Re: [xmca] Reflective Meanings

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

One of the very few things that Steven Pinker ever said that I wholeheartedly agree with is that babies are really just like other degrees of people: some of them like to tinker and others like to schmooze.
 
I don't agree at all with his explanation of this phenomenon, which as you have probably already guessed has to do with evolution and sex differences, but I do agree with the empirical observation.
 
So I think infants are highly specific, and the constant observation of universals in infants is probably more often an indication of how crude our observations are when we are not using speech than of any actual universal laws. 
 
And of course this specificity and uniqueness is even more true the higher up the tree we climb, the more branches of the child's free will that the child passes in his or her development, the less we can make universal statements about what kind of interaction is most required by the next zone of proximal development.
 
An earlier thread was concerned with whether sociogenetic development could actually be considered development, given the plurality of the outcomes (particularly in art) and the fairly retrograde nature of the supposedly more ''advanced" society's ideological products (I like to think of us as Klingons, a technically advanced society with a basically feudal set of beliefs, but of course I know that the Klingons were originally modelled on the USSR.) 
 
Of course it's perfectly possible to see phylogenesis, as Dawkins does, in a non-teleological way--in which case insects are really its most successful variant, and we are an extravagant special case of pointless complexity--and it's possible to see sociogenesis in the same way--in which case the extra years of life and the apparently greater free will we exercise without divination are either an illusion or a Pyrrhic victory over our better selves. But can we really afford to see ontogenesis that way?
 
I think not. One of the biggest problems in English teaching in elementary school level, which was my specialism until August of last year, arises from third person engagement. Consider these two sentences:
 
a) A baby rabbit drinks milk.
b) Young rabbits drink milk.
 
"S" marks the PLURAL in nouns (b) but the SINGULAR in verbs (a). It's VERY confusing for the kids, and for teachers alike, particularly since Korean does not inflect either nouns or verbs for number.
 
Now, a lot of teachers think that this isn't where the (elementary school) action is anyway; we should just teach the kids "you-me" interaction and everyday concepts.
 
But you can see that scientific generalizations and science abstractions are really not possible without the third person (and that somehow the change from "baby" to "young" mirrors the change in generalization that we see in the change from a singular noun to a plural one, and the gradual rise to the very concrete concept of being a mammal).
 
I guess I think that one of the indubitably progressive properties of development is this: every true development makes it possible to restructure all previous knowledge in its own image, the way that a second knowledge makes it possible to restructure the first, and algebra makes it possible to restructure arithmetic, and even naming makes it possible for the baby to restructure pointing. 
 
The new function does everything the old functions did, but so MUCH more besides (you can say things in your second language that your first language doesn't even really allow you to think very easily, you can solve problems with algebra that you can't even pose in arithmetic, and you can name things that aren't even in the visual field to point at).
 
The third person is like that. You can treat yourself as a third person, and you can treat your interlocutor that way too (said David to Larry). But the second person is not like that at all. When I say "he" I sometimes mean "I" but when I say 'me" I never really mean "him".
 
David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

--- On Wed, 3/21/12, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:


From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Reflective Meanings
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2012, 7:22 PM


David, one further thought on my trying to make sense of 2nd person
intentionality [as engagement or enactments]
Your comment,

Let's assume that Reddy is right, and that the "you-me" interaction is the
essential source of all joint intersubjectivity in later life. That still
leaves us an essential problem--and for Brecht, and for Chinese opera, as
well as for my ruminations on murders witnessed but not experienced, it is
the essential problem--of how we get from empathy to objectivity, from the
second to the third person.

David, I agree that how we get from 2nd person engagement  to 3rd person
objectivity is a central question.  However,  I'm wondering if  we need to
pause for awhile and linger on the significance of 2nd person experiences
as Reddy is asking us to do.

Reddy concludes her artice that Martin referenced [Participants Don't Need
Theories: Knowing Minds in Engagement] reflecting on 3rd person accounts.

