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Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
I have three questions about David's question. Of course, it may be that we are not disagreeing; we just have different frames of reference!
a) Can't we say that incommensurable frames simply reflect different interests (and ultimately different class interests)? For example, a structural analysis, a functional analysis, and a genetic analysis are, at first glance, "incommensurable". If we want to take a part a car we may need some different "parts" than if we want to drive a car, but they are not completely different. If we want to explain how cars were invented and how they developed, we still have to talk about recognizeable parts such as steering wheels and wheels. A mechanic has one view, a consumer another, and a college professor a third. But it's the overlap between the parts, not their incommensurability, which defines the object of investigation as an object?
b) Don't we see the same kind of "incommensurability" WITHIN frames? For example, when Vygotsky wrote "The Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology", all the different kinds of psychology claimed to be non-metaphysical, uninterested in the question of the soul, and empirical, but they hardly shared the same explanatory principles or analytical units. In the same way, physicists can talk about "entropy of information" and "heat entropy" but they are clearly talking about very different things. My father likes to say that the smallest "particle" he works with in his research is the size of the earth (it's not strictly true, I notice, but many of the streams of solar particles he describes are far, far larger than the earth).
c) If we take this strongly framed and strongly classified view of knowledge (and such is David Kirshner's view), can we really be monists? Can we even be effectively trans-disciplinary? Is anything inter-disciplinary really possible?
David Kellogg
Hankuk Institute of Foreign Studies
--- On Sat, 9/10/11, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Saturday, September 10, 2011, 2:33 PM
I missed a lot of this interesting discussion at the time, David. Your
question at the end of the note is one I have puzzled about a lot. I often
puzzle over whether people are misunderstanding or disagreeing. Your way of
translating the issue into framing perhaps articulates a way to examine such
issues more usefully I have managed to do.
mike
On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 4:18 PM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu> wrote:
> Martin,
> I was referring to the issue of internalization allegedly separating you
> and David Ke: namely that he embraces it (in a particular sense
> "referring not to a body but as to a nation, a country, a city, a
> community, a family...or some particle thereof"), whereas you find it
> problematic.
> Partly my question was aimed at understanding your positions better,
> partly it was intended as a meta-level probe of our variety of academic
> discourse: Do we ever disagree within a common frame, or do apparent
> disagreements always turn out to reflect incommensurable framings that
> we've adopted for the time being, though we can still see the sense in
> oppositional framings.
> David
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Martin Packer
> Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2011 3:18 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
>
> David,
>
> Are you asking about 'consciousness' and 'thought'? My reply would be
> the standard one: consciousness is the dynamic system of psychological
> functions (as well as being our relationship with the world); thinking
> is one of those functions.
>
> Was it pointless to ask? :)
>
> Martin
>
> On Aug 12, 2011, at 3:54 PM, David H Kirshner wrote:
>
> > Are these different material processes, or different perspectives on
> > the same process, or is it pointless to ask?
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > On Behalf Of Martin Packer
> > Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 1:08 PM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Living metaphor and conventionalized language
> >
> > 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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