Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts

[Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>]

Andy

I believe the reason we are cautious about brain research is it usually implies "biology" as foundational to being human.  The reason I mention Fonagy and others exploring the foundational premises of infant development is they are starting from intersubjectivity as prior to subjectivity and it is only within relational contexts that a sense of subjectivity arises or emerges. They are using brain research to support this relational paradigm.
Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009 7:28 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> Larry,
> 
> In my first forrays into this discussion on emotion, I found 
> myself introducing talk of physiological observations in a 
> way I would never have thought of doing in relation to 
> cognition. After reading about the 300 years of reflections 
> on the physiology of emotion in Vygotsky's article, I was 
> left asking myself: why? Why do I think it is important to 
> investigate the physiology of emotion, while I hold such a 
> low opinion of the place of physiological investigations in 
> understanding the normal process of cognition.
> 
> Consciousness is the outcome of the intersection of two 
> objective processes: human physiology and human behaviour. 
> This is equally true of both emotion and cognition.
> 
> While the marketing, military and medial industries are 
> spending billions of dollars on neurological investigations, 
> I would think that CHAT people would be interested in 
> questions like the role of emotion in learning, behaviour, 
> addicition, the formation of social bonds, and so on, 
> investigating such questions with dual stimulation type 
> experiments, with artifacts that are more or less affect-laden.
> 
> Andy
> 
> Larry Purss wrote:
> > Mike
> > Your comment that this leaves us only at the starting gate of 
> understanding how bodies can be "written on"  points to the 
> research and reflection on the relation of changes in the brain 
> mediated by culture.  
> > One area of research that is exploring how the brain is 
> changed via mediation is intersubjective infant developmental 
> studies that are mapping physiological changes in one person's 
> brain that "mirrors" similar  physiological brain 
> changes  being generated during the activity of the 
> other  person.  Fonagy is doing research in this area 
> and has written a detailed summary of the research in this area. 
> His term for this intersubjective process is "mentalization". 
> > 
> > Larry
> > 
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> > Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009 12:19 pm
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > 
> >> I do not have all this sorted out by a long shot, but my own 
> way 
> >> of thinking
> >> about the issue is that humans are hybrids, really complex 
> >> one's. Their
> >> brains have LITERALLY been shaped by prior genrations of 
> >> mediation of
> >> activity through material artifacts, their brains (and often 
> >> other parts of
> >> the bodies) cannot operate normally without inclusion of 
> >> artifacts, they can
> >> be "written on" as jay points out.
> >>
> >> The problem is that this leaves us only at the starting gate 
> for 
> >> furtherdevelopment of this point of view. I found that 
> >> experimental study I sent
> >> around sort of interest in this regard, even though it 
> provides 
> >> such sketchy
> >> detail and assumes so much about its cultural content and 
> >> organization. The
> >> developmental implications, which in our current discussion 
> >> would mean, the
> >> organization of hybridity during ontogeny, which in turn has 
> >> implicationsfor the cognition/emotion
> >> discussion.
> >> mike
> >>
> >> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Jay Lemke 
> >> <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> One of the ways I have found useful to think about the body 
> in 
> >> relation to
> >>> semiotic mediation is to see the body as, among other 
> things, 
> >> a semiotic
> >>> artifact.
> >>>
> >>> What I mean by semiotic artifact is a material object or 
> >> substrate that can
> >>> be written on and read from, much like a printed page or an 
> >> architectural> drawing. Written on, in the general semiotic 
> >> sense, not necessarily in
> >>> words, but in signs of some kind: meaningful features that 
> can 
> >> be "read" or
> >>> made sense of by people (or nonhumans, but that's another 
> >> story) in that our
> >>> meaning-mediated world, and our actions that respond to that world
> >>> (including by trying to change or re-create it or just 
> imagine 
> >> it in some
> >>> new way), are affected by our encounter with the features of 
> >> the semiotic
> >>> object, according to some community interpretive practices, 
> >> with our own
> >>> individual variations on them.
> >>>
> >>> At a very obvious level, bodies can be dressed up in signs: 
> >> hair styles,
> >>> tans, cosmetics. And this can be taken to a more 
> "artifactual" 
> >> form with
> >>> dress, or a more physiological form with, say, body-
> building. 
> >> From tattoos
> >>> to ripped abs is a small shift when we are thinking about 
> the 
> >> body as a
> >>> writable/readable object. If we want to get still more 
> >> physiological, and
> >>> think not only about reading other people's bodies, but 
> >> reading our own,
> >>> then the proprioceptive feelings we sense within out bodies 
> >> can be
> >>> considered signs as well, whether exhilaration or nausea, 
> >> strength or
> >>> weakness, etc. The meaning of these feelings is certainly 
> culturally>>> mediated. They are physiological phenomena, but 
> they are also 
> >> meaningful> cultural phenomena, with value judgements 
> attached, 
> >> with intertexts in
> >>> literature, etc.
> >>>
> >>> And we can deliberately write to our most physiological 
> >> states, e.g. with
> >>> drugs, to produce feelings that have cultural meanings and 
> >> values for us,
> >>> whether of calm or elation, energy or hallucination. And to 
> a 
> >> considerable> extent, our modifications of our body 
> physiology 
> >> can be "read" by others,
> >>> just as can our made physiques, tattoos, or hair styles.
> >>>
> >>> So I would say that the body mediates our sense of the world 
> >> and ourselves
> >>> and other people in at least two ways: directly through 
> >> physiology, as with
> >>> hormonal responses, sensory modalities of perception, bodily 
> >> affordances and
> >>> dis-affordances ("handicaps" for example), etc. AND also in 
> >> these other,
> >>> clearly semiotic and cultural ways, as a semiotic artifact, 
> as 
> >> well as with
> >>> the cultural overlays of meaning that lie over and color the 
> >> meanings and
> >>> responses to all the direct physiological mediations.
> >>>
> >>> I do not, however, know what being wooden on a rainy day 
> feels 
> >> like to a
> >>> chair.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> JAY.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Jay Lemke
> >>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
> >>> Educational Studies
> >>> University of Michigan
> >>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> >>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
> >>>
> >>> Visiting Scholar
> >>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
> >>> University of California -- San Diego
> >>> La Jolla, CA
> >>> USA 92093
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Dec 7, 2009, at 4:14 AM, 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
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------
> --
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> >>>>>> 
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> >>>>> --
> >>>>> -----------------------------------------------------------
> --
> >> -----------
> >>>>> Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
> >>>>> Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
> >>>>> Ilyenkov $20 ea
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
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> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
> Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, 
> Ilyenkov $20 ea
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