Re: [xmca] The relationship between practice and activity as concepts

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

It's an important question, indeed. There's also this, available in Google Scholar. It's slightly off this topic, but still a useful resource.

Nardi, B. (1992). Studying context: A comparison of activity theory, situated action models, and distributed cognition. In East-West Human Computer Interaction Conference. Petersburg, Russia.
	
On Aug 18, 2011, at 11:15 AM, Helena Worthen wrote:

> Hi --
> 
> This question has had me thinking. If people want to take it up, I'd suggest
> looking at Knud Illeris' first book, in which he lays out theories of
> learning as a field rather than as a set of ideas that correct and replace
> each other, and then Stephen Billet's 2010 book on practice in occupations.
> My point being that activity and practice are concepts that rise to the
> foreground depend on which lens you use to look into CHAT.
> 
> Helena Worthen
> 
> On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 1:23 PM, Nathaniel Dumas <
> ndumas@linguistics.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Dear Colleagues,
>> 
>> Thanks to those who sent me responses to my question in response to my
>> seminar on activities as ethnographic and analytic foci. Along those lines,
>> I wanted to ask another question…does anyone know of any critiques that
>> compare the practice turn in many of the social sciences to CHAT? And how do
>> CHAT perspectives position itself in regards to the practice turn
>> spearheaded by Bourdieu, Giddens, Foucault, and others? In short, what
>> was/is the relationship between activity and practice as concepts for CHAT
>> scholars?
>> 
>> Best,
>> Nate Dumas
>> 
>> On Aug 12, 2011, at 12:00 PM, xmca-request@weber.ucsd.edu wrote:
>> 
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>>> 1. FW: POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT: ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, OSL
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>>> 2. Polanyi's "Magic of Marxism" (Huw Lloyd)
>>> 3. Fw: [historicalmaterialism] Marx and Philosophy Review of
>>>    Books: new reviews online (Bruce Robinson)
>>> 4. Imaginary Friends (David Kellogg)
>>> 5. Re: Imaginary Friends (Helen Grimmett)
>>> 6. Re: Living metaphor and conventionalized language (David Kellogg)
>>> 7. Re: Imaginary Friends (Robert Lake)
>>> 8. Re: Living metaphor and conventionalized language (Martin Packer)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
>>> ----------
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>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:16:39 +0000
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>>> Subject: [xmca] FW: POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT: ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, OSL
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>>> Message: 2
>>> Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 23:28:51 +0100
>>> From: Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
>>> Subject: [xmca] Polanyi's "Magic of Marxism"
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Message-ID:
>>>       <CAG1MBOF_=EZ-KsmBk+**1nKcP005vfNh4cCDPuH6riuoKgJ5u6**
>>> wA@mail.gmail.com<EZ-KsmBk%2B1nKcP005vfNh4cCDPuH6riuoKgJ5u6wA@mail.gmail.com>
>>>> 
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>> 
>>> I'm revisiting a section of Polyani's "Personal Knowledge", p227,
>>> subtitled
>>> the "The Magic of Marxism", in which he describes the contradictory
>>> Marxist
>>> fervour for anti-idealism and the shielding of this fervour as a
>>> 'science'.
>>> I have noted references to Polyani in archived posts and wondered what
>>> others thought about this.
>>> 
>>> I was thinking about this in relation to Luria's "Cognitive Development"
>>> and
>>> Ratner's preface to "Macro Cultural Psychology", in which the scientific
>>> recognition of the social formation of mind might (would?) then lead to
>>> extensive social changes, such as the unveiling of 'education as content'
>>> rather than environment.
>>> 
>>> Here are a few ruminative questions:
>>> 
>>> + Is it possible to have a long standing interest in something without
>>> having a fervour for it?  Whitehead's 'Religion of science' comes to mind
>>> (Science and the Modern World).
>>> 
>>> + If valid, to what degree does this fervour pollute the science.  Is this
>>> (simply?) a case of discriminating between authentic science and the
>>> political wielding of 'science'?
>>> 
>>> + Can we justify this fervour beyond a personal utopian belief, founded,
>>> for
>>> instance, on a understanding of what is wrong currently?  Are there
>>> benefits
>>> to such an outlook, such as the avoidance of dogma?
>>> 
>>> Huw
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Message: 3
>>> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:17:38 +0100
>>> From: "Bruce Robinson" <bruce@brucerob.eu>
>>> Subject: [xmca] Fw: [historicalmaterialism] Marx and Philosophy Review
>>>       of      Books: new reviews online
>>> To: "xmca list" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Message-ID: <**91EA2C653A194A1A9C21A91310D6F4**D9@BRUCEROBINSOPC>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="Windows-1252"
>>> 
>>> The first review of Andy's edition of Ilyenkov may be of interest to
>>> xmcaers.
>>> 
>>> Bruce Robinson
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Sébastien Budgen
>>> To: historicalmaterialism
>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 4:53 PM
>>> Subject: [historicalmaterialism] Marx and Philosophy Review of Books: new
>>> reviews online
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> New reviews just published online in the Marx and Philosophy Review of
>>> Books
>>> ·        Levant on Ilyenkov’s The Ideal in Human Activity
>>> ·        Sutton on Badiou on Wagner
>>> ·        Ainley on Marx and Education
>>> ·        Marshall on Löwy on Combined and Uneven Development
>>> ·        Arfken on Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism
>>> ·        Carelton on Hobsbawm’s How to Change the World
>>> 
>>> New comments and discussion
>>> 
>>> New list of books for review
>>> 
>>> all at www.marxandphilosophy.org.uk/**reviewofbooks/<http://www.marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/>
>>> 
>>> To receive notification of comments and of new reviews when they appear,
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>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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>>> Tel +44 1227-827513; Fax +44 1227-823641
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>>> Message: 4
>>> Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:26:24 -0700 (PDT)
>>> From: David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
>>> Subject: [xmca] Imaginary Friends
>>> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Message-ID:
>>>       <1313115984.11432.**YahooMailClassic@web110308.**
>>> mail.gq1.yahoo.com<1313115984.11432.YahooMailClassic@web110308.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
>>>> 
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>>> 
>>> Gadzooks, TWO of my favorite hobby horses in one posting: Julian Jaynes
>>> and imaginary friends. I don't want to fall between two hobby horses; I
>>> get wobbly at the knees writing about even one of them
>>> Â
>>> I used to think of imaginary friends as what Vygotsky referred to as a
>>> transitional neoformation:Â something that appears around age 7 or 8 and
>>> lasts until the the child is able to attach roles (which are functional
>>> versions of imaginary friends) to actual people (around twelve or thirteen).
>>> Â
>>> Vygotsky describes it like this:
>>> Â
>>> "Neoformations such as self love and self-evaulation remain, but the
>>> symptoms of the crisis (affectation, posing) are transitional. In the crisis
>>> at age seven, because of the fact that a differentiation of the internal and
>>> external develops and intellectual experience first appears, a sharp
>>> conflict of experiences also devleops. The child who does not know which
>>> candy to choose--the bigger or the sweeter--finds himself in a state of
>>> internal conflict even as he vacillates. The internal conflict
>>> (contradiction of experiences and selection of his own experiences) becomes
>>> possible only at this time." (The Crisis at Seven, in "The Essential
>>> Vygotsky", p. 494).
>>> Â
>>> I still think that some imaginary friends are like this: something that
>>> comes out of the same differentiation between internal and external that
>>> gives rise to role play. Like me, the child hesitates between two hobby
>>> horses: imaginary friends and real ones.
>>> Â
>>> The imaginary friend then "volatilizes" into abstract rule play and
>>> conceptual thinking (particularly the concept of "me" "myself" and "I").
>>> Just as the child learns to rise to the concrete, by abstract away the rule
>>> from the role in instances of game play, the child learns to attach theÂ
>>> ideal figure to the behavior of actual people. This is particularly true of
>>> imaginary friends connected with adolescent diary keeping (e.g. Anne
>>> Frank's imaginary friend "Kitty").
>>> Â
>>> My wife's imaginary friend (also associated with keeping a diary), for
>>> example, was called "Yi Lin" or "One Forest". As an adolescent she later
>>> changed her name (which is the Chinese equivalent of "Jane Smith") into
>>> "Spring Thunder", and although she insists that she did this for political
>>> reasons ("Spring Thunder" has a certain Cultural Revolution ring to it in
>>> Chinese) it seems to me that it is more of a continuation of the
>>> naturalistic imagery we see in "One Forest".
>>> Â
>>> But I read a book recently ("Imaginary Companions and the Children Who
>>> Create Them", by Marjorie Taylor, OUP 1999) which suggests that imaginary
>>> companions often appear MUCH earlier than I thought they did (as early as
>>> three or four years of age).
>>> Â
>>> So it seems to me that they are not just reifications of imaginary play or
>>> ideal reconstructions of real people; they might be connected to the child's
>>> (very early) discovery of things like television, fiction, and the child's
>>> attempt to reproduce them in diaries (as WRITTEN self-directed speech).
>>> Â
>>> ("One Forest"Â is also a homophone of a name of a popular magazine in
>>> China which publishes translations from abroad.)
>>> Â
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Â
>>> Â
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --- On Thu, 8/11/11, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>> Subject: RE: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Date: Thursday, August 11, 2011, 2:19 AM
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi David,
>>> 
>>> I hope you won't mind if I reply to just one little corner of your very
>>> eloquent message (I have not been able to keep pace with recent
>>> discussions).
>>> 
>>> I am particularly interested in very early communication which, I think,
>>> has much more of the 'meaty sensuousness' about it - not yet pared and
>>> polished to the clear austerity of a sign system. It occurred to me that
>>> 'internalised' verbal thought 'usually' involves a considerable degree of
>>> paring and polishing - we perhaps learn to think with concepts rather than
>>> simply to 'relive' relational experiences in all their meaty sensuousness. I
>>> wondered, then, whether the fairly widespread incidence of 'imaginary
>>> friends' might be understood, at least to some extent, in terms of an early
>>> reluctance to forego the relational richness of interpersonal communication
>>> as this comes to be 'internalised'. The feeling of relating to another
>>> person is importantly different from the feeling of 'having a thought' and
>>> may, at many levels, feel more satisfying. This could lead on to echoes of
>>> Julian Jayne's argument about the relative recency of our 'ability' to
>>> recognise
>>> thoughts as internal 'products' of our own minds (how much our minds are
>>> indeed our own is the question here!) but also into dangerous territory
>>> where our preferred imaginary friend is omnipotent.
>>> 
>>> Being 'in' relation with another person is an altogether richer, more
>>> complicated and sensually elaborate experience even than remembering or
>>> thinking about being with someone and I think a lot of the yearning of
>>> poetry relates to this sense of the gates of perception being clouded by
>>> knowledge - once you have tasted the forbidden fruit there is no going back
>>> (or at least no easy going back - some people devote their lives to
>>> contemplation, meditation, prayer and other ways of trying to still the
>>> distracting ruckus of 'roof-brain chatter'.
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> 
>>> Rod
>>> 
>>> ______________________________**__________
>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf
>>> Of David Kellogg [vaughndogblack@yahoo.com]
>>> Sent: 10 August 2011 16:27
>>> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>> 
>>> Did I use the word "system"? I suppose I did. What I really mean is what
>>> Halliday calls "meaning potential", the way that a traffic light can
>>> potentially be red or yellow or green. It is what we might call leaving
>>> things that we could say unsaid.
>>> 
>>> I guess I think of a system as being just a set of options, you know, like
>>> a traffic light, or a dictionary entry or the system of tense or negation.
>>> It's the semiotic resources that Mommy and Daddy provide you with, the set
>>> of metaphors that have already been made with the language, what Vygotsky
>>> calls signification.
>>> 
>>> One of the key unresolved problems in CHAT (which you can see, for
>>> example, in the way Ratner disagrees with Wertsch, and even in the early
>>> disagreements between Vygotsky and Leontiev over "activity" and "semiosis")
>>> is how culture gets "in": is it "internalized" or is it "appropriated"? Is
>>> it somehow co-constructed, by the individual on the one hand and the society
>>> on the other?
>>> 
>>> Of course, BOTH "internalization" and "appropriation" are metaphors. I
>>> don't flee from the "internalization" metaphor the way that Martin does,
>>> partly because I think of it as referring not to a body but as to a nation,
>>> a country, a city, a community, a family...or some particle thereof. In this
>>> sense (a sense which I suppose is better captured by "interiorization" than
>>> by "internalization", just as "reflection" is better captured by
>>> "refraction") there is no duality; when you move from one nation to another
>>> you do not change worlds, nor do you change nations when you move from one
>>> city to another.
>>> 
>>> But I do have a problem--I think that we can't just get culture into the
>>> picture by referring to cultural artefacts like signs and tools. The map is
>>> not the territory, and human relations are not, in essence, about signs and
>>> tools; they are about flesh and blood other people. It is here that I think
>>> distinguishing between meaning potential in a cultural artefact and the
>>> actual meaning making that goes on between flesh and blood persons is
>>> important, not least because BOTH of them develop and develop each other in
>>> a way that's not really explicable by just looking at the artefacts
>>> themselves.
>>> 
>>> Consider, for example, the dictionary as a cultural artefact. You know, in
>>> the eighteenth century, dictionaries were a little like Bartlett's today.
>>> They did contain definitions for the really thick-skulled (there was a newly
>>> literate middle class that had to have everything spelled out) but the
>>> definitions were sometimes rather whimsical (e.g. "pensioner: a man whose
>>> flattery is repaid with insolence") and the main thing people read them for
>>> was the learned quotations and snappy put-downs that were provided as
>>> examples (hence Johnson's dictionary and of course the "Devil's Dictionary"
>>> of Ambrose Bierce).
>>> 
>>> So the function of a dictionary was not to systematize the language but
>>> rather to provide resources for sense. It was to make you sound witty and
>>> creative and original in the chocolate houses. I suppose it must have been
>>> rather annoying that dictionaries were so widely read, because it meant that
>>> many people in your chocolate house would know the joke before you told it,
>>> or, heaven forfend, try to tell the same joke themselves.But of course
>>> dictionaries WERE widely read, and they became guides to meaning potential
>>> rather than a set of instances of actual wit.
>>> 
>>> In the late twentieth century, though, the pendulum began to swing the
>>> other way, because CoBuild and other dictionaries began to inspect computer
>>> corpora of actual uses, and they discovered (for example) that it is much
>>> more common to say, metaphorically, that you "run a business" than
>>> concretely, that you run a hundred yards on your own two feet. To me,
>>> though, all that means is that the new systemic "meaning potential" has to
>>> start with running a business, and that what I did this morning for exercise
>>> was a kind of metaphorical extension of running a business to my muscles and
>>> achilles tendons.
>>> 
>>> There is a good poem about the relationship between meaning potential and
>>> actual meaning by Cecil Day-Lewis. It's metaphorical, of course! He begins
>>> by defining a sign for us, and pointing out that a tree is a sign too
>>> (because it stands for itself, or if you want to be physiological about it,
>>> it produces an image on our retina which is interpreted by our brains as a
>>> tree.) But it's a sign without a system, without much unrealized meaning
>>> potential.
>>> 
>>> This tree outside my window here,
>>> Naked, umbrageous, fresh or sere,
>>> Has neither chance nor will to be
>>> Anything but a linden tree,
>>> Even if its branches grew to span
>>> The continent; for nature’s plan
>>> Insists that infinite extension
>>> Shall create no new dimension.
>>> 
>>>> From the first snuggling of the seed
>>>> 
>>> In earth, a branchy form’s decreed.
>>> 
>>> You have to admit the Creator was original. He was certainly forceful in
>>> his creativity. But rather limited, when you look at it; in His later career
>>> He kept repeating Himself with only minor variations, and most of what was
>>> new was not very good. Human creativity is a different matter!.
>>> 
>>> Unwritten poems loom as if
>>> They’d cover the whole of earthly life.
>>> But each one, growing, learns to trim its
>>> Impulse and meaning to the limits
>>> Roughed out by me, then modified
>>> In its own truth’s expanding light.
>>> A poem, settling to its form,
>>> Finds there’s no jailer, but a norm
>>> Of conduct, and a fitting sphere
>>> Which stops it wandering everywhere.
>>> 
>>> Human creativity, unlike nature, is an embarrassment of riches; we need
>>> rhyme (which you notice Day-Lewis adheres to quite rigorously) and meter to
>>> keep us honest. As Adorno says, the bourgeoisie would like life to be
>>> austere and art voluptuous, but we would really be much better off with
>>> things the other way around: life full of actual meaning, and art full of
>>> things left unsaid.
>>> 
>>> Now here Day-Lewis notes that there is a third thing--and it is the thing
>>> that Bakhtin wrote almost exclusively about, something that is neither
>>> system of meaning nor instance of meaning making, something that is neither
>>> signification nor purely individual sense: it is human relationships in all
>>> their complex, meaty sensuousness.
>>> 
>>> Are interpersonal relations more like intra-personal relations or are they
>>> more like societal relations? Are they more intra-psychological or more
>>> trans-psychological? Are more things to be left said or unsaid? Half said?
>>> 
>>> Are these going to be austere or voluptuous? Will they depend on potential
>>> or upon realization?
>>> 
>>> As for you, my love, it’s harder,
>>> Though neither prisoner nor warder,
>>> Not to desire you both: for love
>>> Illudes us we can lightly move
>>> Into a new dimension, where
>>> The bounds of being disappear
>>> And we make one impassioned cell.
>>> So wanting to be all in all
>>> Each for each, a man and a woman
>>> Defy the limits of what’s human.
>>> 
>>> Voluptuous then, and almost intrapersonal--but this is a romantic, young
>>> person's view. Day-Lewis wrote this late in life, after many years of what
>>> we would have to call development. Human development is not like natural
>>> development; it means creating more potential rather than simply realizing
>>> it (and thus leaving less unsaid).
>>> 
>>> But when we cease to play explorers
>>> And become settlers, clear before us
>>> Lies the next need – to re-define
>>> The boundary between yours and mine;
>>> Else, one stays prisoner, one goes free.
