Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation

["Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Hi Paul--

Is the speck of dust on the spider onn the ceiling?
mike

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com>wrote:

> mike and all in this intriguing thread about reflection,
>
> reading the exchanges to this point (5 days ago) reminded me of the the
> notion of reflection in the Chan-Zen buddhist traditions of north east asia
> and  Japan . . . (and I have no idea what this word is in Korean, Chinese or
> Japanese).  The following story is classic:
>
> *Story of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch*
>
> One day, Hong Ren (Hung-jen), the fifth patriarch, called his disciples
> together and instructed them: "Each of you write a verse and bring it to me.
> I will read your verses, and if there is one who is awakened to the cardinal
> meaning, I will give him the robe and the Dhama and make him the Sixth
> Patriarch. Hurry, Hurry!"
>
> The disciples returned to their cells, overwhelmed by the master's request.
> They agreed to let the first among them, Shen Xiu (Shen-hsiu), take on the
> task of composing a verse. Though well-instructed in the sutras, Shen Xiu
> was still far from enlightenment and the master's instructions threw him
> into a deep anxiety. At length he produced his verses and at midnight wrote
> on     the middle wall of the south hall:
>
>     The body is the Bondhi tree,
>     The mind is like a clear mirror.
>     At all times we must strive to polish it.
>     And must not let the dust collect.
>
> Master Hong Ren was the first to see the verses the next morning.
> Assembling of the monks, he burned incense before the inscription on the
> wall. The disciples were filled with wonder and consider the question of
> succession settled. The master, however, called Shen Xiu aside. Having
> confirmed his suspicion that Shen Xiu had written the verses, the master
> said to him: "The verse you wrote shows that you still have not reached true
> understanding. You have merely arrived at the front of the gate but have yet
> to be able to enter it." As the verses make evident, practice can help
> ordinary persons, but it cannot bring them to perfect enlightenment. "You
> must enter the gate and see your own original nature..."
>
> He left Shen Xiu to compose further verses. Days passes, but the first monk
> of the community could not produce a sign of his enlightenment.
>
> Hui Neng, a young monk, heard about the verse and immediately realized that
> it did not express enlightenment. He formulated a new verse and have it
> posted on the wall of the west hall:
>
>     Originally there is no tree of enlightnment,
>     Nor is there a stand with a clear mirror.
>     From the beginning not one thing exists;
>     Where, then, is a grain of dust to cling?
> At midnight, Hong Ren summoned Hui Neng and conferred on him the Dharma of
> Sudden Enlightenment and the patriarchal robe with the words: "I make you
> the Sixth Patriarch."
>
> From "Zen Buddhism: A History vol.1" by Heinrich Dumoulin, 1994
>
>
> Maybe the second poem's conclusion about the nature of reflection as
> presented in the first poem,  emphazing the emptiness of the mirror itself,
> ,can eliminate one of mike's concerns. Mental "reflection" has absolutely
> nothing at all to do with the analogical physical mirror metaphor,    that
> comparison  really confuses things, obscures the dialectical
> interpenetration of "I" and "me"  (the subject and object of experience, the
> active, the passive), original distinctions of experience, in themselves
> have no independent existence.  That's also true of left and right.
>
>
> Paul
>
>
> --- On *Sun, 1/4/09, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation
> To: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Sunday, January 4, 2009, 8:50 PM
>
> The idea that always occurs to me about reflections is that in mirrors, left
> and right are reversed.
>
> Sad? Or a reason to pause to think?
> Quien Sabe?
>
> mike
>
> On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > Why sad?
> >
> >
> > Martin Packer wrote:
> >
> >> I know, but it would be sad to discover that Vygotsky was drawing so
> >> heavily
> >> from Lenin.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 1/4/09 9:42 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>  I might say as an aside, that "reflection" whatever it is
> in
> >>> Russian, has a strong place in Russian Marxism. This is
> >>> because Lenin made such a powerful attack on his
> >>> philosophical enemies in "Materialism
>  and
> Empirio-Criticism"
> >>> written in 1908. Ilyenkov still defends this books in the
> >>> mid-1970s, though almost all non-Russian Marxists would say
> >>> that it is a terrible book and was written before Lenin had
> >>> studied Hegel, etc. In M&EC Lenin makes reflection a central
> >>> category, a universal property of matter, etc., and bitterly
> >>> attacks the use of semiotics of any kind.
> >>>
> >>> I have an ambiguous attitude to M&EC myself. Apart from
> >>> "sins of omission" perhaps, Lenin is right, but did he
> >>> really have to shout it that loud? Well, in the historical
> >>> context of the wake of the defeat of the 1905 Revolution,
> >>> probably he did. Did all Russian Marxists for the next 100
> >>> years have to follow his lead? Probably not.
> >>>
> >>> I note that in Dot
>  Robbins' book on Vygotsky and
> Leontyev's
> >>> Semiotics etc., Dot defends the notion of reflection. The
> >>> situation, as I see it, is that "reflection" has a
> strong
> >>> advantage and an equally strong disadvantage in conveying a
> >>> materialist conception of sensuous perception.
> >>>
> >>> On one side it emphasises the objectivity of the
> >>> image-making - there is nothing in the mirror, or if there
> >>> is, it is an imperfectionit which distorts the image. On the
> >>> other side, mirror-imaging is an entirely passive process, a
> >>> property of even non-living matter.
> >>>
> >>> Personally, I think "reflection" belongs to Feuerbachian
> >>> materialism, not Marxism, but in historical context, the
> >>> position of many Russians who use the concept, is
> >>>
>  understandable.
> >>>
> >>> That's how I see it anyway,
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>>
> >>> Ed Wall wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Martin
> >>>>
> >>>>       It appears the root is more or less
> >>>>
> >>>>                        отрaжáть (отрaзить)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> and, at least according to my dictionary, has the sense of
