Some comments onW-M Roth’s Tracking the Origin of Signs in Mathematical

Activity: A Material Phenomenological Approach

Gérard SensevyCREAD U. Rennes 2-IUFM de Bretagne/UBO

Dewey Lectures, 16 November

2

About lecture 3 About lecture 3 “From the perspective of evolutionary theory… the emergence of

mind and signs have to be explained in a forward manner, from the absence of mind and signs, rather than in a teleological manner, as the necessary step to present-day cognition and semiotic” …”non linguistic corporeal origin of signs”

See Wittgenstein and the origin of language-gamesDialectics between “genetic explanation” and “teleological

explanation” The crucial importance of action in perception:” the idea emerges

together with…gestures rather than preceding them ».For example the importance of eyes movement (Lecture 2), of the

head/hand movement ‘Lecture 3See Alva Noe : “Perception is not something that happens to us, or in

us. It is something we do” Movements (kinetic melody), rather gestures “The intention … is the result of a “searching” process, which is a

process for thought to develop itself in interaction with the expressive forms that the body produces” 

The body expressive forms constitute a milieu for the epistemic action

3

About lecture 3 About lecture 3 Doubling

“we see how a movement emerges and becomes a sign for itself, which expresses itself as habit. But in this form, the originary sign is also the antithesis (absolute negation, other) of the sign because signifier and signified are one and the same. To obtain the sign as we know it, the original self-relation has to unfold to become the external relation between a signifier and a signified. This is achieved by means of a doubling »

“Because recognition (self-reference) is immanent in the cognition by means of movement, it can become at any moment the explicit theme of thought (Henry 1965). From this arises a new form of intentionality, this time directed to the transcendent object, which, in the present case, is the form of the movement that produces the gesture and chalk line. This object can be recognized as something that I have seen before. This leads Henry to conclude that “habit is the foundation of memory” (ibid: 137). Concerning his own theory of habitus Bourdieu (1997) notes – consistent with Henry – that the past is present in the form of the dispositions that it has produced” (Good example of the soccer player (21))

Fundamental concept of doubling: “soi-même comme un autre”, expressive forms as a milieu

4

About lecture 3 About lecture 3 Mirror neurons, experience, and recognition

“That is, an organism only recognizes a movement when it is already capable of this movement. Rizzolatti et al. make explicit reference to the field in which my own work is grounded by noting “that philosophers in the phenomenological tradition long ago posited that one had to experience something within oneself to truly comprehend it” (ibid: 56)”

Mirror neurons as a good examplar of the “connoisseur’s paradigm” What is the knowledge of the body: knowing that, knowing how (G.

Ryle)

« This is so because the body constitutes the “possibility of knowledge in general, a know-how of the world in its absence, that it also is, and for that reason, remembering of the world, memory of its forms, knowledge a priori of its being and its determinations” (Henry 1965:137).

In Henry’s text : « un savoir du monde »

5

About lecture 3 About lecture 3 The concrete and the abstract “A particular object or trace therefore is given twice. First, it is

given as something that I can achieve by means of a particular, concrete and specific movement; and, second, because the movement is a possibility, it is something that I can achieve in principle, that is, in general. This leads to the fact that the world is constituted by the totality of my experiences; it is the transcendent term of all the real and potential movements that I can produce ».

The relationship between concrete and abstract has to be found in the “recognition” of an expressive form

See Gergely & Csibra

http://www.institutnicod.org/lectures2011_outline.htm

6

More generallyMore generally 1) About intentions

– Importance of intentions “as the result of a searching process”BUT– Three types of intentions (Pacherie, 2008, 20011)

- Distal intentions- Proximal intentions- Motor intentions

Picasso’s example in Baxandall’s Patterns of intentions: impossible to understand Picasso’s game without recognizing his distal and proximal intentions (see p. 68, p. 67), i.e. the problem he deals with

– The connoisseur’s paradigm as a way to account for intentions– See Stravinsky’s example, rugby player’s example, dancer’s

example improvisation: the relationship between flesh and situation as a milieu

The necessity of understanding the dialectic between the three types of intentions, between different kinds of patterns of intention (even at fine-grain size: see for example analogic and digital expressions in magnetocaloric episode)

7

More generallyMore generally 2) About the learning paradox

– Old paradox (Plato’s Meno)– Fundamental feature of the didactic relationship– The dilution of the paradox lies in the enduring joint action– In didactic joint action, the teacher may give the possibility to the

students to gradually envision the invisable, in a specific kind of accommodation process (contract/milieu), which is a “production of institution” (Merleau-Ponty), and a “donation of culture”

BUT– In the didactic game, this institutional accommodation may unfold in

two ways (equilibration process)• Priority to the contract (the teacher’s expectations), see Mario’s case in

Talk 2• Priority to the milieu, the students’ collective experience in potentially

epistemic structures, in which they may take decisions, scrutinize the consequences of their decisions and modify them according to feedbacks of the milieu

The necessity of understanding the nature, the structure, and the function of didactic joint action

8

More generallyMore generally 3) Semiosis, catastrophe, and joint action

– The importance of taking into account the learner’s viewpoint– Learning means being able to see A as B, in a particular

thought styleBUT– In the didactic game, a twofold semiosis process

• The deciphering of teacher’s sign (priority to the contract)• The deciphering of milieu’s sign (priority to the milieu)• The example of the puzzle (Brousseau)

Organizing the encounter of ignorance, which means an impossibility of assimilation, and impossibility of being in the accurate seeing-as

In the didactic game, organizing the encounter of ignorance means structuring the kind of “catastrophic situation” the students have to experience

9

More generallyMore generally 4) Emotions, pathos (feelings), situation, game

– Emotions may be conceived of as resulting from an inaccurate anticipation, or the very impossibility of anticipation (Livet)

– The emotions may be conceived of as occurring in a game in which one does not know how to win, even how to play

– In the didactic game, emotions occur from uncertainty inherent to the game

Emotions occurring from the taming of epistemic uncertainty are of a different kind, for they stem from a power of acting, an effectuation of power (Spinoza)

A science of the instructional process (Didactics) has to take into account the way affects and emotions unfold in the didactic game

10

More generallyMore generally 5) The question of sign Signifier/signified ?or Representer/represented (no mental representations) ? A (or B) is a representer for the represented B (or A)

relating to a given purpose within a given situation S occurring in a given institution I

Representing is a process, a praxis, a praxis of inscription