>>> Each to his own identity
>>> Grown back, shall prove our love’s expression
>>> Purer for this limitation.
>>> Love’s essence, like a poem’s, shall spring
>>> 
>>>> From the not saying everything.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --- On Wed, 8/10/11, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>> Subject: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Date: Wednesday, August 10, 2011, 10:59 AM
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi David Ke
>>> 
>>> Your response to Nickolai mentioned the constant movement of living
>>> metaphor
>>> and language as a conventionalized SYSTEM.  This seems to me to be one
>>> more
>>> example of this living GENERATIVE movement of consciousness.
>>> 
>>> Larry
>>> ______________________________**____________
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>>> 
>>> Message: 5
>>> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:04:51 +1000
>>> From: Helen Grimmett <helen.grimmett@monash.edu>
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Imaginary Friends
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Message-ID:
>>>       <CAGzL+FJ0Y1fY0R6AvqWbE-**YpZL9dFNf+eDrTP+eo012v1-B8vA@**
>>> mail.gmail.com<CAGzL%2BFJ0Y1fY0R6AvqWbE-YpZL9dFNf%2BeDrTP%2Beo012v1-B8vA@mail.gmail.com>
>>>> 
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>> 
>>> Hi David,
>>> I can attest to the fact that imaginary friends do appear as early as
>>> three.
>>> When my daughter was 3 we travelled around Australia in a motorhome,
>>> apparently accompanied by an extra imaginary girl (whose name escapes me),
>>> a
>>> pair of imaginary twins called Hog and Sock (not sure what gender!) and a
>>> fluffy white imaginary dog called Maddi. I'm sure there were people right
>>> across the country scratching their heads as we had to wait while Hog and
>>> Sock had a turn on the swings before we could get back in the truck, and a
>>> very confused waitress in Darwin who got snapped at by a 3 year old when
>>> she
>>> tried to take all the extra (empty) chairs away from our table to give us
>>> more space! I sometimes wonder if this was a coping mechanism Natalie
>>> developed to deal with the fact that we were in a new place every couple
>>> of
>>> days and life was suddenly quite unpredictable, although I think these
>>> extra
>>> friends had appeared even before we left on the trip. I am sure it helped
>>> her gain some measure of control over her (and our) life. If it wasn't
>>> inconveniencing anyone we were happy to pander to the imaginary friends,
>>> but
>>> fortunately she was realistic enough to realise that the needs of real
>>> humans came first (i.e. if someone else was waiting for the swing or
>>> needed
>>> the empty chairs). When you are living in a confined space for 3 months
>>> you
>>> do whatever it takes to keep everyone happy!
>>> 
>>> cheers,
>>> Helen
>>> 
>>> On 12 August 2011 12:26, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Gadzooks, TWO of my favorite hobby horses in one posting: Julian Jaynes
>>>> and
>>>> imaginary friends. I don't want to fall between two hobby horses; I get
>>>> wobbly at the knees writing about even one of them
>>>> 
>>>> I used to think of imaginary friends as what Vygotsky referred to as a
>>>> transitional neoformation: something that appears around age 7 or 8 and
>>>> lasts until the the child is able to attach roles (which are functional
>>>> versions of imaginary friends) to actual people (around twelve or
>>>> thirteen).
>>>> 
>>>> Vygotsky describes it like this:
>>>> 
>>>> "Neoformations such as self love and self-evaulation remain, but the
>>>> symptoms of the crisis (affectation, posing) are transitional. In the
>>>> crisis
>>>> at age seven, because of the fact that a differentiation of the internal
>>>> and
>>>> external develops and intellectual experience first appears, a sharp
>>>> conflict of experiences also devleops. The child who does not know which
>>>> candy to choose--the bigger or the sweeter--finds himself in a state of
>>>> internal conflict even as he vacillates. The internal conflict
>>>> (contradiction of experiences and selection of his own experiences)
>>>> becomes
>>>> possible only at this time." (The Crisis at Seven, in "The Essential
>>>> Vygotsky", p. 494).
>>>> 
>>>> I still think that some imaginary friends are like this: something that
>>>> comes out of the same differentiation between internal and external that
>>>> gives rise to role play. Like me, the child hesitates between two hobby
>>>> horses: imaginary friends and real ones.
>>>> 
>>>> The imaginary friend then "volatilizes" into abstract rule play and
>>>> conceptual thinking (particularly the concept of "me" "myself" and "I").
>>>> Just as the child learns to rise to the concrete, by abstract away the
>>>> rule
>>>> from the role in instances of game play, the child learns to attach
>>>> the ideal figure to the behavior of actual people. This is particularly
>>>> true
>>>> of imaginary friends connected with adolescent diary keeping (e.g. Anne
>>>> Frank's imaginary friend "Kitty").
>>>> 
>>>> My wife's imaginary friend (also associated with keeping a diary), for
>>>> example, was called "Yi Lin" or "One Forest". As an adolescent she later
>>>> changed her name (which is the Chinese equivalent of "Jane Smith") into
>>>> "Spring Thunder", and although she insists that she did this for
>>>> political
>>>> reasons ("Spring Thunder" has a certain Cultural Revolution ring to it in
>>>> Chinese) it seems to me that it is more of a continuation of the
>>>> naturalistic imagery we see in "One Forest".
>>>> 
>>>> But I read a book recently ("Imaginary Companions and the Children Who
>>>> Create Them", by Marjorie Taylor, OUP 1999) which suggests that imaginary
>>>> companions often appear MUCH earlier than I thought they did (as early as
>>>> three or four years of age).
>>>> 
>>>> So it seems to me that they are not just reifications of imaginary play
>>>> or
>>>> ideal reconstructions of real people; they might be connected to the
>>>> child's
>>>> (very early) discovery of things like television, fiction, and the
>>>> child's
>>>> attempt to reproduce them in diaries (as WRITTEN self-directed speech).
>>>> 
>>>> ("One Forest" is also a homophone of a name of a popular magazine in
>>>> China
>>>> which publishes translations from abroad.)
>>>> 
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --- On Thu, 8/11/11, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>>> Subject: RE: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>> Date: Thursday, August 11, 2011, 2:19 AM
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Hi David,
>>>> 
>>>> I hope you won't mind if I reply to just one little corner of your very
>>>> eloquent message (I have not been able to keep pace with recent
>>>> discussions).
>>>> 
>>>> I am particularly interested in very early communication which, I think,
>>>> has much more of the 'meaty sensuousness' about it - not yet pared and
>>>> polished to the clear austerity of a sign system. It occurred to me that
>>>> 'internalised' verbal thought 'usually' involves a considerable degree of
>>>> paring and polishing - we perhaps learn to think with concepts rather
>>>> than
>>>> simply to 'relive' relational experiences in all their meaty
>>>> sensuousness. I
>>>> wondered, then, whether the fairly widespread incidence of 'imaginary
>>>> friends' might be understood, at least to some extent, in terms of an
>>>> early
>>>> reluctance to forego the relational richness of interpersonal
>>>> communication
>>>> as this comes to be 'internalised'. The feeling of relating to another
>>>> person is importantly different from the feeling of 'having a thought'
>>>> and
>>>> may, at many levels, feel more satisfying. This could lead on to echoes
>>>> of
>>>> Julian Jayne's argument about the relative recency of our 'ability' to
>>>> recognise
>>>> thoughts as internal 'products' of our own minds (how much our minds are
>>>> indeed our own is the question here!) but also into dangerous territory
>>>> where our preferred imaginary friend is omnipotent.
>>>> 
>>>> Being 'in' relation with another person is an altogether richer, more
>>>> complicated and sensually elaborate experience even than remembering or
>>>> thinking about being with someone and I think a lot of the yearning of
>>>> poetry relates to this sense of the gates of perception being clouded by
>>>> knowledge - once you have tasted the forbidden fruit there is no going
>>>> back
>>>> (or at least no easy going back - some people devote their lives to
>>>> contemplation, meditation, prayer and other ways of trying to still the
>>>> distracting ruckus of 'roof-brain chatter'.
>>>> 
>>>> All the best,
>>>> 
>>>> Rod
>>>> 
>>>> ______________________________**__________
>>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
>>>> Behalf
>>>> Of David Kellogg [vaughndogblack@yahoo.com]
>>>> Sent: 10 August 2011 16:27
>>>> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>>> 
>>>> Did I use the word "system"? I suppose I did. What I really mean is what
>>>> Halliday calls "meaning potential", the way that a traffic light can
>>>> potentially be red or yellow or green. It is what we might call leaving
>>>> things that we could say unsaid.
>>>> 
>>>> I guess I think of a system as being just a set of options, you know,
>>>> like
>>>> a traffic light, or a dictionary entry or the system of tense or
>>>> negation.
>>>> It's the semiotic resources that Mommy and Daddy provide you with, the
>>>> set
>>>> of metaphors that have already been made with the language, what Vygotsky
>>>> calls signification.
>>>> 
>>>> One of the key unresolved problems in CHAT (which you can see, for
>>>> example,
>>>> in the way Ratner disagrees with Wertsch, and even in the early
>>>> disagreements between Vygotsky and Leontiev over "activity" and
>>>> "semiosis")
>>>> is how culture gets "in": is it "internalized" or is it "appropriated"?
