[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [xmca] perception/conception etc
Well, we could call it preconscious, or unconscious I suppose. What are you getting at, David?
On Jul 10, 2010, at 2:39 PM, David H Kirshner wrote:
> To put it as a question, what status are we to give to experiences we
> have but don't know we have (i.e., can't articulate to ourselves)
> because those experiences are not (yet) reified in language?
> David
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Martin Packer
> Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2010 1:42 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] perception/conception etc
>
> Michael,
>
> I am having some difficulty following your argument. Let me see if I can
> reconstruct what you are saying.
>
> First, you say I am presupposing my conceptions. Yes, I suppose I am. Is
> there a way of engaging in debate that does not presuppose conceptions?
> Or perhaps your point is that I should be critiquing my conceptions,
> albeit necessarily from within? But isn't that what I am doing? I am
> critiquing our common assumption that emotion is somehow prior to
> culture.
>
> Second, you say that one does not know what pain is before one
> experiences it. I suppose that is true too, in a narrow sense. Would you
> say I do not know what Australia is before I visit it? We need to draw
> distinctions between different kinds of knowledge, don't we?
>
> But do I "know" what Australia is after I have experienced it? Surely
> yes, but there are many ways to know a continent, and there are many
> ways to know pain.
>
> If you are trying to draw a distinction between theoretical knowledge
> and practical knowledge, I would certainly agree with you. To call only
> the latter "real" knowledge is problematic, however. Even Heidegger,
> who, as you know, emphasized the ready-to-hand mode of engagement in
> practical activity and was critical of what he called the
> pure-present-at-hand of detached contemplation, granted a place for
> deliberation and articulation. We could hardly view the book Being &
> Time as a practical manual, could we?! Bourdieu himself wrote text upon
> text in which he demonstrated his symbolic mastery, albeit with an
> ambivalence (especially clear in Homo Academicus) that shows the
> problems that come from attributing the status of "real knowledge" only
> to practical know-how.
>
> In an earlier message you wrote "we know pain in and through the
> experience of pain not because of cultural-historical concepts." It is
> not clear to me whether you want to say that we don't know pain because
> of culture, or because of concepts. If it is the former, I disagree with
> you, as I explained in my last message.
>
> But if it is the latter, my response has to be that it all depends on
> what one means by 'concepts,' and this is where we came in, isn't it?
> None of us seems to sure what we mean by a concept. The standard
> psychological definition is that a concept is a mental representation,
> and I certainly agree that the experience of pain is prior to mental
> representations. But I presume that a sociocultural approach is aiming
> to develop a different conception of concepts. One approach would be to
> argue that concepts exist precisely in practical activities, as a mode
> of human engagement in the world. (You mentioned Merleau-Ponty, who has
> explored this. For M-P, the 'invisible' that is in 'the visible' is the
> conception that is always in perception, to put it briefly.) My point
> was that what counts as pain, and the way pain is experienced (or love)
> is always the consequence of our participation in cultural practices. I
> would not rule out the possibility of conceiving of this participation
> in terms of concepts, suitably rethought.
>
> Martin
>
> On Jul 10, 2010, at 12:57 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
>
>> Martin,
>> your way of thinking is cultural-historical unsustainable, because you
> did not have cultural concepts prior to culture. It is completely
> inconsistent of all phenomenological analyses I am aware off that ----
> similar to CHAT (Leontyev, Holzkamp) ---- show how anything like
> intention, cognition can come about in the first place. You seem to
> reason from after the fact but presuppose your conceptions.
>>
>> And, I beg your pardon, you do not know what pain is before you
> experienced it; you do not know what flow is until you experienced it. A
> physicist who has never played football may be able to calculate an
> approximate trajectory for a ball but never throw a ball
> himself/herself. If you were claiming such things, then you are in the
> same position as Catholic priests who know what it means to feel things
> that they inherently, because of their commitments, never can feel. As
> said, you are talking about what Bourdieu calls SYMBOLIC mastery, not
> real mastery.
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2010-07-10, at 10:42 AM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>
>> Michael,
>>
>> I'm afraid that just don't agree with your claim. There is already a
> lot of research to show that culture mediates what is taken to be pain,
> and how pain is experienced. I will mention again Hoschchild's work. I
> recently read a fascinating ethnography of the Jayne, an Indian
> religious group that practices extreme practices of self denial. Think
> of self flagellation in the Middle Ages. Think of Micky Rourke stapling
> himself in the wrestling ring. Or think of the experience of undergoing
> eye surgery. When a doctor inserts a needle into the eye one's reaction
> is definitely influenced by the interpretation that the procedure is
> intended to be beneficial.
>>
>> Or on a more positive note, would you claim that the passion of love
> is not today mediated, organized, colonized by technologies of romance,
> sexuality, eroticism, etc.?
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On Jul 10, 2010, at 11:48 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
>>
>>> HI Martin,
>>> we know pain in and through the experience of pain not because of
> cultural-historical concepts. Same with suffering and other passions.
> "Only suffering permits us to know what suffering is" (Henry, 2003, p.
> 167, my translation). And passions are not intended, they come upon us,
> we receive them . . .
>>>
>>> We may subsequently talk about them, which means employ cultural
> concepts. We may even talk about passions we have not experienced (like
> Catholic priests, possibly) but we don't KNOW these passions, we only
> have, in the words of Bourdieu, symbolic mastery thereof, not real
> mastery.
>>>
>>> All of this to say that there is no primacy of cultural
> concept(ion)s, and that is what the history of the phenomenology of
> perception would reveal to you. (I am not saying the reverse, that "raw
> experience" underlies anything). But you know that Marx talks about
> consciousness being the result of life rather than its origin.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Michael
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2010-07-09, at 6:46 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>>
>>> Sorry, Michael - what precisely is your point?
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> On Jul 9, 2010, at 7:56 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
>>>
>>>> Martin,
>>>> PRECISELY my point. What';s the difference between a Japanese (or
> Albertan, where I get my chicks from) and Martin Packer? They see a
> difference what is the same to Martin. What is different? Well, there
> are different gestalts.
>>>>
>>>> I have been watching you all running in circle wondering by myself
> why nobody was suggesting to go back to Heidegger and his notion of
> apophansis (in Being and Time), and its relation to logos, which, for
> the Greeks according to Heidegger, have the same origin. From there I
> would go to the phenomenology of perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1945) to
> Crossing of the Visible (Jean-Luc Marion, 2004) and Michel Henry (Seeing
> the invisible).
>>>>
>>>> Then you would have some answers to the questions raised, thought
> through by some interesting philosophers.
>>>>
>>>> :-)
>>>>
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2010-07-09, at 5:04 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Michael,
>>>>
>>>> This is the famous and familiar 'chicken-sexing' phenomenon. Experts
> are able to tell the sex of day-old chickens, and can't explain why. The
> best chicken sexers come from Japan, where the Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing
> School has 2-year long courses.
>>>>
>>>> But I don't follow your argument. You seem to be saying, since they
> can't explain what they do in words, they have no concepts. But they
> must have something, so they have percepts.
>>>>
>>>> You are apparently equating a concept with a 'cultural label' that
> is 'stuck' on an object, as though we could only recognize a barrel if
> it were labelled 'barrel,' if not literally then metaphorically. That
> seems a rather simplistic view of what concepts do. And actually the
> chicken sexers do employ cultural labels - as do your fish sorters, I
> presume. The chicken sexers say to themselves, 'male chick,' 'female
> chick.' They simply can't introspect the characteristics they have
> identified which have enabled them to attach the label. Your fish
> sorters are saying, 'good fish, 'bad fish,' or something similar.
> Obviously these are cultural-historical distinctions, right?
>>>>
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>> On Jul 9, 2010, at 6:14 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> See, even without the notion of "barrel", you perceive a shape and
> do not run into it. This shape, prior to all cultural labels you might
> stick to it or recognize it as part of cultural-historical activity, is
> some shape that exists for you in your practices. In two papers, one in
> Journal of Pragmatics and the other in Social Studies of Science, I
> describe phenomena for which there are no words or concepts and yet
> people act toward it. For example, fish culturists sort fish. They can't
> tell you the difference between the ones that go to the right, down into
> the bucket, or into the left channel. They ask you to "just look." So
> they can see it, but not tell it. Similarly, in ecological field work,
> the participants could see differences but not tell them, that is see
> that something is not a rock pile even though the definition of a rock
> pile said it was one.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> How do you describe or name what they see as difference but for
> which there is no concept, no "notion" to name and tell the difference?
> In such cases, "percept" may well do the trick. There are two percepts,
> they are different, yet there are no cultural-historical concepts to
> name, theorize, conceptualize . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> As you see from the title of one paper, I used the term "perceptual
> gestalts" . . . . Don't know whether that resolves your problem, but was
> useful and the best solution for me.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Roth, W.-M. (2005). Making classifications (at) work: Ordering
> practices in science. Social Studies of Science, 35, 581-621.
