Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation

["Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Derek and Martin--

We are trapped by our language and appear able to maintain the needed
double-sided, spiraling, approximation to reality we seek only within a very
right theoretical frame and well grounded examples. This is both the good
news and the bad news: words are NECESSARILY polysemic. There cannot be a
single word-thought relation because thought (all accept Derek's rapid
simulation version for this discussion) is is a dynamic temporal process
that cannot be reduced to a single, "instant" or solid unchanging thing.

How could the following not be true, Martin: *My* alternative is, I would
argue, what Vygotsky meant: when I can speak silently to myself the
*physiology* of my brain has changed. This would be to say that the
functional brain systems
(as Leontiev calls them) responsible for vocalization become able to connect
*directly* to the functional systems responsible for action, without needing
any longer to pass through the articulatory and sensory apparatus of vocal
tract and ears.

That is, what would it mean if there was a new functional organization of
behavior and no change in the way that is accomplished by that part of the
inter.intra linked processes that are human life??


I just a copy of Luria's neurolinguistics for other reasons, but he most
probably has something interesting to say in this regard.
mike
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> I forgot to say that the suggestion that we replace 'reflection' with
> 'representation' was just what I was afraid to hear. This would bring us
> right back to Kant and cognitivism. As Derek well knows, right?
>
> Martin
>
>
> On 1/7/09 4:18 PM, "Derek Melser" <derek.melser@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Martin, you ask whether there is a more active-connoting synonym of
> > 'reflect'.
> What about 'represent'? Rorty's book, Philosophy and the Mirror of
> > Nature,
> was about the representational theory of mind. The metaphor of
> > innerness, of
> people doing things inside their own heads, and the metaphor of
> > thoughts
> representing reality, are two different metaphors. But they go
> > together very
> well, as the longevity of traditional Western epistemology and
> > the
> funds-attracting power of modern cognitive science show.
>
>
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