>>>> Is
>>>> it somehow co-constructed, by the individual on the one hand and the
>>>> society
>>>> on the other?
>>>> 
>>>> Of course, BOTH "internalization" and "appropriation" are metaphors. I
>>>> don't flee from the "internalization" metaphor the way that Martin does,
>>>> partly because I think of it as referring not to a body but as to a
>>>> nation,
>>>> a country, a city, a community, a family...or some particle thereof. In
>>>> this
>>>> sense (a sense which I suppose is better captured by "interiorization"
>>>> than
>>>> by "internalization", just as "reflection" is better captured by
>>>> "refraction") there is no duality; when you move from one nation to
>>>> another
>>>> you do not change worlds, nor do you change nations when you move from
>>>> one
>>>> city to another.
>>>> 
>>>> But I do have a problem--I think that we can't just get culture into the
>>>> picture by referring to cultural artefacts like signs and tools. The map
>>>> is
>>>> not the territory, and human relations are not, in essence, about signs
>>>> and
>>>> tools; they are about flesh and blood other people. It is here that I
>>>> think
>>>> distinguishing between meaning potential in a cultural artefact and the
>>>> actual meaning making that goes on between flesh and blood persons is
>>>> important, not least because BOTH of them develop and develop each other
>>>> in
>>>> a way that's not really explicable by just looking at the artefacts
>>>> themselves.
>>>> 
>>>> Consider, for example, the dictionary as a cultural artefact. You know,
>>>> in
>>>> the eighteenth century, dictionaries were a little like Bartlett's today.
>>>> They did contain definitions for the really thick-skulled (there was a
>>>> newly
>>>> literate middle class that had to have everything spelled out) but the
>>>> definitions were sometimes rather whimsical (e.g. "pensioner: a man whose
>>>> flattery is repaid with insolence") and the main thing people read them
>>>> for
>>>> was the learned quotations and snappy put-downs that were provided as
>>>> examples (hence Johnson's dictionary and of course the "Devil's
>>>> Dictionary"
>>>> of Ambrose Bierce).
>>>> 
>>>> So the function of a dictionary was not to systematize the language but
>>>> rather to provide resources for sense. It was to make you sound witty and
>>>> creative and original in the chocolate houses. I suppose it must have
>>>> been
>>>> rather annoying that dictionaries were so widely read, because it meant
>>>> that
>>>> many people in your chocolate house would know the joke before you told
>>>> it,
>>>> or, heaven forfend, try to tell the same joke themselves.But of course
>>>> dictionaries WERE widely read, and they became guides to meaning
>>>> potential
>>>> rather than a set of instances of actual wit.
>>>> 
>>>> In the late twentieth century, though, the pendulum began to swing the
>>>> other way, because CoBuild and other dictionaries began to inspect
>>>> computer
>>>> corpora of actual uses, and they discovered (for example) that it is much
>>>> more common to say, metaphorically, that you "run a business" than
>>>> concretely, that you run a hundred yards on your own two feet. To me,
>>>> though, all that means is that the new systemic "meaning potential" has
>>>> to
>>>> start with running a business, and that what I did this morning for
>>>> exercise
>>>> was a kind of metaphorical extension of running a business to my muscles
>>>> and
>>>> achilles tendons.
>>>> 
>>>> There is a good poem about the relationship between meaning potential and
>>>> actual meaning by Cecil Day-Lewis. It's metaphorical, of course! He
>>>> begins
>>>> by defining a sign for us, and pointing out that a tree is a sign too
>>>> (because it stands for itself, or if you want to be physiological about
>>>> it,
>>>> it produces an image on our retina which is interpreted by our brains as
>>>> a
>>>> tree.) But it's a sign without a system, without much unrealized meaning
>>>> potential.
>>>> 
>>>> This tree outside my window here,
>>>> Naked, umbrageous, fresh or sere,
>>>> Has neither chance nor will to be
>>>> Anything but a linden tree,
>>>> Even if its branches grew to span
>>>> The continent; for nature’s plan
>>>> Insists that infinite extension
>>>> Shall create no new dimension.
>>>> 
>>>>> From the first snuggling of the seed
>>>>> 
>>>> In earth, a branchy form’s decreed.
>>>> 
>>>> You have to admit the Creator was original. He was certainly forceful in
>>>> his creativity. But rather limited, when you look at it; in His later
>>>> career
>>>> He kept repeating Himself with only minor variations, and most of what
>>>> was
>>>> new was not very good. Human creativity is a different matter!.
>>>> 
>>>> Unwritten poems loom as if
>>>> They’d cover the whole of earthly life.
>>>> But each one, growing, learns to trim its
>>>> Impulse and meaning to the limits
>>>> Roughed out by me, then modified
>>>> In its own truth’s expanding light.
>>>> A poem, settling to its form,
>>>> Finds there’s no jailer, but a norm
>>>> Of conduct, and a fitting sphere
>>>> Which stops it wandering everywhere.
>>>> 
>>>> Human creativity, unlike nature, is an embarrassment of riches; we need
>>>> rhyme (which you notice Day-Lewis adheres to quite rigorously) and meter
>>>> to
>>>> keep us honest. As Adorno says, the bourgeoisie would like life to be
>>>> austere and art voluptuous, but we would really be much better off with
>>>> things the other way around: life full of actual meaning, and art full of
>>>> things left unsaid.
>>>> 
>>>> Now here Day-Lewis notes that there is a third thing--and it is the thing
>>>> that Bakhtin wrote almost exclusively about, something that is neither
>>>> system of meaning nor instance of meaning making, something that is
>>>> neither
>>>> signification nor purely individual sense: it is human relationships in
>>>> all
>>>> their complex, meaty sensuousness.
>>>> 
>>>> Are interpersonal relations more like intra-personal relations or are
>>>> they
>>>> more like societal relations? Are they more intra-psychological or more
>>>> trans-psychological? Are more things to be left said or unsaid? Half
>>>> said?
>>>> 
>>>> Are these going to be austere or voluptuous? Will they depend on
>>>> potential
>>>> or upon realization?
>>>> 
>>>> As for you, my love, it’s harder,
>>>> Though neither prisoner nor warder,
>>>> Not to desire you both: for love
>>>> Illudes us we can lightly move
>>>> Into a new dimension, where
>>>> The bounds of being disappear
>>>> And we make one impassioned cell.
>>>> So wanting to be all in all
>>>> Each for each, a man and a woman
>>>> Defy the limits of what’s human.
>>>> 
>>>> Voluptuous then, and almost intrapersonal--but this is a romantic, young
>>>> person's view. Day-Lewis wrote this late in life, after many years of
>>>> what
>>>> we would have to call development. Human development is not like natural
>>>> development; it means creating more potential rather than simply
>>>> realizing
>>>> it (and thus leaving less unsaid).
>>>> 
>>>> But when we cease to play explorers
>>>> And become settlers, clear before us
>>>> Lies the next need – to re-define
>>>> The boundary between yours and mine;
>>>> Else, one stays prisoner, one goes free.
>>>> Each to his own identity
>>>> Grown back, shall prove our love’s expression
>>>> Purer for this limitation.
>>>> Love’s essence, like a poem’s, shall spring
>>>> 
>>>>> From the not saying everything.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --- On Wed, 8/10/11, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>>> Subject: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>> Date: Wednesday, August 10, 2011, 10:59 AM
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Hi David Ke
>>>> 
>>>> Your response to Nickolai mentioned the constant movement of living
>>>> metaphor
>>>> and language as a conventionalized SYSTEM.  This seems to me to be one
>>>> more
>>>> example of this living GENERATIVE movement of consciousness.
>>>> 
>>>> Larry
>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Helen Grimmett
>>> PhD Student, Teaching Associate
>>> Faculty of Education
>>> Monash University, Peninsula Campus
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Message: 6
>>> Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:54:03 -0700 (PDT)
>>> From: David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Message-ID:
>>>       <1313121243.6209.**YahooMailClassic@web110315.**mail.gq1.yahoo.com<1313121243.6209.YahooMailClassic@web110315.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
>>>> 
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>>> 
>>> Dear Rob:
>>> Â
>>> Thanks for the kind words, and above all for the Wallace Stevens, neither
>>> fragment of which I knew, but whose rather self-defeating sentiments I am
>>> very fond of (for reasons that actually do have something to do with the
>>> reasons that I will probably never be able to unload any of this stuff in
>>> the Journal of Aesthetic Education or any other peer-reviewed journal).
>>> Â
>>> I like to think of Stevens as the greatest insurance agent who every
>>> wrote poetry about it. Insurance companies make money by betting with you
>>> that you are wrong when you wake up in the night and imagine that something
>>> absolutely catastrophic is going to happen to you in the morning.
>>> Â
>>> But what happens when an insurance company issues a fire policy on its
>>> own headquarters? In both fragments you cite, Stevens picks up where Blake
>>> leaves off:
>>> Â
>>> Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
>>> Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
>>> You throw the sand against the wind,
>>> And the wind blows it back again.