>>>>> Roth, W.-M. (2004). Perceptual gestalts in workplace communication.
> Journal of Pragmatics, 36(6), 1037-1069.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Michael
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2010-07-09, at 3:43 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Describe" in what respect, Michael?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jul 9, 2010, at 4:01 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Martin, the percept might describe the forms that appear in
> perception? What do you think? Michael
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 2010-07-09, at 9:46 AM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Eric,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For me, the question that needs to be answered is why we need to
> introduce a new term, "percept." We can all talk about 'perception,' as
> an active process of interaction with the world, right? What is gained
> when we start to talk about 'percepts,' as though there are some little
> entities floating around somewhere? Haven't we turned a process into an
> entity?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The university has a good selection of DVDs, and I recently
> checked out the first season of the cable TV channel Showtime's series
> The Tudors, which recounts how Henry VIII's need for a male heir led to
> the rupture between England and the Catholic Church. It's not exactly
> aiming for historical accuracy, but I was then motivated to check out
> Elton's history of the period and it turns out the series does a pretty
> good job of touching on most of the important events.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Everyone in the show is a fashion statement, including Cardinal
> Wolsey who, as played by Sam Neil, is both cunning and likable. He shows
> up each time in a different outfit, wearing a variety of official
> headgear, each in that rich cardinal red.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One morning I was fixing breakfast and reached out for the salt
> shaker. It's made of transparent plastic with a lid, something we picked
> up at the supermarket. But the lid is bright red, and (and here's the
> point; thanks for your patience!) as I picked it up, for a second or two
> what I saw was a little cardinal.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That seems to me a nice example of what Mike has been exploring,
> the active and ongoing character of perception, in which conceiving and
> perceiving are intimately linked. I see the object *through* and *in
> terms* of a concept (though we're still none to sure what that is!), in
> this case the concept of cardinal that had been enriched by watching the
> TV show. The process is not entirely within me as an individual, because
> the salt shaker did its part.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To me, saying that I "have" a "percept" doesn't help me understand
> this process. The percept would be - what, a little red cardinal? or is
> the percept the salt shaker, and I impose a concept of cardinal on it?
> but isn't 'salt shaker' a concept too?? Putting all of this stuff inside
> the individual leads to an infinite regress, not a satisfactory
> explanation (or even description) of what is going on.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jul 9, 2010, at 10:43 AM, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Percept would be preference? I don't know exactly but people do
> not
>>>>>>> operate upon appropriated concepts 100% of the time. Do they?
> Certainly
>>>>>>> children do not. Currently I am not exactly sure what the
> question is
>>>>>>> that needs to be answered.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Perhaps the percept in the 'not-wanting-to-listen-to-dylan" for
> me would
>>>>>>> be I would prefer listening to the radio seeing as he never gets
> any air
>>>>>>> time or perhaps it would be that I am stuck inside of mobile with
> the
>>>>>>> memphis blues again?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> That certainly is a great question. Others with
>>>>>>> thoughts/percepts/concepts?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> eric
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
>>>>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>>>> Date: 07/09/2010 09:14 AM
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] perception/conception etc
>>>>>>> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> OK, Eric let's suppose you woke up this morning not wanting to
> listen to
>>>>>>> Dylan. What is the percept in that situation? Dylan? His music?
> Your
>>>>>>> temporary dislike? The fact that yesterday you felt differently?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Jul 9, 2010, at 8:04 AM, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Martin:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I understand your misgivings about placing construction within
> but
>>>>>>> perhaps
>>>>>>>> this makes sense: concepts are appropriated from the
> social/cultural
>>>>>>>> arena but percepts are individually based. My percepts about
> music may
>>>>>>>> run counter to yours and there are even days I don't want to
> listen to
>>>>>>> Bob
>>>>>>>> Dylan. However, I have an appropriated concept of music that is
>
>>>>>>> probably
>>>>>>>> extremely similar to yours. Does this make sense? I know this
>>>>>>>> internal/exteranl debate has raged for years and won't end
> anytime soon
>>>>>>>> but some things do indeed happen within. I still have to think
> though
>>>>>>>> that cracking this code between everyday and scietific could
> assist in
>>>>>>>> understanding human development.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> eric
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca