Re: [xmca] signs and tools-for-thought: an analogy?

Well I agree with that Mike. In my comment on tools-for-thought, I was
saying that the concept of semiosis was a tool for thought. Obviously, for
Peirce as for Vygotsky, tool and sign are the same thing and both are
material things albeit artefacts.
Andy
At 09:02 AM 10/09/2007 -0700, you wrote:
>I don't know enough about physics except to be a great person to
>demonstrate the
>errors of naive physics folks who are asked to think about where a rock
>will drop
>from a moving airplane or the forces operating on a spring attached to a
>wall and pulled
>by an aging academic.
>
>But vis a vis mediated human activity, my intuitive take on Vygotsky's
>ideas is that human
>thought, in so far as it incorporates the products of prior human actions,
>has a unique structure
>that gives rise to higher psychological functions, an emergent outcome in
>which tool and non-tool
>contributions are both essential and irreducible to "thought" and "tool."
>This may be more Pierce than somebody else, or simply mike cole's
>confusion.
>mike
>
>On 9/10/07, David Williamson Shaffer <dws@education.wisc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Analogies are always dangerous, of course. (Wasn't it Kundera who said to
> > be
> > careful of metaphors, because a single metaphor can give birth to love?)
> >
> > In any event, in technical terms heat is not Brownian motion, but
> > temperature is. This from wikipedia, for example:
> >
> > "The temperature of a system is defined as simply the average energy of
> > microscopic motions of a single particle in the system per degree of
> > freedom."
> >
> > (For those wondering, heat is the transfer of this energy from one body to
> > another.)
> >
> > Tony is clearly more of a Peirce expert than I, but the idea of a
> > toolforthought is to suggest that thinking is, as he suggests, a tool
> > activity--where signs and physical objects are all tools, and therefore
> > also
> > thoughts, and thinking is an emergent property of the inter-activity of
> > toolforthoughts. That is, as Katie and I suggest, toolforthoughts are the
> > cognitive instantiation of Latour's mutually mediating mediators.
> >
> > Which also suggests at least part of why the idea is so unsettling. It is
> > awkward to conceive of our own experience as the product of a kind of
> > socio-cultural/intellectual Brownian motion.
> >
> > I hope perhaps Jay Lemke and others who are more versed in actually
> > physics
> > than I will weigh in too. Meanwhile, there is a little flash animation of
> > Brownian motion for those who think visually at
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature
> >
> > David
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > > On Behalf Of Tony Whitson
> > > Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2007 10:25 PM
> > > To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > Subject: [xmca] signs and tools-for-thought: an analogy?
> > >
> > > In an earlier post, I repeated Peirce's view that thought is
> > > sign-activity, and asked, if signs are merely tools for thought, then
> > what
> > > do we take thought, itself, to be?
> > >
> > > Reflecting on that, it occurs to me that it might be helpful to suggest
> > > this as an analogy:
> > >
> > > To say that signs are tools for thought, is rather like saying that
> > > molecules are tools for heat.
> > >
> > > To think of thought AS sign activity, is it helpful, as a lame analogy,
> > to
> > > think of heat AS Brownian motion?
> > >
> > > Tony Whitson
> > > UD School of Education
> > > NEWARK DE 19716
> > >
> > > twhitson@udel.edu
> > > _______________________________
> > >
> > > "those who fail to reread
> > > are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> > > -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
> > > _______________________________________________
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> >
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> >
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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435, AIM
identity: AndyMarxists mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Mon Sep 10 19:32 PDT 2007