>>> 
>>> And every sand becomes a gem
>>> Reflected in the beams divine;
>>> Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
>>> But still in Israel's paths they shine.
>>> 
>>> The Atoms of Democritus
>>> And Newton's Particles of Light
>>> Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
>>> Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.Â
>>> 
>>> Blake would never bother to take out life insurance on Israel's paths and
>>> tents; he believes in their eternal life, and he looks forward, gleefully,
>>> to collecting on Voltaire and Rousseau.
>>> Â
>>> I think Stevens is not so sure. When we read "Anecdote of a Jar" or "The
>>> Idea of Order"  we can see that he believes that any human artefact
>>> imposes reasons and a kind of order in the place of chaotic nature.
>>> Â
>>> The way a Tibetan woman dresses, as she walks "korla" around the Jokhang
>>> Temple in Lhasa, imposes a clockwork regularity on the whole of existence.
>>> Vygotsky? Oh, I think there is no question about it. He would have betÂ
>>> with Voltaire and Rousseau against Israel's paths and tents (probably
>>> wearing a square hat or some kind of phylacteries).
>>> Â
>>> There is a good defense of Vygotsky's rationalism in Bakhurst's article
>>> "Vygotsky's Demons" (in the Cambridge Companion), and I agree with it. The
>>> only really rationalist demon that Bakhurst refuses to defend is the one
>>> that troubles Mike from time to time, the idea that cultures must be said to
>>> be different, and that some of them must be said to be more developed than
>>> others.
>>> Â
>>> Actually, even this seems defensible to me, but we have to face the fact
>>> that "we" will probably belong to the senescent, post-development others
>>> rather than to the most developed. Take, for example, the crudest possible
>>> quantitative measure of a "developed" society, namely the average life
>>> expectancy it offers to its newborn children. In China, the average life
>>> expectancy in Tibet (at least in the rural areas) is in the thirties and
>>> forties, while the rest of the country has easily twice that.
>>> Â
>>> Life expectancy fell when Russia re-established capitalism, and of course
>>> it is falling in the USA, and it seems to me this too suggests something
>>> about their changing level of social and cultural development. So on the
>>> one hand, development is real, substantial, and it does apply not just to
>>> individual lives but also to those of cultures and societies. And on other,
>>> unlike individual development, it can really never said to be over and
>>> therefore there can't be any absolute sense in which any race has won the
>>> race.
>>> Â
>>> I think Stevens would have felt the contradiction between those two
>>> statements, but Vygotsky would have been able to explain it. Wearing a
>>> sombrero!
>>> Â
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Â
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --- On Thu, 8/11/11, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Date: Thursday, August 11, 2011, 7:04 AM
>>> 
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg,
>>> Thank-you for this wonderful posting.
>>> 
>>>> From what I have been reading of your work
>>>> 
>>> for over a year now, writing like this
>>> represents your best work.
>>> 
>>> I recommend you submit something to the
>>> *Journal of Aesthetic Education.*
>>> 
>>> Thanks for the poetry and your commentary.
>>> I have never read anything by Cecil Day-Lewis and now I must have more.
>>> Here are the last two stanzas -from Wallace Stevens........
>>> 
>>> *Six Significant Landscapes*
>>> 
>>> I include the first one for the sheer beauty of metaphor and the last one
>>> just for fun.
>>> 
>>> Robert Lake
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
>>> Nor the chisels of the long streets,
>>> Nor the mallets of the domes
>>> And high towers,
>>> Can carve
>>> What one star can carve,
>>> Shining through the grape-leaves.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Rationalists, wearing square hats,
>>> Think, in square rooms,
>>> Looking at the floor,
>>> Looking at the ceiling.
>>> They confine themselves
>>> To right-angled triangles.
>>> If they tried rhomboids,
>>> Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
>>> As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
>>> Rationalists would wear sombreros.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:27 AM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
>>>> **wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Did I use the word "system"? I suppose I did. What I really mean is what
>>>> Halliday calls "meaning potential", the way that a traffic light can
>>>> potentially be red or yellow or green. It is what we might call leaving
>>>> things that we could say unsaid.
>>>> 
>>>> I guess I think of a system as being just a set of options, you know,
>>>> like
>>>> a traffic light, or a dictionary entry or the system of tense or
>>>> negation.
>>>> It's the semiotic resources that Mommy and Daddy provide you with, the
>>>> set
>>>> of metaphors that have already been made with the language, what Vygotsky
>>>> calls signification.
>>>> 
>>>> One of the key unresolved problems in CHAT (which you can see, for
>>>> example,
>>>> in the way Ratner disagrees with Wertsch, and even in the early
>>>> disagreements between Vygotsky and Leontiev over "activity" and
>>>> "semiosis")
>>>> is how culture gets "in": is it "internalized" or is it "appropriated"?
>>>> Is
>>>> it somehow co-constructed, by the individual on the one hand and the
>>>> society
>>>> on the other?
>>>> 
>>>> Of course, BOTH "internalization" and "appropriation" are metaphors. I
>>>> don't flee from the "internalization" metaphor the way that Martin does,
>>>> partly because I think of it as referring not to a body but as to a
>>>> nation,
>>>> a country, a city, a community, a family...or some particle thereof. In
>>>> this
>>>> sense (a sense which I suppose is better captured by "interiorization"
>>>> than
>>>> by "internalization", just as "reflection" is better captured by
>>>> "refraction") there is no duality; when you move from one nation to
>>>> another
>>>> you do not change worlds, nor do you change nations when you move from
>>>> one
>>>> city to another.
>>>> 
>>>> But I do have a problem--I think that we can't just get culture into the
>>>> picture by referring to cultural artefacts like signs and tools. The map
>>>> is
>>>> not the territory, and human relations are not, in essence, about signs
>>>> and
>>>> tools; they are about flesh and blood other people. It is here that I
>>>> think
>>>> distinguishing between meaning potential in a cultural artefact and the
>>>> actual meaning making that goes on between flesh and blood persons is
>>>> important, not least because BOTH of them develop and develop each other
>>>> in
>>>> a way that's not really explicable by just looking at the artefacts
>>>> themselves.
>>>> 
>>>> Consider, for example, the dictionary as a cultural artefact. You know,
>>>> in
>>>> the eighteenth century, dictionaries were a little like Bartlett's today.
>>>> They did contain definitions for the really thick-skulled (there was a
>>>> newly
>>>> literate middle class that had to have everything spelled out) but the
>>>> definitions were sometimes rather whimsical (e.g. "pensioner: a man whose
>>>> flattery is repaid with insolence") and the main thing people read them
>>>> for
>>>> was the learned quotations and snappy put-downs that were provided as
>>>> examples (hence Johnson's dictionary and of course the "Devil's
>>>> Dictionary"
>>>> of Ambrose Bierce).
>>>> 
>>>> So the function of a dictionary was not to systematize the language but
>>>> rather to provide resources for sense. It was to make you sound witty and
>>>> creative and original in the chocolate houses. I suppose it must have
>>>> been
>>>> rather annoying that dictionaries were so widely read, because it meant
>>>> that
>>>> many people in your chocolate house would know the joke before you told
>>>> it,
>>>> or, heaven forfend, try to tell the same joke themselves.But of course
>>>> dictionaries WERE widely read, and they became guides to meaning
>>>> potential
>>>> rather than a set of instances of actual wit.
>>>> 
>>>> In the late twentieth century, though, the pendulum began to swing the
>>>> other way, because CoBuild and other dictionaries began to inspect
>>>> computer
>>>> corpora of actual uses, and they discovered (for example) that it is much
>>>> more common to say, metaphorically, that you "run a business" than
>>>> concretely, that you run a hundred yards on your own two feet. To me,
>>>> though, all that means is that the new systemic "meaning potential" has
>>>> to
>>>> start with running a business, and that what I did this morning for
>>>> exercise
>>>> was a kind of metaphorical extension of running a business to my muscles
>>>> and
>>>> achilles tendons.
>>>> 
>>>> There is a good poem about the relationship between meaning potential and
>>>> actual meaning by Cecil Day-Lewis. It's metaphorical, of course! He
>>>> begins
>>>> by defining a sign for us, and pointing out that a tree is a sign too
>>>> (because it stands for itself, or if you want to be physiological about
>>>> it,
>>>> it produces an image on our retina which is interpreted by our brains as
>>>> a
>>>> tree.) But it's a sign without a system, without much unrealized meaning
>>>> potential.
>>>> 
>>>> This tree outside my window here,
>>>> Naked, umbrageous, fresh or sere,
>>>> Has neither chance nor will to be
>>>> Anything but a linden tree,
>>>> Even if its branches grew to span
>>>> The continent; for nature’s plan
>>>> Insists that infinite extension
>>>> Shall create no new dimension.
>>>> 
>>>>> From the first snuggling of the seed
>>>>> 
>>>> In earth, a branchy form’s decreed.
>>>> 
>>>> You have to admit the Creator was original. He was certainly forceful in
>>>> his creativity. But rather limited, when you look at it; in His later
>>>> career
>>>> He kept repeating Himself with only minor variations, and most of what
>>>> was
>>>> new was not very good. Human creativity is a different matter!.
>>>> 
>>>> Unwritten poems loom as if
>>>> They’d cover the whole of earthly life.
