Re: [xmca] in-between

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

On 2 September 2012 00:44, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:

>   Greg--
>
>
> You recently sent around a Call for Papers to a conference on second
> language learning and sociocultural theory, with some truly mouthwatering
> offerings. But it also contained the puzzling concept note that "mind is
> mediated".
>
>
> What could that possible mean, that mind is mediated? Does it mean that
> the mind is formed through mediation? We can't really say that, since
> mediation doesn't exist until there is mind on the one hand and non-mind on
> the other.
>

Hi David,

Here's a little counterpointing for you.

I can't say I have a problem with the phrase.  Mediation can refer to the
process of participation and regulation.  Though I think you're perfectly
right to point out errors of a metaphysical treatment of it.


>
> Or does it mean that the mind is a mediating layer between things of the
> world and the brain/body? That doesn't seem right either; it's dualistic,
> and it says that not only communication but even perception is a kind of
> telementation.
>
>
> Of course, the problem is really one of naming things: mediation is not
> equal to itself, and what is mediation at the end of the process is not the
> same as mediation at the beginning. But if we accept that the concept of
> mediation has algebraic content, then we also have to accept that a formula
> like "mediated mind" explains absolutely nothing.
>

If you wanted to hold mediation constant, as an interface and as a
particular form of regulation,  then it seems that the agency would be
distributed.  You could then observe how the agency moves and is taken up
for a fixed form of mediation.


>
> I worry that concepts like mediation, or intermediation, or communication
> are essentially Gestalts--that is, undifferentiated wholes that contain
> both Jewish psychologists and Nazis. I think that's why I prefer Anna
> Sfard's formulation: the in-between is not communication, but commognition,
> and commognition is, at the beginning of the process, communignition
> (firstly communication) and at the end of the process cognimunication
> (foremostly cognition
>

Personally, I don't see gestalts as being undifferentiated.  I suppose the
point really is whether the author, and reader, have a developed notion of
system.  System as some form of aggregated blob is insufficient.  My
impression is that "commognition" serves to highlight the lesser known
conceptual aspects of communication, e.g. communication of a virus.  Again,
the main thing is system and systemic change.

Best regards,
Huw




>
> David Kellogg
>
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
>
> --------- 원본 메일 ---------
>
> *보낸사람*: Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> *받는사람* : "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> *날짜*: 2012년 9월 01일 토요일, 01시 02분 22초 +0900
> *제목*: [xmca] in-between
>
> In a prior conversation that Martin and I were having regarding language
> ideology, I was arguing that the trouble with dominant language ideologies
> (including Saussure, Chomsky, Derrida, Searle, and perhaps Austin) is that
> they split the world in two. Here is Bruno Latour's characterization of
> this problem:
>
> "If you turn round suddenly, as in the children’s game ‘Mother, may I?’,
> [the moderns]
> will freeze, looking innocent, as if they hadn’t budged: here, on the left,
> are things
> themselves; there, on the right, is the free society of speaking, thinking
> subjects, values
> and signs. Everything happens in the middle, everything passes between the
> two,
> everything happens by way of mediation, translation and networks, but this
> space does
> not exist, it has no place. It is the unthinkable, the unconscious of the
> moderns." (Latour,
> 1993.:37)
>
> I'd add that it points to the importance of the unthinkable "between" - and
> I take "communication" to be the great between.
>
> -greg
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> 833 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Department of Anthropology
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu<http://hanmail/mail/MailComposeFrame.daum?TO=xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
>
>
>
> <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca