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 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? 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