File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0306, message 75


Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 08:50:16 +0100
From: "John Mingers" <John.Mingers-AT-mail.wbs.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Positivism, Realism, Materialism - Embodiment


Iconoclast

I think there is a lot of interest and work at the moment around the
notion of embodied cognition - ie in opposition to the Cartesian split
between mind and body.

Philosophically, Merleau-Ponty is the main person. We can trace a
fairly clear line of phenomenological development from Husserl with pure
thought through Heidegger with Being as rooted in day to day activity to
Merleau-Ponty who refused any such splits between thought and action or
objectivism and subjectivism. Cognition, language and even mathematical
concepts are firmly rooted in the "Flesh" (see especially "The Visible
and the Invisible"). Some feminists have picked up on this, eg Elizabeth
Grosz "Volatile Bodies".
Also interesrting is the work of Lakoff and Johnson on language and the
extent to which it is inescapably suffused with physical and especially
bodily metaphors - see "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things" and
"Philosophy in the Flesh"

Biologically there is important work by Maturana and Varela on
"Autopoiesis (self-producing systems) and Cognition". They argue that
all activity by living organisms that enables them to exist successfully
within an environment should be seen as cognitive whether or not
language or even a nervous system is involved "Cognition is effective
action". See also Varela et al "The Embodied Mind".

Even Sociology has been getting in on the act which is interesting
since you would conventionally see the social world as at least a couple
of levels up from the body. Anyway they are interested both in how the
social world inscribes itself and shapes the body and how our bodies
shape and structure our social activity. Main people here are Foucault,
Turner, Shilling and a host of others.

In terms of CR it is one connection that seems to be quite underplayed.
In fact the whole area of the individual subject seems to be quite taken
for granted and there is little attention to the social structuring of
subjectivity.


Cheers

John


Dr. John Mingers
Professor of OR and Systems
 Warwick Business School
 Warwick University
 Coventry CV4 7AL UK
phone: +2476 522475
fax: +2476 524539
email: j.mingers-AT-warwick.ac.uk

>>> iconoclast2050-AT-yahoo.com 11 June 2003 19:28:29 >>>
Jamie,
 
My questions are not directly related to what you had stated. It is
just that after reading your comments, and thinking over them, the idea
of inscribing social practices on human bodies came to my mind. Hence, I
asked for your opinion on indoctrination. Just a case of raising another
set of questions.
 
The crux of the issue is the structuring of the structures of
cognition. Let me add a couple of more points here, if the topic
interests you. These points have direct relevance to the cognitive tools
of humans. One, there is no privileged access to the mind (Nisbett and
Wilson). This stands in counterposition to what much of philosophy has
believed in or would like to believe in. Two, 90% of thought is
unconscious. How do these points challenge the conventional views of
cognition? I think there are still more frontiers to be explored to
comprehend the 'subject'. Don't you think the subject has been taken for
granted, and it is precisely this that 'claims being'?
 
Shiv

Jamie Morgan <jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
Shiv, I don't understand the basis of your questions - please elaborate
- do they derive form what I said or what you would like to raise?
 
jamie
----- Original Message ----- 
From: shiv kumar 
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu 
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Positivism, Realism, Materialism


Bodies are vehicles that not only seek indoctrination, but can easily
be indoctrinated. How would you respond to this line of thought, given
the long history of religion, ideology,......
 
And, once something has been inscribed, why is it difficult to shake
off? 
 
Why so many accept the correspondence between reality and
sense-experience? Why is it that disjuncture between the two is
difficult to call into question? What is the structuring of the
structures of cognition that impart resistance?
 
Shiv

Jamie Morgan <jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
I'll give this some thought - my gut, no pun intended, reaction to
relations
and bodies is to say they are also in bodies (though probably in a
different
way than you mean) - in a Foucauldian sense we internalise relations
and
discipline ourselves accordingly (which is not meant to suggest 'I
drive a
bus therefore I am'), also our bodies are highly adaptable to aspects
of
social relations and in this sense internalise siomethign about them -
witness the invesrion of the long term conjunction between weight and
wealth - in Capitalism fat is now an aspect of class - the rich are
thin,
the poor are not (with exceptions in both directions). This though
really
doesn't answre your question. I'll come back to you.

Jamie



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