>>>> But each one, growing, learns to trim its
>>>> Impulse and meaning to the limits
>>>> Roughed out by me, then modified
>>>> In its own truth’s expanding light.
>>>> A poem, settling to its form,
>>>> Finds there’s no jailer, but a norm
>>>> Of conduct, and a fitting sphere
>>>> Which stops it wandering everywhere.
>>>> 
>>>> Human creativity, unlike nature, is an embarrassment of riches; we need
>>>> rhyme (which you notice Day-Lewis adheres to quite rigorously) and meter
>>>> to
>>>> keep us honest. As Adorno says, the bourgeoisie would like life to be
>>>> austere and art voluptuous, but we would really be much better off with
>>>> things the other way around: life full of actual meaning, and art full of
>>>> things left unsaid.
>>>> 
>>>> Now here Day-Lewis notes that there is a third thing--and it is the thing
>>>> that Bakhtin wrote almost exclusively about, something that is neither
>>>> system of meaning nor instance of meaning making, something that is
>>>> neither
>>>> signification nor purely individual sense: it is human relationships in
>>>> all
>>>> their complex, meaty sensuousness.
>>>> 
>>>> Are interpersonal relations more like intra-personal relations or are
>>>> they
>>>> more like societal relations? Are they more intra-psychological or more
>>>> trans-psychological? Are more things to be left said or unsaid? Half
>>>> said?
>>>> 
>>>> Are these going to be austere or voluptuous? Will they depend on
>>>> potential
>>>> or upon realization?
>>>> 
>>>> As for you, my love, it’s harder,
>>>> Though neither prisoner nor warder,
>>>> Not to desire you both: for love
>>>> Illudes us we can lightly move
>>>> Into a new dimension, where
>>>> The bounds of being disappear
>>>> And we make one impassioned cell.
>>>> So wanting to be all in all
>>>> Each for each, a man and a woman
>>>> Defy the limits of what’s human.
>>>> 
>>>> Voluptuous then, and almost intrapersonal--but this is a romantic, young
>>>> person's view. Day-Lewis wrote this late in life, after many years of
>>>> what
>>>> we would have to call development. Human development is not like natural
>>>> development; it means creating more potential rather than simply
>>>> realizing
>>>> it (and thus leaving less unsaid).
>>>> 
>>>> Â  But when we cease to play explorers
>>>> And become settlers, clear before us
>>>> Lies the next need – to re-define
>>>> The boundary between yours and mine;
>>>> Else, one stays prisoner, one goes free.
>>>> Each to his own identity
>>>> Grown back, shall prove our love’s expression
>>>> Purer for this limitation.
>>>> Love’s essence, like a poem’s, shall spring
>>>> 
>>>>> From the not saying everything.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --- On Wed, 8/10/11, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>>> Subject: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>> Date: Wednesday, August 10, 2011, 10:59 AM
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Hi David Ke
>>>> 
>>>> Your response to Nickolai mentioned the constant movement of living
>>>> metaphor
>>>> and language as a conventionalized SYSTEM.  This seems to me to be one
>>>> more
>>>> example of this living GENERATIVE movement of consciousness.
>>>> 
>>>> Larry
>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>>> *Assistant Professor
>>> Social Foundations of Education
>>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>>> Georgia Southern University
>>> P. O. Box 8144
>>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>>> Statesboro, GAÂ  30460
>>> 
>>> *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>>> midwife.*
>>> *-*John Dewey.
>>> ______________________________**____________
>>> _____
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Message: 7
>>> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:13:49 -0400
>>> From: Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Imaginary Friends
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>,
>>>       helen.grimmett@monash.edu, vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
>>> Message-ID:
>>>       <CAGivucn1v0YnQmS21M4+**TBiz2Oifo4qU8Ab_QFv2pqFQA+**
>>> vFCg@mail.gmail.com<CAGivucn1v0YnQmS21M4%2BTBiz2Oifo4qU8Ab_QFv2pqFQA%2BvFCg@mail.gmail.com>
>>>> 
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>>> 
>>> Dear Helen, David, Larry and all,
>>> I appreciated the postings about imaginary friends. A few weeks ago, I
>>> wrote
>>> this for
>>> a section of* Vygotsky on Education Primer* for Peter Lang Publishers,
>>> which
>>> should be out in March of 2012.
>>> In it I cite Laura Berk and add a story from a friend (cited with
>>> permission).*
>>> 
>>> *
>>> 
>>> Berk shares another powerful example of private speech at work (or should
>>> I
>>> say at play) which can be seen in the form of children creating imaginary
>>> playmates. Berk sees this as much more than self entertainment for bored
>>> children. “Dialogues with make-believe partners may serve a special
>>> coping
>>> function, offering a safe context in which to practice social skills with
>>> nonthreatening “playmates† before transferring them to the real world
>>> of
>>> peer play†(2004. p.96). Some parents and teachers have bought into the
>>> idea
>>> that such activities should be restricted or stopped altogether.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> One story comes from two sisters who shared an imaginary playmate named
>>> Speedy Harbor. These two girls were often cared for by their aunt since
>>> the
>>> parent’s work involved quite a bit of travel. The aunt decided that the
>>> girls were spending too much time with the imaginary playmate so one day
>>> she
>>> told the girls that Speedy Harbor had died. Needless to say they were
>>> really
>>> upset by this news so they decided to have a funeral for Speedy Harbor by
>>> placing him in a shoebox and burying him. Years later one of the sisters
>>> told this story to her classmates in an undergraduate psychology class and
>>> of course the professor was horrified.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> According to Berk, “25-45 percent of 3-7 year olds have at least one
>>> imaginary friend, and many more than one† (ibid, p.97). Other estimates
>>> are
>>> higher. For example Taylor, Carlson, Maring, Gerow,& Charley (2004)
>>> reported
>>> that “Overall, 65% of children up to the age of 7 had imaginary
>>> companions
>>> at some point during their lives†(p.1,abstract). Further research is
>>> needed
>>> in this area but as of this moment in 2011, it is clear that imaginary
>>> friends for the most part play a positive role in social processes of
>>> development and language internalization.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Have a great weekend and tell your imaginary friends I said hi!
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Robert Lake
>>> 
>>> 
>>> * *
>>> * *
>>> 
>>> *Berk, L.(1992). Children’s private speech:An overview of theory and the
>>> status of research. In R.M. Diaz & L. Berk (Eds.), Private speech: From
>>> social interaction to self-regulation. Hillsdale, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum
>>> Associates.*
>>> * *
>>> 
>>> * *
>>> * *
>>> 
>>> *Berk, L. (2004). Awakening Children's Minds: How Parents and Teachers Can
>>> Make a Difference. Cary, NC. Oxford University Press. *
>>> * *
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 11:04 PM, Helen Grimmett
>>> <helen.grimmett@monash.edu>**wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi David,
>>>> I can attest to the fact that imaginary friends do appear as early as
>>>> three.
>>>> When my daughter was 3 we travelled around Australia in a motorhome,
>>>> apparently accompanied by an extra imaginary girl (whose name escapes
>>>> me),
>>>> a
>>>> pair of imaginary twins called Hog and Sock (not sure what gender!) and a
>>>> fluffy white imaginary dog called Maddi. I'm sure there were people right
>>>> across the country scratching their heads as we had to wait while Hog and
>>>> Sock had a turn on the swings before we could get back in the truck, and
>>>> a
>>>> very confused waitress in Darwin who got snapped at by a 3 year old when
>>>> she
>>>> tried to take all the extra (empty) chairs away from our table to give us
>>>> more space! I sometimes wonder if this was a coping mechanism Natalie
>>>> developed to deal with the fact that we were in a new place every couple
>>>> of
>>>> days and life was suddenly quite unpredictable, although I think these
>>>> extra
>>>> friends had appeared even before we left on the trip. I am sure it helped
>>>> her gain some measure of control over her (and our) life. If it wasn't
>>>> inconveniencing anyone we were happy to pander to the imaginary friends,
>>>> but
>>>> fortunately she was realistic enough to realise that the needs of real
>>>> humans came first (i.e. if someone else was waiting for the swing or
>>>> needed
>>>> the empty chairs). When you are living in a confined space for 3 months
>>>> you
>>>> do whatever it takes to keep everyone happy!
>>>> 
>>>> cheers,
>>>> Helen
>>>> 
>>>> On 12 August 2011 12:26, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Gadzooks, TWO of my favorite hobby horses in one posting: Julian Jaynes
>>>>> 
>>>> and
>>>> 
>>>>> imaginary friends. I don't want to fall between two hobby horses; I get
>>>>> wobbly at the knees writing about even one of them
>>>>> 
>>>>> I used to think of imaginary friends as what Vygotsky referred to as a
>>>>> transitional neoformation: something that appears around age 7 or 8 and
>>>>> lasts until the the child is able to attach roles (which are functional
>>>>> versions of imaginary friends) to actual people (around twelve or
>>>>> 
>>>> thirteen).
