As you know I'm happier with the British Analytical tradition and more
sympathetic to Andy's work rather than what I see as the platitudinous
imponderables of the Continental School.
However I agree it is interesting that these two strands become
adjacent as they develop. I'm interested in discovering links that
bridge what we have become used to calling Modernist and Postmodern
thought like this. Another good one is Varela & Kauffman's
application of Spencer Brown's calculus of indications (essentially a
boundary grammar) to self-reference and autopoiesis. (Form Dynamics,
J. Social Biol. Struct. 1980 3, 171-206).
Best
Paul
On 12 Aug 2009, at 00:59, Simon Biggs wrote:
> Andy is Professor of Logic and Metaphysics here at Edinburgh and he
> has
> close links with the art college so I am very familiar with his
> work. To
> some extent it is relevant to what I am arguing but our points of
> departure
> are profoundly different. Andy is coming out of the Anglo-American
> rationalist tradition of philosophy and very much involved in
> debates around
> the neurophysiology of mind. I am taking my references from people
> like
> Foucault, Ortiz and Latour whose concerns are more with socially
> situated
> ontologies of mind. However, what is interesting is that whilst these
> perspectives have such differrent sources they do connect up further
> down
> the road. The arguments would tend to strengthen one another whilst
> putting
> the sources for each under a critical microscope.
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
> Simon Biggs
> Research Professor
> edinburgh college of art
> s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>
> simon@littlepig.org.uk
> www.littlepig.org.uk
> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>
>
>
> From: Paul Brown <paul@paul-brown.com>
> Reply-To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:29:44 +0100
> To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Creativity as social mind
>
> I think Andy Clark's name has come up in this discussion before but
> Simon's
> comments remind me of his concept of the extended mind:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Clark
> http://mymindonbooks.com/?p=815
>
> Paul
>
> On 11 Aug 2009, at 17:51, Simon Biggs wrote:
>
>> Wittgenstein wrote:
>>
>> It is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a 'mental
>> activity'. We may say that thinking is essentially the activity
>> of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand,
>> when we think by writing; by the mouth and larynx, when we think
>> by speaking; and if we think by imagining signs or pictures, I
>> can give you no agent that thinks. If then you say that in such
>> cases the mind thinks, I would only draw attention to the fact
>> you are using a metaphor, that here the mind is an agent in a
>> different sense from that in which the hand can be said to be
>> the agent in writing.
>>
>> If again we talk about the locality where thinking takes place
>> we have a right to say that this locality is the paper on which
>> we write or the mouth which speaks. And if we talk of the head
>> or the brain as the locality of thought, this is using the
>> 'locality of thinking' in a different sense.[1]
>>
>> -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary studies for the
>> "Philosophical investigations".
>>
>> The argument Wittgenstein is proposing here is that thinking is an
>> activity
>> that might be located in all sorts of places other than the mind. He
>> suggests that mind itself might be little more than a metaphor, a
>> conceptual
>> receptacle we can use so as to be able to identify where we
>> subjectively do
>> things like thinking, talking, perceiving and feeling. Wittgenstein
>> suggests
>> that the mind might not exist as anything more than metaphor or,
>> that if it
>> does exist, it might exist in place(s) we do not expect.
>>
>> I'd like to add to the places mind can exist the creative space that
>> exists
>> between us all; the social relationships we forge and are forged by,
>> through
>> our exchanges, whether large (a significant cultural intervention,
>> for
>> example) or so small we are not aware anything is there at all. I
>> would like
>> to think it is in the innumerable small things we share that we
>> largely
>> exist, only being reminded of ourselves as a phenomenon of this
>> process of
>> culturation when we encounter the big event (what might sometimes be
>> called
>> genius – a word I find unuseful). Through this view we might gain a
>> more
>> profound understanding of what is often called popular culture but
>> which
>> might be better characterised as of the same ilk as Fernando Ortiz's
>> concept
>> of transculturation.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> Simon Biggs
>> Research Professor
>> edinburgh college of art
>> s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
>> www.eca.ac.uk
>> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>>
>> simon@littlepig.org.uk
>> www.littlepig.org.uk
>> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>>
>>
>>
>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
>> number SC009201
>>
>>
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> ====
> Paul Brown - based in the UK July - Sept 2009
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> http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
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> ====
> Paul Brown - based in the UK July - Sept 2009
> mailto:paul@paul-brown.com == http://www.paul-brown.com
> UK Mobile +44 (0)794 104 8228 == USA fax +1 309 216 9900
> Skype paul-g-brown
> ====
> Visiting Professor - Sussex University
> http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
> ====
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