just too busy to get involved in this thread. Sorry.

Firstly on etymology of "consciousness". According to OED, it comes from
the Latin: "consci-us knowing something with others, knowing in oneself"
and goes on to explain the original usage as in being privy to something -
alone or with others. But the roots are the same as for Russian con-scius =
"to know with."

Finally, on the significance of the difference between self-consciousness
and consciousness. This is a very important difference, Mike. It was Fichte
who started the interest in self-consciousness in somewhat the sense you
refer to it, but let us go with Hegel's understanding of self-consciousness
which has been very very influential (e.g. it is what the master-servant
narrative is about, and in the 1830s the Young Hegelians used
"self-consciousness" almost synonymously with "revolutionary consciousness."

To be self-conscious means to be able to see yourself from a different
social position, and therefore to be aware that what you see, believe,
think, do, etc., is the view from one social position and not another, and
not simply "the way things are", absolute truth if you like.
Self-consciousness therefore arises only in and through collaborating with
people who have a different social position or culture from your own.

So, whereas consciousness arises from labour (e.g. using tools and words,
raising kids), self-consciousness cannot arise from the labour process
alone (think of Marx, Lenin etc on class consciousness not arising out of
the experience of production) but only through interactions with other
cultures, other classes, etc., etc. Without self-consciousness it is
impossible to really participate in modern society at a level above menial
work and subjugation by the bureaucracy.

When Franklin saw that the drama he was acting out at preschool was about
*him* then he made a development which was impossible without him learning
how to stand outside of himself and see himself objectively, as an other,
like others saw him.

Andy

At 12:17 PM 9/03/2008 -0700, you wrote:
>Super helpful, Martin. thanks
>I clearly now need to go back and understand what Piaget meant by a social
>version of genetic epistemology!
>more and more threads in the labyrinth; where is Ariadne when I need her!
>mike
>
>On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
> > Mike,
> >
> > I didn't mean that Cs is not social. It is *social,* but studying its
> > development is not a matter of (a social version of) genetic epistemology,
> > at least as Piaget defined that enterprise.
> >
> > On 3/9/08 1:45 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Wow. Consciousness is only possible as co-knowledge (so-znanie) but its
> > not
> > > social? Who is the con-spirit-or, or what?
> >
> > And I can't resist rsponding to this... (below)
> >
> > > In a note where I was asking Martin's help on a closely related issue,
> > he
> > > referred to something he called (approximately), "simple stimulus
> > > consciousness" which didn't interest him. But this simple
> > > consciousness/knowledge that you see a rock in front of you does
> > interest
> > > me! (And I am clearly boring in THIS regard!). Why am I interested?
> > Because
> > > I believe that the mechanisms of this "simple" form of consciousness
> > REQUIRE
> > > imagination,
> >
> > I didn't mean to say that this simple Cs is uninteresting, but only that
> > it
> > develops into more complex forms: that Cs changes. What I would now like
> > to
> > try to add is that I think that V was working towards the view that
> > concepts
> > are in interaction, and so transform Cs. I say this to agree with your
> > proposal that imagination is needed with even the simple forms of Cs.
> >
> > I can see (at least) two accounts of concepts in V's writing. In Crisis
> > and
> > in Educational Psychology he presents the first account. Later (in
> > Pedology
> > of the Adolescent for example) he rejects this account and substitutes a
> > second.
> >
> > The first is that concepts are a form of abstraction, facilitated by
> > naming.
> > In Crisis, for example, he writes:
> >
> > ³Everything described as a fact is already a theory. These are the words
> > of
> > Goethe to which Munsterberg
> > refers in arguing the need for a methodology. When we
> > meet what is called a cow and say: ³This is a cow,² we
> > add the act of thinking to the act of perception, bringing
> > the given perception under a general concept. A child
> > who first calls things by their names is making genuine
> > discoveries. I do not see that this is a cow, for this
> > cannot be seen. I see something big, black, moving,
> > plowing, etc., and understand that this is a cow. And
> > this act is an act of classification, of assigning a singular
> > phenomenon to the class of similar phenomena, of
> > systematizing the experience, etc. Thus, language itself
> > contains the basis and possibilities for the scientific
> > knowledge of a fact. The word is the germ of science
> > and in this sense we can say that in the beginning of
> > science was the word² (47)
> >
> > This idea that we "add" the act of thinking *to* the act of perception
> > seems
> > just like Kant, to me.
> >
> > The second account comes later. In the Pedology of the Adolescent he first
> > rejects the view that concepts are abstract and mental (again citing
> > Goethe,
> > this time critically):
> >
> > ³Here we come close to establishing one of the central points that must be
> > explained if we are to overcome the usual error relative to the break
> > between form and content in the development of thinking. From formal
> > logic,
> > traditional psychology adopted the idea of the concept as an abstract
> > mental
> > construct extremely remote from all the wealth of concrete reality. From
> > the
> > point of view of formal logic, the development of concepts is subject to
> > the
> > basic law of inverse proportionality between the scope and content of a
> > concept. The broader the scope of a concept, the narrower its content.
> > This
> > means that the greater the number of objects that the given concept can be
> > applied to, the greater the circle of concrete things that it encompasses,
> > the poorer its content, the emptier it proves to be. The process of
> > forming
> > concepts according to formal logic is extremely simple. The points of
> > abstracting and generalizing are internally closely connected with each
> > other from the point of view of one and the same process, but taken from
> > different aspects. In the words of K. Bühler, what logic terms an
> > abstraction and generalization is completely simple and understandable. A
> > concept from which one of the traits is taken away becomes poorer in
> > content, more abstract and augmented in scope, and becomes general."
> >
> > In its place he proposes that a concept is a process that penetrates
> > deeply
> > into the concrete character of reality, in a complex unity of judgment,
> > apperception, interpretation, recognition, and we could add imagination,
> > no?
> >
> > "The concept begins to be understood not as a thing, but as a process, not
> > as an empty abstraction, but as a thorough and penetrating reflection of
> > an
> > object of reality in all its complexity and diversity, in connections and
> > relations to all the rest of realityŠ. Thus, we see that for the
> > psychologist, the concept is an aggregate of acts of judgment,
> > apperception,
> > interpretation, and recognition. The concept taken in action, in movement,
> > in reality, does not lose unity, but reflects its true nature. According
> > to
> > our hypothesis, we must seek the psychological equivalent of the concept
> > not
> > in general representations, not in absolute perceptions and orthoscopic
> > diagrams, not even in concrete verbal images that replace the general
> > representations ­ we must seek it in a system of judgments in which the
> > concept is disclosed² (54-55).
> >
> > So, to gloss this, conceptual thinking is a transformed consciousness in
> > which multiple psychological functions work together.
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
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> >
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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Mon Mar 10 23:07 PDT 2008