[Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical

Mon Mar 19 14:50:44 PDT 2018

I don't think we have to accept Chomskyan innatism to accept the Chomskyan
idea that language is (now, in adult humans) preponderantly a medium for
thinking and not an instrument for acting directly on the material
environment or even interacting with the social environment. If you compare
the sheer volume of language you will use today, you will probably see that
the number of clauses you will speak is greater than the number of clauses
you will write. But the number of unspoken predications you will THINK may
well greatly outnumber the number of clauses you will actually speak (you
may well need more than one predication for every clause you speak,
and there may be many propositions and proposals that go through your head"
which are better left completely unsaid). Of course, this doesn't mean that
acting on the environment didn't play a decisive role in the creation of
language for thought; it's quite possible that language might emerge in one
way (e.g. gesture) and then flourish in quite a different one (speech or
thinking).

So even the history of "technology", and certainly the history of science,
is composed of "ifs", most of which are roads never taken, and others of
which are for others the central, determining truth of their lives. This
isn't just so for what Vygotsky called primitivism, paths of development
which seem circuitous, indirect, and ultimately inexpedient from our point
of view (e.g. deaf children who grow up with only "home sign" and not a
true sign language). The fact that the novel took a very different path in
China than it did in the West (Chinese novels never had the names of
individuals and were not primarily preoccupied with any single
consciousness) shows that paths untaken are nevertheless takeable and may
even be even more worth taking than our own.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Recent Article in *Early Years*

The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and the
child’s first interrogatives
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>

Free e-print available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:04 AM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu> wrote:

> I'm replying, here, also to Michael's question about the pragmatic view of
> language, and perhaps also to Peter's observations about non-deliberative
> speech.
>
> As I understand Vygotsky, thought is developed initially as internalized
> speech.
> And much verbalized speech constitutes thinking out loud.
>
> If we are using speech to think, this would seem to preclude using it
> instrumentally to affect the world.
>
> David
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> On Behalf Of robsub@ariadne.org.uk
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2018 10:36 AM
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
>
> Is there not a sense in which humans do design language? Perhaps our
> ancestors did not deliberately develop the noises they made, but since then
> people do develop their languages to meet particular needs and motives. Are
> we not constantly developing a language to enable discussion of CHAT?
>
>  From another angle perhaps while "language" was not designed, "some
> languages" may have been.
>
> Esperanto was deliberately developed for unification purposes.
>
> And Klingon and Na'vi were developed for whatever reasons we might
> attribute - aesthetic, commercial, status seeking....
>
> Or, maybe the issue of when a language becomes a tool is the same as other
> tools. We pick up a rock to smash open a shell; later we smash the rock to
> create one we can hold more easily; later on we rub our new rock against
> another to produce a sharper edge. At what point does the rock become a
> tool?
>
> On 19/03/2018 14:57, David H Kirshner wrote:
> > I hope this question is addressed.
> > Language is different from technology in the sense that it has not been
> designed by humans (who still struggle to understand it's structures).
> > Of course, a rock which is used as a weapon also has not been designed
> by humans.
> > Still, in picking up a rock to use as a weapon, the wielder is cognizant
> of its size and shape, and uses it deliberatively and strategically.
> > In some cases, language is used in a similar deliberative and strategic
> sense to accomplish ends. But as I understand it, the Vygotskian
> understanding of language as a tool references language in its
> non-deliberative and strategic deployment, so the usual prescriptions that
> apply to understanding tools and technologies does not apply.
> > David
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael
> > Sent: Monday, March 19, 2018 9:13 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
> >
> > Isn't spoken language a technology?
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> > Sent: Monday, March 19, 2018 9:08 AM
> > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
> >
> > The thing that intrigues me  is that it seems that spoken language
> pre-dates (at 150-350,000 years ago) the rapid development in technology.
> > I thought the migration patterns were pretty well settled by now, and
> > that "hobbit" found in Flores is a diversion),
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Andy Blunden
> > ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > On 19/03/2018 11:50 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> >> Somewhere in the discussion of Monica and Fernando's article,
> >> Fernando made the remark that history does not know "ifs". Similarly,
> >> Monica implied at one point that large technological changes must be
> >> taken as given; they are not something over which humans have
> >> control. But even if we accept the "Out of Africa" story which this
> >> article undermines, we are left with the apparently conscious
> >> decision of early hominids to leave the home continent, something none
> of the other great apes ever determined upon.
> >> Vygotsky remarked that rudiments of all four forms of higher
> >> behavior--instinct, enculturation, creativity, and free will that is
> >> none of these--appear even in infancy. So it appears that free will
> >> was always part of anthropogenesis, and consequently that
> >> history--including present history--knows nothing but ifs. We just
> >> don't see the others because we are sitting in one of them.
> >>
> >> David Kellogg
> >> Sangmyung University
> >>
> >> Recent Article in *Early Years*
> >>
> >> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and
> >> the child’s first interrogatives
> >> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>
> >>
> >> Free e-print available at:
> >> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 7:33 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> This synoptic story of the current state of research on human
> >>> origins seems relevant to the cultural-historical folks around.
> >>> mike
> >>>
> >>> https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/human-evolution-
> >>> australia-asia/?utm_source=SAPIENS.org+Subscribers&utm_
> >>> campaign=1b31c25316-Email+Blast+12.22.2017&utm_medium=
> >>> email&utm_term=0_18b7e41cd8-1b31c25316-199570669
> >>>
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>