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Re: [xmca] Death and dying
Why didn't he just give himself an electric shock each time he spoke the word 'mind'? It shouldn't have been a struggle at all!
Martin
On Feb 6, 2012, at 5:59 PM, David H Kirshner wrote:
> A few years ago, Eva Ekeblad sent me a paper she had mentioned on XMCA
> about Skinner's struggle to purge his own language of mentalist
> assumptions. Seems like a nice counterpart to Bateson's efforts to avoid
> the language of separateness.
> David
> Ekeblad, E. (1996). A lifetime of verbal discipline. Revision of a paper
> presented to the Nordic Association of Education Research, 1994.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Christine Schweighart
> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 4:47 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Death and dying
>
> Apologies Greg,
> It was Bateson speaking and not von Glaserfeld!
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTsY3TosVX0&feature=related
>
>
> This aside I wondered if you might be interested to consider the
> aesthetic of Garcia Lorca writing on the social meaning of death in
> Spanish culture, it seems quite relevant to your topic.
> Christine.
>
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 7:38 PM, Greg Thompson
> <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> There is a flipside to "gaps" that suggests that a gapless world. This
>
>> position is nicely captured by Gregory Bateson (please forgive my
>> transcription by intonation unit - Bateson's prose is hard to capture,
>
>> but see link below for original):
>>
>> "The nature of
>>
>> the world in which I live
>>
>> and in which I wish you lived -
>>
>> all of you -
>>
>> and all the time -
>>
>> but even I don't live in it all the time.
>>
>> (solemnly) There are times,
>>
>> when I catch myself believing
>>
>> that there is such a thing as something
>>
>> which is separate from something else."
>>
>> And linking back to General Semantics (and Corey Anton is both
>> affiliated with General Semantics and has written much on Bateson),
>> Bateson was influenced by Korzybski (see Bateson's Korzybski memorial
> lecture at:
>>
>> http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/gsb-37-bate
>> son.pdf
>> and
>> Bateson's quote above is taken from a blog announcing the new
>> biographical movie of GB by Nora Bateson, the website can be seen at:
>> http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/emind.html).
>> And linking further back to Korzybski's view of why things go wrong in
>
>> the world, Bateson writes that:
>>
>> "The major problems in the world are the result of the difference
>> between how nature works and the way people think."
>>
>> It would seem that Bateson is pointing to gap-filling as the problem
>> that creates the mismatch between word and world. Does that seem about
>
>> right to others? Is there a tension here between the gap filling that
>> Etienne and Mike describe as something that we do all the time and
>> what Bateson seems to be suggesting about a (preferred) gapless world?
>
>> Am I headed in endless circles here or is there an interesting
>> question at this particular intersection? Or is my way of linking both
>
>> of these positions filling in (or not) too many gaps?
>>
>> Thoughts?
>> -greg
>>
>> p.s. C.S. Peirce, may have articulated a fuller conception in his
>> notion of "synechism," but Bateson's is certainly more comprehensible
> and artful.
>> Peirce's vision is a lot more difficult to take in. But I'd add that
>> he has a wonderful notion of "self" that extends beyond the body and
> beyond life.
>> We are "vicinities" "neighborhoods" rather than discretely bounded
> bodies.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:47 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Anthony
>>>
>>> The topic of death and the social formation of mind seems to be the
>>> ultimate form of "gap & gap filling" which gives meaning to life.
>>> I'm reading an article by Corey Anton titled "Beyond Theoretical
> Ethics:
>>> Bakhtinian Anti-Theoreticism" [in Human Studies volume 24, pages
>>> 211-225; 2001] This is what Corey has to say about death and our
>>> unique once-occurant dwelling in the world.
>>>
>>> "The position that I am trying to make clear is that the human 'in
>> general'
>>> does not factually exist and that ethical considerations commonly
>>> posit a general human: they posit a 'someone' who is ACTUALLY no
>>> one. In this regard, their universality implicitly suggets that
>>> people are basically interchangeable or not non-replaceable - not
>>> uniquely held by their place in existence. The 'theoretical world
>>> is obtained through an essential
>> and
>>> fundamental abstraction from the factor of my unique being and from
>>> the moral sense of that fact - AS IF I did not exist' (Bahktin).
>>> This theoretical world can deeply mislead, for I never do not exist
>>> in my
>> life;
>>> I am never unnecessary or irrelevant, and it is only theoretical
>>> positing that can make this seem to be so. (Leder) suggests that
>>> one's lived body
>> '
>>> is never just an object in the world but that very medium whereby
>>> our
>> world
>>> comes into being.' Thus, I may, in one sense, be simply one person
>>> among other persons in the world that will go on without me AFTER MY
> DEATH.
>> And
>>> yet, I am, for me, that person who is never not there, that person
>>> who somehow is ALWAYS co-given along with the world, and that person
>
>>> whose world falls out of existence WITH MY DEATH. [page 215]
>>>
>>> Anthony, Corey is pointing to death as the ulimate "gap" and our
>> humanness
>>> as the process of gap-filling within our once-occurent unique
>>> cultural historical existence. The social formation of mind
>>> develops through differentiation and distanciation [gaps] AND the
>>> integrating
>> [gap-filling]
>>> ACTS (including theoretical acts) of our humanness.
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 5:45 AM, ANTHONY M BARRA
>>> <tub80742@temple.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks for the resources, Huw and Andy.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Nektarios Alexi
>>>> <NEKTARIOS.ALEXI@cdu.edu.au>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thats an excellent book Huw!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Huw Lloyd
>>>>> Sent: Wed 2/1/2012 9:43 PM
>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Death and dying
>>>>>
>>>>> Bakhtin's "Dostoevsky's Poetics" has a few indexed references.
>>>>>
>>>>> Huw
>>>>>
>>>>> On 31 January 2012 16:46, ANTHONY M BARRA <tub80742@temple.edu>
>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm looking for Vygostky's, or Vygotskian, words on death and
>> dying,
>>>>>> especially terms of (but not limited to) "the social formation
>
>>>>>> of
>>>> mind,"
>>>>>> and "mind extending beyond the skin."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks for any direction or help...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anthony
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar Department of Communication
>> University of California, San Diego
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