I will quickly paraphrase her main point.
Theorizing about mental states PRESUPPOSES the knowledge of others that is
evident [shown] INSIDE 2nd person engagements. Reflections upon and
theories about other people's intentions and motivations DO enter into
everyday discourse, but these discourses, theories, and reflections are
experientially and developmentally SECONDARY [derived] to ACTUAL
engagements with these intentions and motivations.  Theory of Mind [theory
theory] has simply not taken the SIGNIFICANCE of engagement [enactment]
and engagements  development seriously enough. Reddy gives significance to
2nd person engagement and therefore accepts the transparency of mind in
action
Speaking ABOUT mental states is not clear evidence of the theory of mind.
Speaking about mental states is a narrative behavior and discourses,
theories, and models ABOUT mental states are actions that may be experience
within engaged or disengaged forms of life.

David, after pausing, the question of HOW this engagement gets played out
objectively is also a fascinating question.

Larry
On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 3:40 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> Larry:
>
> Three things I noticed in perusing the article:
>
> a) Like you, I noticed that the "you-me" relationship is "one possible
> perspective" on the development of reflected upon experience.
>
> b) But I also noticed, with faint annoyance, that the author seemed to be
> be claiming universality, despite clear evidence in her own data (e.g.
> "Show mommy the potty, Nanny") that her conclusion might be very child
> specific.
>
> c) I noticed, with some relief, a minimum of 'theory of mind"
> discussion. I guess we are finally getting it through our thick skulls that
> a theory of mind is going to develop as long as the mind that
> contemplates and the mind that is contemplated does so.
>
> Let's assume that Reddy is right, and that the "you-me" interaction is the
> essential source of all joint intersubjectivity in later life. That still
> leaves us an essential problem--and for Brecht, and for Chinese opera, as
> well as for my ruminations on murders witnessed but not experienced, it is
> the essential problem--of how we get from empathy to objectivity, from the
> second to the third person.
>
> I think Rod is right. On the one hand, Vygotsky refers to word meaning as
> the microcosm of consciousness in the conclusion to "Thinking and Speech"
> and on the other he clearly lists "perizhvanie" as the unit of child
> consciousness in "The Problem of the Environment" (p. 342 of the Vygotsky
> Reader).
>
> Neither unit is "activity" in the sense used by activity theorists;
> neither has an outcome in production. Neither inheres in a purely "you-me"
> relationship which can be and often is carried out without any use of word
> meaning or any self-reflection. But, as Rod points out, both are
> inextricably bound up with the "activity" of using verbal meanings upon
> yourself.
>
> And that, to me, explains why when we observe some horrific incident and
> we immediately notice, whether with relief or with guilt, the unmistakeable
> fact of our own non-involvement, we often say "It was just like a movie"
> but we never say "It was just like a book".
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
> --- On Sun, 3/18/12, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Reflective Meanings
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Sunday, March 18, 2012, 6:23 AM
>
>
> Rod, David, Peter
>
> The relationship between perezhivanie and reflecting on  *second hand*
> experience.  How does this relationship manifest?  What  sequences  unfold
> in this process.
> Rod, a year ago you recommended a book by V. Reddy who was exploring the
> negotiation of feelings as well as understandings within what is referred
> to as primary intersubjectivity developing within  2nd person communicative
> expressions.
>
> I recently came across this 6 page summary of V. Reddy's *2nd person*
> perspective on lived experience as the basic process from which emerges the
> derived 3rd person perspectives which are *borrowing* the processes
> previously lived through within  2nd person engagements.
> The article uses charts which clearly distinguish her perspective from more
> cognitively oriented accounts
>
> >From Reddy's perspective, these borrowed 2nd person processes are
> profoundly transformed within language games [Wittgenstein's term] acquired
> as culturally informed skilled practices expressing the giving
> of reasons.  Reddy posits the skill of offering justifications in the 3rd
> person as derived from 2nd person *I-YOU* encounters previously lived
> through. Derived justifications  borrow the content from 2nd person lived
