[Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

[David Kellogg]

Yes, I got interested in the problem of imitation: that is, the problem of
defining imitation in such a way that other forms of development more
susceptible to creative imagination are included. So if you define a
dramatic situation and then run through an example, you find that the group
leaders will want to use the example rather than the definition (Vygotsky
explains why this is so in Chapter 10 of Pedology of the Adolescent). That
leads to what I would call habit formation or skill, Buhler's second level
of behavior (where you get imitation but not innovation). So one way out of
this was to present the product but not the actual process. For example,
instead of presenting the whole dramatic situation as SS, CC, PP (set the
scene with adverbials and prepositional phrases, create the characters with
names and nouns, pose the problem with a few choice verbs) we just present
the outcome (Four boys had an arm wrestling match. Here's the outcome in
the form of a tournament tree. What will it look like if you have a
tournament in your group?) In the former case, we get back a lot of
adverbials and prep phrases, names and nouns and verbs. But in the latter?
Well, we got a lot of shouting, but not much of it was in English....)

"Bright Air, Brilliant Fire" is a synthesis; as Phillilp says, it's a good
place to start. Before he wrote it, Edelman wrote a kind of Hegelian
"trilogy"--a GENERAL work, a PARTICULAR one, and an INDIVIDUAL one.

"Topobiology" was the general background to the theory of neuronal group
selection (i.e. the general theory that GROUPS of neurons with a particular
function are selected for in ontogenesis more  or less the way that organs,
species, and phyla are selected for in phylogenesis, mutatis mutandis).

"Neural Darwinism" was particular--it took that "mutatis mutandis" out of
the parentheses, and contrasted and complemented the theory of neuronal
group selection with other strands of Darwinian thought.

"Remembered Present" was individual--it accounts for the individual nature
of consciousness by describing how neuronal groups do not imitate but
instead integrate (re-entrant neurons rather than "mirrors").

Andy worries that Vygotsky's psychology is deterministic, and of course it
is. To me this doesn't really pose a problem: I have a indefinite view of
what determinism is (grammar is deterministic, but what it determines is
indefinitely large). But what does pose a problem is the idea that at any
one point in development there is a single function which determines the
development of all the others (instinct at birth, perception in infancy,
proto-speech at one, speech in early childhood, etc). Where do these single
functions come from and how are they determined? If we see all the
functions as the product of neuronal group selection and
re-entrance (a.k.a. perezhivanie), the single function is simply one
configuration of neuronal groups rather than another in a continuous chain
of adaptation and exaptation. .

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuDgAlDP_g$ 
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
Works* *Volume
One: Foundations of Pedology*"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuAjTIkH_A$ 


