Some comments on
W-M Roth’s Tracking the Origin of Signs in Mathematical
Activity: A Material Phenomenological Approach
Gérard Sensevy
CREAD U. Rennes 2-IUFM de Bretagne/UBO
Dewey Lectures, 16 November
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-games
Dialectics 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 3
See 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

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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
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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 »
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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
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More 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)
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More 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
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More generally
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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 style
BUT
– 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
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More generally
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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
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More generally
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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
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