In his talk to the Detroit NAACP dinner , Rev. Wright discussed linguistics (Black and Standard English) . He mentioned the old "left-brain/rightbrain" thingy from about 30 years ago. His dichotomy was "subject thinking" /object thinking".
As I thought about it later, this could be "subject thinking" is to "object thinking" as imitative thinking is to symbolic thinking. subject thinking : object thinking :: imitative thinking; symbolic thinking (Actually thought of the latter when a little boy imitated me with a salute greeting) picture or imtiative thinking is one function ( we share that with other species;"monkey see monkey do"). Symbolic thinking as highly developed as our's is ,is unique to humans. Symbolic thinking involves using something to represent something that it is not , an object or something outside something else represents something that it is not. The marks on a page 'dog" are identified with something that they are not identical to, an actual dog. ( See anthropologist Leslie white's deinition of "symbol" in this regard; see any elementary anthroplogy textbook. Picture thinking or representations on the otherhand "imitate: or similate what they represent. They are similar, not different , than what they represent. The prime example of the most objective thinking is writing. originally it was speaking, but at any rate through language. Wright actually referred to "learning styles". His "subjective" thinking involved learners who sympathize with the teacher. They learn by thinking in terms of "subjects" or imitating other human individuals (subjects). The other learning style is through "objects" as, Wright put it. I then made the "mental slide" from thinking though objects to "objective thinking". Then I though of sympathizing with another subject as imitating another person type thinking. Anyway, it was an update and connection ( in my frontal lobes ; smile) between that old ideas of rightbrain/leftbrain, subject/object, picturethinking/wordthinking, imitate/symbol. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