On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 2:57 AM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Thanks, David. That seems just the right way to think about the process, a
> re-presentation, a focus on the process, an event
> occurring over time. Seems like this is part of what
> microethnography provides, so long as we realize that the test
> itself is a process operating on  a different time scale, and taken as a
> "thing" operating in what journalists are calling "real time"
> these days.  People like Bud Mehan and Aaron Cicourel were studying the
> process of test taking "itself,"  a process that Ray McDermott
> and David Roth pursued as part of our studies of ecological validity at
> Rock U. I am not sure it got written up formally. I recall Ray saying in
> frustration one
> day after a dozen hours watching a professional tester administer a set of
> tests to an 11 year old boy, "THe context is between their eyes! I can't
> see it."
> Exactly what a test is supposed to do , create a thing so you can measure
> it.
>
> Now people seek to make the visible through analysis of fmri's.
> Through a different glass, but foggily.
> mike
>
> PS-- I suggest again that in thinking about these issues, Powers of Ten,
> seems helpful to think with. Besides, its interesting in itself
> even if my thinking is not!
>
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.google.com/search?q=powers*of*ten&oq=Powers*of*Ten&aqs=chrome.0.35i39j46j0l5j69i61.2991j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8__;KysrKw!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuCfYhZ_PQ$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.google.com/search?q=powers*of*ten&oq=Powers*of*Ten&aqs=chrome.0.35i39j46j0l5j69i61.2991j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8__;KysrKw!!Mih3wA!TmAYwTcFqnzEuLRdRsdUrETBcrLxlvD6IMUPNXsOyvZkSMbEW_dV6K6yz9JHbOHJ2xHPsw$>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 9:49 AM HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> David, Annalisa, Anthony, Martin, Phillip and the rest of cast of
>> characters,
>> I got lost in the details of the methodological maze you and Annalisa
>> constructed until this turn of yours. Thanks for pulling it together. Mike
>> isn’t the only one amused by the practice-what-you-teach lesson to
>> yourself. Of course, I get up every day looking for these lessons to
>> myself. I assume Anthony does as well. How could any 8th grade English
>> teacher get through the day otherwise? Staying humble. HAS to be why he got
>> through the little kerfufle with Martin so gracefully. I am impressed with
>> the lot of you. I’ve been in the hospital and recuperating from a little
>> bowel obstruction since Tuesday and only yesterday had a chance to read the
>> chat dialog since the SBO hit me. It was jumble last night,  but when I
>> woke up and read this post, it all became clear. Ha!
>>
>> David, Would you please expand on your last paragraph on Edelman,
>> Halliday and Vygotsky and how Edelman’s “mirror” neurons “offer a pretty
>> clear way out of the problem”? Maybe re-present “the problem”?
>> Henry
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 14, 2020, at 12:43 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Annalisa and Mike:
>>
>> The Good Lord loves and rewards stubborn persistence, Annalisa. I am not
>> sure kids do, though--will they want to sit through the same presentation
>> three times? Or do you simply mean we use three different presentations so
>> that we can randomize the order? Of course, "sputnik" didn't mean a
>> satellite for Vygotsky--the first Sputniks were launched just before I was
>> born, about twenty years after Vygotsky died. When I first translated
>> Vygotsky, I thought a "sputnik" was a kind of sattelite God, Hermes to
>> Zeus, Hanuman to Ram, Athena to Odysseus. But I notice that Russians use
>> "sputnik" to just mean something like "companion", a fellow traveler, or a
>> playmate. So instead of a kind of guardian angel, emotion functions as a
>> bosom companion, growing up as the child grows.
>>
>> I have--as usual--expressed myself rather poorly, Mike. (It will amuse
>> you greatly to learn that I am teaching Communication this term!) When I
>> said "represent" I did mean re-present. I actually meant exactly what
>> Annalisa is describing. The teacher presents  the task (usually a dramatic
>> situation of some kind) to a small group of "group leaders" and they do an
>> example before the class begins. Those group leaders then return to their
>> groups and present the task to the groups. We did video the results, but I
>> thought the product wasn't nearly as interesting as analyzing the process.
>>
>> Phillip: Halliday thought that Edelman's view of intelligence was the
>> real biological foundation of his linguistics. And Annalisa is right, it
>> did have a lot to do with Edelman's theory of re-entrant
>> ("mirror") neurons. Andy has some trouble with the determinism of Vygotsky;
>> I have a rather different problem with his hierarchical ideas of how
>> functions are organized in a system. Edelman's books offer a pretty clear
>> way out of that problem!
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 7:10 AM Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> David,
>>>
>>> My stubborn persistence tells me that there is a way to bring in the
>>> dynamics of the pandemic crisis into your research design if we think about
>>> it long enough.
>>>
>>> If emotion is the sputnik, as you reasonably hypothesize, then how can
>>> you create opportunities for sputnik to launch?
>>>
>>> I maintain that this can be done with peer learning, because what counts
>>> is the cultural connection a student has with a peer compared to that
>>> cultural connection the student has with an instructor. Given in your
>>> description of social distancing, isn't there a way to compare and contrast
>>> learning that comes from "in person with social distancing" vis s vis
>>> learning that comes from "online learning"?
>>>
>>> What you describe in your study is not what I was proposing. I was
>>> proposing how a student learns from a peer presenting the object of
>>> learning compared to the way a teacher might. And to use online vs in
>>> person learning venues to compare and contrast what we might call the
>>> perezhivanie in the learning moment.
>>>
>>> If we might accept Nuthall's findings that learning happens when the
>>> underlying materials are presented at least three times, that should be a
>>> replicable structure that could bear fruit. It should be possible to
>>> determine and trace the emotional attachment that prevails in successful
>>> concept development.
>>>
>>> How about:
>>>
>>>    - Have a control for presentations with underlying material offered
>>>    three times (delivered via online learning?)
>>>    - Have a presentation with socially distant teacher presenting three
>>>    times.
>>>    - Have a presentation with socially distant peer presenting three
>>>    times.
>>>
>>>
>>> Note the differences and similarities, as well as effectiveness and even
>>> how quickly a concept is absorbed and mastered by the learner.
>>>
>>> What is the flaw in that design as you see it?
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>> Annalisa
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>> *Sent:* Saturday, June 13, 2020 3:26 PM
>>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"