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Vygotsky describes it like this:
>>>>> 
>>>>> "Neoformations such as self love and self-evaulation remain, but the
>>>>> symptoms of the crisis (affectation, posing) are transitional. In the
>>>>> 
>>>> crisis
>>>> 
>>>>> at age seven, because of the fact that a differentiation of the internal
>>>>> 
>>>> and
>>>> 
>>>>> external develops and intellectual experience first appears, a sharp
>>>>> conflict of experiences also devleops. The child who does not know which
>>>>> candy to choose--the bigger or the sweeter--finds himself in a state of
>>>>> internal conflict even as he vacillates. The internal conflict
>>>>> (contradiction of experiences and selection of his own experiences)
>>>>> 
>>>> becomes
>>>> 
>>>>> possible only at this time." (The Crisis at Seven, in "The Essential
>>>>> Vygotsky", p. 494).
>>>>> 
>>>>> I still think that some imaginary friends are like this: something that
>>>>> comes out of the same differentiation between internal and external that
>>>>> gives rise to role play. Like me, the child hesitates between two hobby
>>>>> horses: imaginary friends and real ones.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The imaginary friend then "volatilizes" into abstract rule play and
>>>>> conceptual thinking (particularly the concept of "me" "myself" and "I").
>>>>> Just as the child learns to rise to the concrete, by abstract away the
>>>>> 
>>>> rule
>>>> 
>>>>> from the role in instances of game play, the child learns to attach
>>>>> the ideal figure to the behavior of actual people. This is particularly
>>>>> 
>>>> true
>>>> 
>>>>> of imaginary friends connected with adolescent diary keeping (e.g. Anne
>>>>> Frank's imaginary friend "Kitty").
>>>>> 
>>>>> My wife's imaginary friend (also associated with keeping a diary), for
>>>>> example, was called "Yi Lin" or "One Forest". As an adolescent she later
>>>>> changed her name (which is the Chinese equivalent of "Jane Smith") into
>>>>> "Spring Thunder", and although she insists that she did this for
>>>>> 
>>>> political
>>>> 
>>>>> reasons ("Spring Thunder" has a certain Cultural Revolution ring to it
>>>>> in
>>>>> Chinese) it seems to me that it is more of a continuation of the
>>>>> naturalistic imagery we see in "One Forest".
>>>>> 
>>>>> But I read a book recently ("Imaginary Companions and the Children Who
>>>>> Create Them", by Marjorie Taylor, OUP 1999) which suggests that
>>>>> imaginary
>>>>> companions often appear MUCH earlier than I thought they did (as early
>>>>> as
>>>>> three or four years of age).
>>>>> 
>>>>> So it seems to me that they are not just reifications of imaginary play
>>>>> 
>>>> or
>>>> 
>>>>> ideal reconstructions of real people; they might be connected to the
>>>>> 
>>>> child's
>>>> 
>>>>> (very early) discovery of things like television, fiction, and the
>>>>> 
>>>> child's
>>>> 
>>>>> attempt to reproduce them in diaries (as WRITTEN self-directed speech).
>>>>> 
>>>>> ("One Forest" is also a homophone of a name of a popular magazine in
>>>>> 
>>>> China
>>>> 
>>>>> which publishes translations from abroad.)
>>>>> 
>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --- On Thu, 8/11/11, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>>>> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>>>> Subject: RE: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>> Date: Thursday, August 11, 2011, 2:19 AM
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi David,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I hope you won't mind if I reply to just one little corner of your very
>>>>> eloquent message (I have not been able to keep pace with recent
>>>>> discussions).
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am particularly interested in very early communication which, I think,
>>>>> has much more of the 'meaty sensuousness' about it - not yet pared and
>>>>> polished to the clear austerity of a sign system. It occurred to me that
>>>>> 'internalised' verbal thought 'usually' involves a considerable degree
>>>>> of
>>>>> paring and polishing - we perhaps learn to think with concepts rather
>>>>> 
>>>> than
>>>> 
>>>>> simply to 'relive' relational experiences in all their meaty
>>>>> 
>>>> sensuousness. I
>>>> 
>>>>> wondered, then, whether the fairly widespread incidence of 'imaginary
>>>>> friends' might be understood, at least to some extent, in terms of an
>>>>> 
>>>> early
>>>> 
>>>>> reluctance to forego the relational richness of interpersonal
>>>>> 
>>>> communication
>>>> 
>>>>> as this comes to be 'internalised'. The feeling of relating to another
>>>>> person is importantly different from the feeling of 'having a thought'
>>>>> 
>>>> and
>>>> 
>>>>> may, at many levels, feel more satisfying. This could lead on to echoes
>>>>> 
>>>> of
>>>> 
>>>>> Julian Jayne's argument about the relative recency of our 'ability' to
>>>>> recognise
>>>>> thoughts as internal 'products' of our own minds (how much our minds are
>>>>> indeed our own is the question here!) but also into dangerous territory
>>>>> where our preferred imaginary friend is omnipotent.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Being 'in' relation with another person is an altogether richer, more
>>>>> complicated and sensually elaborate experience even than remembering or
>>>>> thinking about being with someone and I think a lot of the yearning of
>>>>> poetry relates to this sense of the gates of perception being clouded by
>>>>> knowledge - once you have tasted the forbidden fruit there is no going
>>>>> 
>>>> back
>>>> 
>>>>> (or at least no easy going back - some people devote their lives to
>>>>> contemplation, meditation, prayer and other ways of trying to still the
>>>>> distracting ruckus of 'roof-brain chatter'.
>>>>> 
>>>>> All the best,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Rod
>>>>> 
>>>>> ______________________________**__________
>>>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
>>>>> 
>>>> Behalf
>>>> 
>>>>> Of David Kellogg [vaughndogblack@yahoo.com]
>>>>> Sent: 10 August 2011 16:27
>>>>> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
>>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>>>> 
>>>>> Did I use the word "system"? I suppose I did. What I really mean is what
>>>>> Halliday calls "meaning potential", the way that a traffic light can
>>>>> potentially be red or yellow or green. It is what we might call leaving
>>>>> things that we could say unsaid.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I guess I think of a system as being just a set of options, you know,
>>>>> 
>>>> like
>>>> 
>>>>> a traffic light, or a dictionary entry or the system of tense or
>>>>> 
>>>> negation.
>>>> 
>>>>> It's the semiotic resources that Mommy and Daddy provide you with, the
>>>>> 
>>>> set
>>>> 
>>>>> of metaphors that have already been made with the language, what
>>>>> Vygotsky
>>>>> calls signification.
>>>>> 
>>>>> One of the key unresolved problems in CHAT (which you can see, for
>>>>> 
>>>> example,
>>>> 
>>>>> in the way Ratner disagrees with Wertsch, and even in the early
>>>>> disagreements between Vygotsky and Leontiev over "activity" and
>>>>> 
>>>> "semiosis")
>>>> 
>>>>> is how culture gets "in": is it "internalized" or is it "appropriated"?
>>>>> 
>>>> Is
>>>> 
>>>>> it somehow co-constructed, by the individual on the one hand and the
>>>>> 
>>>> society
>>>> 
>>>>> on the other?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Of course, BOTH "internalization" and "appropriation" are metaphors. I
>>>>> don't flee from the "internalization" metaphor the way that Martin does,
>>>>> partly because I think of it as referring not to a body but as to a
>>>>> 
>>>> nation,
>>>> 
>>>>> a country, a city, a community, a family...or some particle thereof. In
>>>>> 
>>>> this
>>>> 
>>>>> sense (a sense which I suppose is better captured by "interiorization"
>>>>> 
>>>> than
>>>> 
>>>>> by "internalization", just as "reflection" is better captured by
>>>>> "refraction") there is no duality; when you move from one nation to
>>>>> 
>>>> another
>>>> 
>>>>> you do not change worlds, nor do you change nations when you move from
>>>>> 
>>>> one
>>>> 
>>>>> city to another.
>>>>> 
>>>>> But I do have a problem--I think that we can't just get culture into the
>>>>> picture by referring to cultural artefacts like signs and tools. The map
>>>>> 
>>>> is
>>>> 
>>>>> not the territory, and human relations are not, in essence, about signs
>>>>> 
>>>> and
>>>> 
>>>>> tools; they are about flesh and blood other people. It is here that I
>>>>> 
>>>> think
>>>> 
>>>>> distinguishing between meaning potential in a cultural artefact and the
>>>>> actual meaning making that goes on between flesh and blood persons is
>>>>> important, not least because BOTH of them develop and develop each other
>>>>> 
>>>> in
>>>> 
>>>>> a way that's not really explicable by just looking at the artefacts
>>>>> themselves.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Consider, for example, the dictionary as a cultural artefact. You know,
>>>>> 
>>>> in
>>>> 
>>>>> the eighteenth century, dictionaries were a little like Bartlett's
>>>>> today.
>>>>> They did contain definitions for the really thick-skulled (there was a
>>>>> 
>>>> newly
>>>> 
>>>>> literate middle class that had to have everything spelled out) but the
>>>>> definitions were sometimes rather whimsical (e.g. "pensioner: a man
>>>>> whose
>>>>> flattery is repaid with insolence") and the main thing people read them
>>>>> 
>>>> for
>>>> 
>>>>> was the learned quotations and snappy put-downs that were provided as
>>>>> examples (hence Johnson's dictionary and of course the "Devil's
>>>>> 
>>>> Dictionary"
>>>> 
>>>>> of Ambrose Bierce).
>>>>> 
>>>>> So the function of a dictionary was not to systematize the language but
>>>>> rather to provide resources for sense. It was to make you sound witty
>>>>> and
>>>>> creative and original in the chocolate houses. I suppose it must have
>>>>> 
>>>> been
>>>> 
>>>>> rather annoying that dictionaries were so widely read, because it meant
>>>>> 
>>>> that
>>>> 
>>>>> many people in your chocolate house would know the joke before you told
>>>>> 
>>>> it,
>>>> 
>>>>> or, heaven forfend, try to tell the same joke themselves.But of course
>>>>> dictionaries WERE widely read, and they became guides to meaning
>>>>> 
>>>> potential
>>>> 
>>>>> rather than a set of instances of actual wit.
>>>>> 
>>>>> In the late twentieth century, though, the pendulum began to swing the
>>>>> other way, because CoBuild and other dictionaries began to inspect
>>>>> 
>>>> computer
>>>> 
>>>>> corpora of actual uses, and they discovered (for example) that it is
>>>>> much
>>>>> more common to say, metaphorically, that you "run a business" than
>>>>> concretely, that you run a hundred yards on your own two feet. To me,
>>>>> though, all that means is that the new systemic "meaning potential" has
>>>>> 
>>>> to
>>>> 
>>>>> start with running a business, and that what I did this morning for
>>>>> 
>>>> exercise
>>>> 
>>>>> was a kind of metaphorical extension of running a business to my muscles
>>>>> 
>>>> and
>>>> 
>>>>> achilles tendons.
>>>>> 
>>>>> There is a good poem about the relationship between meaning potential
>>>>> and
>>>>> actual meaning by Cecil Day-Lewis. It's metaphorical, of course! He
>>>>> 
>>>> begins
>>>> 
>>>>> by defining a sign for us, and pointing out that a tree is a sign too
>>>>> (because it stands for itself, or if you want to be physiological about
>>>>> 
>>>> it,
>>>> 
>>>>> it produces an image on our retina which is interpreted by our brains as
>>>>> 
>>>> a
>>>> 
>>>>> tree.) But it's a sign without a system, without much unrealized meaning
>>>>> potential.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This tree outside my window here,
>>>>> Naked, umbrageous, fresh or sere,
>>>>> Has neither chance nor will to be
>>>>> Anything but a linden tree,
>>>>> Even if its branches grew to span
>>>>> The continent; for nature’s plan
>>>>> Insists that infinite extension
>>>>> Shall create no new dimension.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> From the first snuggling of the seed
>>>>>> 
>>>>> In earth, a branchy form’s decreed.
>>>>> 
>>>>> You have to admit the Creator was original. He was certainly forceful in
>>>>> his creativity. But rather limited, when you look at it; in His later
>>>>> 
>>>> career
>>>> 
>>>>> He kept repeating Himself with only minor variations, and most of what
>>>>> 
>>>> was
>>>> 
>>>>> new was not very good. Human creativity is a different matter!.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Unwritten poems loom as if
>>>>> They’d cover the whole of earthly life.
>>>>> But each one, growing, learns to trim its
>>>>> Impulse and meaning to the limits
>>>>> Roughed out by me, then modified
>>>>> In its own truth’s expanding light.
>>>>> A poem, settling to its form,
>>>>> Finds there’s no jailer, but a norm
>>>>> Of conduct, and a fitting sphere
>>>>> Which stops it wandering everywhere.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Human creativity, unlike nature, is an embarrassment of riches; we need
>>>>> rhyme (which you notice Day-Lewis adheres to quite rigorously) and meter
>>>>> 
>>>> to
>>>> 
>>>>> keep us honest. As Adorno says, the bourgeoisie would like life to be
>>>>> austere and art voluptuous, but we would really be much better off with
>>>>> things the other way around: life full of actual meaning, and art full
>>>>> of
>>>>> things left unsaid.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Now here Day-Lewis notes that there is a third thing--and it is the
>>>>> thing
>>>>> that Bakhtin wrote almost exclusively about, something that is neither
>>>>> system of meaning nor instance of meaning making, something that is
>>>>> 
>>>> neither
>>>> 
>>>>> signification nor purely individual sense: it is human relationships in
>>>>> 
>>>> all
>>>> 
>>>>> their complex, meaty sensuousness.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Are interpersonal relations more like intra-personal relations or are
>>>>> 
>>>> they
>>>> 
>>>>> more like societal relations? Are they more intra-psychological or more
>>>>> trans-psychological? Are more things to be left said or unsaid? Half
>>>>> 
>>>> said?
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Are these going to be austere or voluptuous? Will they depend on
>>>>> 
>>>> potential
>>>> 
>>>>> or upon realization?
>>>>> 
>>>>> As for you, my love, it’s harder,
>>>>> Though neither prisoner nor warder,
>>>>> Not to desire you both: for love
>>>>> Illudes us we can lightly move
>>>>> Into a new dimension, where
>>>>> The bounds of being disappear
>>>>> And we make one impassioned cell.
>>>>> So wanting to be all in all
>>>>> Each for each, a man and a woman
>>>>> Defy the limits of what’s human.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Voluptuous then, and almost intrapersonal--but this is a romantic, young
>>>>> person's view. Day-Lewis wrote this late in life, after many years of
>>>>> 
>>>> what
>>>> 
>>>>> we would have to call development. Human development is not like natural
>>>>> development; it means creating more potential rather than simply
>>>>> 
>>>> realizing
>>>> 
>>>>> it (and thus leaving less unsaid).
>>>>> 
>>>>> But when we cease to play explorers
>>>>> And become settlers, clear before us
>>>>> Lies the next need – to re-define
>>>>> The boundary between yours and mine;
>>>>> Else, one stays prisoner, one goes free.
>>>>> Each to his own identity
>>>>> Grown back, shall prove our love’s expression
>>>>> Purer for this limitation.
>>>>> Love’s essence, like a poem’s, shall spring
>>>>> 
>>>>>> From the not saying everything.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --- On Wed, 8/10/11, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>>>> Subject: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>> Date: Wednesday, August 10, 2011, 10:59 AM
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi David Ke
>>>>> 
>>>>> Your response to Nickolai mentioned the constant movement of living
>>>>> metaphor
>>>>> and language as a conventionalized SYSTEM.  This seems to me to be one
>>>>> 
>>>> more
>>>> 
>>>>> example of this living GENERATIVE movement of consciousness.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Larry
>>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>>> _____
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>>> _____
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>>> _____
>>>>> xmca mailing list
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>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Helen Grimmett
>>>> PhD Student, Teaching Associate
>>>> Faculty of Education
>>>> Monash University, Peninsula Campus
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>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>>> *Assistant Professor
>>> Social Foundations of Education
>>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>>> Georgia Southern University
>>> P. O. Box 8144
>>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>>> Statesboro, GA  30460
>>> 
>>> *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>>> midwife.*
>>> *-*John Dewey.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Message: 8
>>> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:08:04 -0400
>>> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Message-ID: <66D2727E-5C2E-47E3-81ED-**C39EE66C20AF@duq.edu<66D2727E-5C2E-47E3-81ED-C39EE66C20AF@duq.edu>
>>>> 
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>> 
>>> Larry, David...
>>> 
>>> I don't like the word "internalization" because I can't see that anything
>>> internal is involved! As LSV put it:
>>> 
>>> “Consciousness does not occur as a specific category, as a specific mode
>>> of being. It proves to be a very complex structure of behaviour”
>>> 
>>> David Bakhurst describes well the 'radical realism' those guys were
>>> developing:
>>> 
>>> "Thought is conceived not as a barrier or interface between the self and
>>> the world beyond the mind, but as the means by which the individual enters
>>> into immediate cognitive contact with the material world. Thought, the mode
>>> of activity of the socially defined subject, reaches right out to reality
>>> itself" (1991, p. 261)
>>> 
>>> If the "inner" is out there in the "outer," we've got the metaphors wrong,
>>> IMHO.
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> On Aug 11, 2011, at 12:27 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
>>> 
>>> Of course, BOTH "internalization" and "appropriation" are metaphors. I
>>>> don't flee from the "internalization" metaphor the way that Martin does,
>>>> partly because I think of it as referring not to a body but as to a nation,
>>>> a country, a city, a community, a family...or some particle thereof. In this
>>>> sense (a sense which I suppose is better captured by "interiorization" than
>>>> by "internalization", just as "reflection" is better captured by
>>>> "refraction") there is no duality; when you move from one nation to another
>>>> you do not change worlds, nor do you change nations when you move from one
>>>> city to another.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------
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>>> 
>>> 
>>> End of xmca Digest, Vol 75, Issue 12
>>> **************************************
>>> 
>> 
>> Nathaniel Dumas
>> UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow
>> Department of Linguistics
>> University of California, Santa Barbara
>> http://ucsb.academia.edu/**NathanielDumas/About<http://ucsb.academia.edu/NathanielDumas/About>
>> 
>> 
>> 
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