[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts



Mabel, there is no need to ask "What is the difference between a chair and the human body?" Clearly there are so many ways that a body is different from any other artefact.

The question arises for me only certain specific philosophical contexts. For example, Critical Theorists read Mead as a theory of unmediated communication. How is this possible? For Critical Theory, the body is part of the subject. Therefore when one person waves to another, there is no mediation; it is direct, unmediated communication. Nonsense of course.

Andy

Mabel Encinas wrote:
Ok. You have a point. Then, lets start thinking from an embodied approach :)
Let's accept that the body is an artifact. What is then the difference between a chair and the body. Both are yes, "products of human art", as you express it. However, only in the process (practice) there seem to be a difference. Both are material and ideal (the body is not separated from the mind; the chair, this one here that I feel is made of cloth and a cushioned material, plastic, metal, and involves the ideal that a designer and workers in a factory transformed so people could seat on). What is the difference? Mabel



Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 22:53:40 +1100
From: ablunden@mira.net
To: liliamabel@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts

Well, the body is the body is the body. The reason the question arises for me is when we make generalisations in which things like person, artefact, consciousness, concept, action, and so on, figure, where does the body fit in? My response was that even though it is obviously unique in many ways, it falls into the same category as artefacts.

My questions to you are: what harm is done? why is anything ignored? And, what is the body if it is not a material product of human art, used by human beings?

Andy

Mabel Encinas wrote:
Is this way being fruitful? That is why I do not like to consider the body as an artifact. Did not cognitive pscyhology do that? (Bruner, Acts of Meaning). Then intentions and all the teleological aspects are so much ignored...



Mabel









Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 20:21:09 +1100
From: ablunden@mira.net
To: liliamabel@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts

Sure. But the body has been constructed like a living
machine - the various artefacts that you use (especially but
not only language and images) are "internalized" in some
way. So one (external) artefact is replaced by another
(internal) artefact. Yes?

Andy

Mabel Encinas wrote:
However, sometimes practices do not involve other artefact
than the body (some practices are directed to the body), and that was
why I was talking about the limit of thinking about the body as
artefact... is that a limit? That is why I mentioned the body as "the
raw material". I was thinking for example practices linked to
meditation
and the like, for example, among many others.
Mabel
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep your friends updated— even when you’re not signed in. <http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/see-it-in-action/social-network-basics.aspx?ocid=PID23461::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-xm:SI_SB_5:092010>
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea

_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live Hotmail: Your friends can get your Facebook updates, right from Hotmail®.
http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/see-it-in-action/social-network-basics.aspx?ocid=PID23461::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-xm:SI_SB_4:092009_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca


--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca