[Xmca-l] Conditional and Conditioned

[David Kellogg]

Mike makes the point, in an earlier thread, that if we do not understand
what Pavlov meant by "conditional response"--if, for example, we assimilate
it to operant conditioning on the one hand or reflexology on the other--we
do not understand the type of claim that Pavlov was making, nor the
position that Pavlov's work takes up in Vygotsky's development.

So what is the difference that makes a difference? Pavlov takes the
response as given by natural conditions rather than by a conditioned
system (e.g. designed and designated rewards and punishments). At the same
time, Pavlov takes the response as being neurologically ordered rather than
simply reflexive and mechanical (and so potentially open to explaining
language through a "second signal system").

Pavlov is working in a good old Russian interpretation of Darwin which was
(as Loren Graham points out) a kind of "Through the Looking Glass" version
of our own. 19th Century America happily accepted the Spencerian formula
"survival of the fittest" but rejected the mutability of species; Russians
came to precisely the opposite conclusion (as did Darwin himself).

Pavlov sees species as endlessly mutable, and the conditional response is
part of that infiinite mutability. It includes the possibility of
self-mutability--something that, as Vygotsky points out, opens the door to
a synthesis of Darwin and Lamarck, as far as cultural forms of behavior are
concerned.

At the same time, there is something immutable in Pavlov that Vygotsky in
turn rejects,  Pavlov sees the response as given by nature and the
condition as given by nurture, and for Vygotsky this division is too
elemental to be interesting in the understanding of cultural forms of
behavior: if the condition is both "natural" and "human", then it makes no
sense to argue that the response is merely the former. A dog that can ring
its own bell is a very different species indeed.

Take, for example, a classroom situation. If we take children's responses
as conditional, their source is always in the classroom environment
(physical punishments, and tangible rewards, the real apple and not the
apple of the imagination, as Bleuler says). But if we take chlidren's
response as conditioned, their source is ultimately the child (the
satisfactions of peer recognition, teacher praise, self-praise, or simply
turning out to have the right answer).There is absolutely nothing
preventing the child from emancipating himself or herself from peers,
teachers, and even a pre-determined right answer. The continuation of
development beyond this point of self-emancipation cannot be explained at
all.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Recent Article in Language Sciences

A science for verbal art: Elizabeth Gaskell's contribution to a critique of
political economy

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000117303534

Fang Li and David Kellogg.,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2018.05.001