> reflecting
> >>>> or having an effect. However, my qualifications are dated.
> >>>>
> >>>> Ed
> >>>>
> >>>> On Jan 4, 2009, at 7:01 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>  At the end of last year several of us were trying to figure
> out whether
> >>>>> 'reflection' is a good term to translate the way
> Vygotsky and leontiev
> >>>>>
>  wrote
> >>>>> about 'mental' activity. Michael Roth pointed out
> that the German word
> >>>>> that
> >>>>> Marx used was Widerspiegeln rather than Reflektion (see
> below). I don't
> >>>>> think anyone identified the Russian word that was used. I
> still haven't
> >>>>> found time to trace the word in Vygotsky's texts,
> English and Russian.
> >>>>> But
> >>>>> an article by Charles Tolman suggests that the Russian
> term was
> >>>>> 'otrazhenie.'  Online translators don't like
> this word: can any Russian
> >>>>> speakers suggest how it might be translated?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Reflection (German: Widerspiegelung; Russian: otrazhenie)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Tolman, C.W. (1988). The basic vocabulary of Activity
> Theory. Activity
> >>>>>
>  Theory, 1, 14-20.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Martin
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 10/25/08 12:40 PM, "Wolff-Michael Roth"
> <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>  Hi Martin,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Marx does indeed use the term
> "widerspiegeln" in the sentence you
> >>>>>> cite.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Das Gehirn der
> >>>>>> Privatproduzenten spiegelt diesen doppelten
> gesellschaftlichen
> >>>>>> Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten nur wider in den
> Formen, welche im
> >>>>>> praktischen Verkehr, im Produktenaustausch erscheinen
> - den
> >>>>>> gesellschaftlich
> >>>>>> nützlichen Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten also in
> >>>>>> der Form, daß das Arbeitsprodukt nützlich
>  sein muß,
> und zwar für
> >>>>>> andre - den gesellschaftlichen Charakter der
> Gleichheit der
> >>>>>> verschiedenartigen
> >>>>>> Arbeiten in der Form des gemeinsamen Wertcharakters
> >>>>>> dieser materiell verschiednen Dinge, der
> Arbeitsprodukte.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> But the Duden, the reference work of German language
> says that there
> >>>>>> are 2 different senses. One is reflection as in a
> mirror, the other
> >>>>>> one that something brings to expression. In this
> context, I do not
> >>>>>> see Marx draw on the mirror idea.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> For those who have trouble, perhaps the analogy with
> mathematical
> >>>>>> functions. In German, what a mathematical function
> does
>  is
> >>>>>> "abbilden," which is, provide a projection
> of, or reflection, or
> >>>>>> whatever. You have the word Bild, image, picture in
> the verb. But
> >>>>>> when you look at functions, only y = f(x) = x, or -x
> gives you what
> >>>>>> you would get in the mirror analogy. You get very
> different things
> >>>>>> when you use different functions, log functions, etc.
> Then the
> >>>>>> relationship between the points on a line no longer is
> the same in
> >>>>>> the "image", that is, the target domain.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> We sometimes see the word "refraction" in
> the works of Russian
> >>>>>> psychologists, which may be better than reflection. It
> allows you to
> >>>>>> think of looking at the world through a kaleidoscope,
> and
>  you get all
> >>>>>> sorts of things, none of which look like "the
> real thing."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Michael
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On 25-Oct-08, at 9:01 AM, Martin Packer wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Michael,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Here's one example from Marx, and several from
> Leontiev, if we can
> >>>>>> get into
> >>>>>> the Russian too.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> "The twofold social character of the labour of
> the individual appears
> >>>>>> to
> >>>>>> him, when *reflected* in his brain, only under those
> forms which are
> >>>>>> impressed upon that
>  labour in every-day practice by
> the exchange of
> >>>>>> products." Marx, Capital, Chapter 1, section 4.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> " Activity is a non-additive unit of the
> corporeal, material life of
> >>>>>> the
> >>>>>> material subject. In the narrower sense, i.e., on the
> psychological
> >>>>>> plane,
> >>>>>> it is a unit of life, mediated by mental *reflection*,
> by an *image,*
> >>>>>> whose
> >>>>>> real function is to orientate the subject in the
> objective world."
> >>>>>> Leontiev,
> >>>>>> Activity & Consciousness.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> " The circular nature of the processes effecting
> the interaction of
> >>>>>> the
> >>>>>> organism with the environment
>  has been generally
> acknowledged. But
> >>>>>> the main
> >>>>>> thing is not this circular structure as such, but the
> fact that the
> >>>>>> mental
> >>>>>> *reflection* of the objective world is not directly
> generated by the
> >>>>>> external influences themselves, but by the processes
> through which the
> >>>>>> subject comes into practical contact with the
> objective world, and
> >>>>>> which
> >>>>>> therefore necessarily obey its independent properties,
> connections,
> >>>>>> and
> >>>>>> relations." ibid
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> " Thus, individual consciousness as a
> specifically human form of the
> >>>>>> subjective *reflection* of objective reality may be
> understood
>  only
> >>>>>> as the
> >>>>>> product of those relations and mediacies that arise in
> the course of
> >>>>>> the
> >>>>>> establishment and development of society." ibid
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Martin
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> xmca mailing list
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> >>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
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> >>
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> >>
> > --
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>+61 3 9380 9435 Skype andy.blunden
> > Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
> >
>  http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
> >
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