[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

Sat Aug 15 15:29:25 PDT 2020

Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech.

Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1:
"To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness – understood as generalization – leads directly to mastery.

Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can – like any structure – be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept."

Mike’s reply, in total was:

I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.

What am I missing?
Mike

David

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Martin Packer
Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

David,

Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in?

Puzzled...

Martin

On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu<mailto:dkirsh@lsu.edu>> wrote:

Andy,

That “any ‘actual’ concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,” speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post.
But they’re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike’s interpretation of a Vygotsky’s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, “humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.”

I do not question Vygotsky’s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, “like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.” What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory.

David

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract.
Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E.
I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker.
Andy
________________________________
Andy Blunden
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On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote:
Thanks for your accessible example, Michael.

Vygotsky’s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I’m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology’s Dual Process Theory that at its “theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes…: type 1—intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2—reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct” (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey.

David

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa,

Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says “Chess?” I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don’t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop’s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop’s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop’s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop’s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop’s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!!

I don’t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere.

Michael

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question)

Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case.

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