> through experiences and use this derived content within the activity of
> giving reasons.
>
> I also noticed she posits two *basic* movements within our emotional 2nd
> person engagements: *hiding* & *revealing* our selves. As I understand
> Reddy's position these basic intersubjective orientations continue to play
> out  within more complex cultural-historical  informed engagements.
> Reddy's 2nd person perspective offers one possible approach into the
> relationship between
> perhezivanie and activity.
>
> Larry
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 4:45 AM, Rod Parker-Rees <
> R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > Many thanks for this, David - a really valuable clarification of  the
> > relationship between  perezhivanie and activity. I wonder what you would
> > have to say about the extent to which your second  type of reflection is
> >  actually  a culturally mediated process of mediation. In other words,
> >  when we practise the activity of reflecting on a 'second-hand'
> experience,
> > in order to colour it with the  'body and vitality' of our  own
> spontaneous
> > concepts, are we 'borrowing' processes which we have picked up, absorbed
> or
> > internalised from our  experiences of engaging with others (and
> negotiating
> > the sharing of feelings as well as understandings)?  When we reflect in
> > tranquility on observed second hand (second body) experiences do we not
> > have to draw on  internalised sociocultural processes to be able to do
> this?
> >
> > All the best,
> >
> > Rod
> > ________________________________________
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf
> > Of David Kellogg [vaughndogblack@yahoo.com]
> > Sent: 18 March 2012 03:33
> > To: xmca
> > Subject: [xmca] Reflective Meanings
> >
> > We have been worrying about how to correctly render the word
> "переживаний"
> > in Korean, and above all how to link it to "activity" (because it is
> clear
> > to me that Vygotsky saw the one as a reflection upon the other). At the
> > same time, I have been following the news from Syria, where I witnessed,
> in
> > the early nineteen eighties, a similar bloody uprising against the
> current
> > leader's father.
> >
> > It has been estimated that by the time a child is twelve or thirteen
> years
> > old the child has witnessed, on television, several hundred, possibly
> many
> > thousands, of simulated murders. We didn't have a television when I was a
> > kid, but when I first witnessed real murders as a twenty-year-old I
> > remember thinking that it was "like a movie".
> >
> > Of course, when you say that, what it means is that you are undergoing
> the
> > visual experience of observing something but that the acutal переживаний,
> > the lived experience or the feeling of what is happening to you, is
> somehow
> > missing. It means almost the same thing as when you say that something
> is a
> > dream (I still dream a lot about Syria, and sometimes I dream things that
> > are very disturbing, but I know that the dreams feel very different from
> > the way the reality felt).
> >
> > Here, it seems to me, we have an almost complete contrast of the two
> > meanings of reflection. For on the one hand, the scene that you see
> before
> > your eyes is a clear reflection; when you say that you feel like a
> > particularly gruesome or traumatic scene is like a movie or like a dream,
> > you do not in any way have the sense of watching a movie or dreaming.
> What
> > you mean is that you are seeing the sights but not feeling the feelings
> of
> > what happens to you; you are lacking the переживаний.
> >
> > And it seems to me that there are two ways to interpret that lack that
> > corresond to the two meanings of the word "reflection". One is to say
> that
> > you are not feeling and thinking the experience because you are too busy
> > directly experiencing it, reflecting it like a mirror or a TV screen or a
> > flickering image on the back of your dreaming eyelids.
> >
> > But the other is that you are not participating in the experience, and
> > that your first reaction is that you yourself are neither the murderer
> nor
> > the murdered one. In other words, it is an experience, but it is not an
> > activity. And an experience that is not an activity is not a lived
> > experience: it is like a movie or like a dream.
> >
> > It's that SECOND meaning of reflection, which I am almost sure really is
> a
> > type of activity, even though it involves no actions and only indirectly
> > involves verbal meanings, that converts an experience which is not an
> > activity, into переживаний, or what Wordsworth would call emotion
> reflected
> > upon in tranquility.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________
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