>>>
>>>
>>> *  [EXTERNAL]*
>>> Annalisa:
>>>
>>> It's a great idea. But we are in the throes of "the dance" here in South
>>> Korea. Schools reopen. Then there's an outbreak. So the government closes
>>> schools again and we all go back into isolation for ten days. Then things
>>> reopen again, until the next outbreak. Even when schools are open, class
>>> size is greatly reduced, students are kept at least two meters apart and
>>> put in masks (we don't have those crazy hats that you see in China, but
>>> some schools use cubicles), and that would make it really hard to get peer
>>> teaching, much less collect data from peer teaching.
>>>
>>> We did do something like what you propose way back in 2007--we just
>>> looked at the difference between the way a teacher presented the task and
>>> the way that the task was represented to groups.
>>>
>>> Guk, I. and Kellogg, D. (2007). The ZPD and Whole Class Teaching:
>>> Teacher-led and Student-led Interactional Mediation in Tasks. Language
>>> Teaching Research 11,3 (2007); pp. 281–299
>>>
>>> I suspect that if you read this study you will find it methodologically
>>> and even intellectually crude, particularly compared to what you propose,
>>> but for reasons I don't really understand it's the only thing we ever wrote
>>> that gets widely cited!)
>>>
>>> Phillip:
>>>
>>> Yes, ethnography would show precisely the kind of development we're
>>> interested in. But I think ethnography is better suited to studying
>>> stability than to studying crises. I get that crises are like anything
>>> else--they need to be highly contextured to be well textured. But because
>>> ethnography has a tendency to view the social and cultural and historical
>>> dimension exclusively through the language of the interpersonal, it's
>>> really hard to get genetic cross-sections that are broad enough and long
>>> enough to tell you how the system as a whole changes at "inflection points"
>>> (Joe Biden!) that are prepared for systematically precisely by those epochs
>>> we are naively thinking of as stable. (Ruqaiya Hasan's work was one of very
>>> few exceptions to this constraint....)
>>>
>>> For example. One of the most important responses to the crisis revealed
>>> by George Floyd's murder has been to argue that the protests are too easily
>>> hijacked as pretexts for violence (see, for example, Boris Johnson's recent
>>> remarks on the descecration of Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament
>>> Square in London). This assumes, weirdly, a widespread tendency towards
>>> unmotivated violence that I have never actually observed in any fellow
>>> human being. I am pretty sure that Boris Johnson could probably find
>>> someone to produce ethnographic evidence that it exists, but I am equally
>>> sure that he couldn't ever produce evidence that it is systemic. Without
>>> that evidence, there is no way to predict or explain the fire next time.
>>>
>>> Language stuff is not like this: every text is evidence of both the
>>> interpersonal and of what we are calling, non-redundantly, the
>>> socio-cultural.
>>>
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Sangmyung University
>>>
>>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
>>> Outlines, Spring 2020
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuDgAlDP_g$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03Im5e4BWA$>
>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
>>> Works* * Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>>>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuAjTIkH_A$ 
>>>
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03IavHbi-w$>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 11:59 PM White, Phillip <
>>> Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> rather than a test, David, perhaps a rigorous ethnography along the
>>> lines of what Graham Nuthall did -
>>>
>>>
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuDIPG8WGw$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVv1FWd6Q$>
>>> Graham Nuthall: Educational research at its best – researchED
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVv1FWd6Q$>
>>> Graham Nuthall: Educational research at its best 26th February 2019 / in
>>> February 2019 / by Jan Tishauser. Professor Emeritus Graham Nuthall, an
>>> educational researcher from New Zealand, is credited with one of the
>>> longest series of studies of teaching and learning in the classroom that
>>> has ever been carried out. A pioneer in his field, his ...
>>> researched.org.uk
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://researched.org.uk__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03Jr3xUlgw$>
>>>
>>>
>>> it was highly complex, but clearly from his finding emotions play a key
>>> role in concept formation.
>>>
>>> he died about 16 years ago.  and oddly enough his work is still little
>>> appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuD6jtER3g$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVKl43myA$>
>>> The cultural myths and realities of teaching and learning / Pedagogical
>>> leadership / Pedagogy and assessment / Home - Educational Leaders
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVKl43myA$>
>>> The cultural myths and realities of teaching and learning. by Graham
>>> Nuthall. Download this complete document (PDF 149 kB) Help with PDF files
>>> Overview. Graham Nuthall was Emeritus Professor of Education at the
>>> University of Canterbury in Christchurch.
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuAFvdxnKA$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kXD3p1_-w$>
>>>
>>> Nuthall had participated in some of xmca conversation.
>>>
>>> also, Gerard Edelman's work, which was the focus of an xmca conversation
>>> some time ago, points out that initials perceptions are initially sorted
>>> into one of two values - in layman's terms, like or dislike.  which is of
>>> course an emotional response.
>>>
>>> *Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind* (Basic Books,
>>> 1992, Reprint edition 1993). ISBN
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN_(identifier)__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVQcrjGHA$>
>>>  0-465-00764-3
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-465-00764-3__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kWgq0yeVA$>
>>>
>>> in short, there are many ways of exploring student emotions i'd consider
>>> to be more reliable that trustworthy than tests.
>>>
>>> phillip
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> --
>
> Crush human humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it
> will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of
> rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the
> same fruit, according to its kind.  C.Dickens.
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!SZdzyMBY-rAfnUqTnB6aV8-A_jyZr1Pr6UzP3KR3sUNMXm5NVZ1Y8PB-tEfpkuCAlGYeDA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TmAYwTcFqnzEuLRdRsdUrETBcrLxlvD6IMUPNXsOyvZkSMbEW_dV6K6yz9JHbOHtakEb4g$>
> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://re-generatingchat.com__;!!Mih3wA!TmAYwTcFqnzEuLRdRsdUrETBcrLxlvD6IMUPNXsOyvZkSMbEW_dV6K6yz9JHbOEJYLu0Fg$>
> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu.
> Narrative history of LCHC:  lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>
>
>
>
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