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Re: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?



Yes, I didn't find anything I disagreed with in David Ki's post, so I presume David was just drawing what for him was the conclusion of my gloss on Vygotsky's concepts. Yes, David?

I am a bit hesitant about jumping into "distributed cognition" with Vygotsky though unless and until we are clear on the starting point. But - Martin drew my attention to this - ...

On p. 61 LSVCW v. 4 Vygotsky alludes to Hegel and immediately follows this, explicitly by way of explanation with: "Marx refers to this definition when he speaks of the tools of work and indicates that man "makes use of mechanical, physical, chemical properties of things in order to change them into tools to act on other things according to his purpose" (Capital, chapter 7: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm):

   "An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which
   the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his
   labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes
   use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some
   substances in order to make other substances subservient to his
   aims. Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of
   subsistence as fruits, in gathering which a man’s own limbs serve as
   the instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer
   possesses himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument.
   Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he
   annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite
   of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his
   original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for
   throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an
   instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a
   whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high
   development of labour."

The Hegel quote Marx is alluding to is:

   “Reason is as cunning as it is powerful. Cunning may be said to lie
   in the intermediative action which, while it permits the objects to
   follow their own bent and act upon one another till they waste away,
   and does not itself directly interfere in the process, is
   nevertheless only working out its own aims." /Shorter Logic
   <../works/sl/slobject.htm#SL209n>/ (1830) (
   http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slobject.htm#SL209n
   )

So "the cunning of reason" is how the intelligence invested in artefacts is dealt with in Hegel and Marx. From this I think we are led to connect Hegel's idea of Spirit with artefact mediation.

Andy

Greg Thompson wrote:
Thanks David Ki for pulling some pieces together in an interesting fashion,
that's helpful.

Vygotsky is starting to sound like Dewey (which I like).

So does this mean that for Vygotsky riding a bike is a "true, semiotic
representation"?

It seems easier for Dewey to make this kind of move b.c. he doesn't have
the language of "true, semiotic representation" but has a somewhat vaguer
notion of "theory". The farmer is a theoretician when deciding which crops
to plant even if he isn't exactly using the scientist's understanding of
the process.

Distributed Cognition would take us further in this direction by saying
that it is okay if the theory is distributed across people and resources
(and Latour's Actor Network Theory can be useful for that last part).

So I'd like to see the same move made with Vygotsky. Seems like someone out
there has probably already made this move, but I'm too poorly read to know
where/who it might be.

Cheers,
greg


On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 7:18 AM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu> wrote:

Andy said:

1. "Vygotsky does explicitly recognise that use of a tool modifies the
mental processes and enlarges the child's sphere of activity, but he wants
to focus on what he sees as *voluntary* control of the child's own behavior"

2. "A potential concept can be acquired as a system of actions organised
around a tool, but it is still only potential. Once the same activity is
organised even when the tool is not present, but by means of a true,
semiotic representation of the tool, then you have a 'higher psychological
function.'"

Why the focus on "*voluntary* control?" Is self-regulation not just an
example of a higher psychological function, but really the foundation stone?

Also, putting 1 and 2 together, is the implication that "a true, semiotic
representation" always is consciously deployed as part of an intentional
process?

David


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:03 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?

Mike, in "Tool and Symbol in Child development," Vygotsky goes on at great
length and detail in distinguishing between the changes in the child's
functioning associated with the use of tools (e.g. a bicycle) and the use
of a sign. (and he includes learning by rote under the heading of tool- not
symbol-use) I hesitate to try to summarise this discussion. But he makes a
distinction between acquiring the habit of using a tool, and adopting a
symbol for use in controlling one's own and others' minds. I think this is
the distinction which is /underlying /his elusive distinction between
learning and development.

Vygotsky's "clear-cut dualism" has to be understood in terms of its basis
and the use he is making of it, i.e., to explain a conceptual distinction
in understanding tendencies of developmental processes.
Ultimately, a dichotomy between tool and sign, or even between tool-use
and symbol-use is unsustainable, least of all in our times - one and the
same keyboard can be used to control a machine or send a message to the
operator. Controlling one's own body has to be counted as tool-use in some
circumstances, and symbol-use in others.

Vygotsky does explicitly recognise that use of a tool modifies the mental
processes and enlarges the child's sphere of activity, but he wants to
focus on what he sees as *voluntary* control of the child's own behaviour,
and he does not see learning to use a tool as doing that: you have learnt
to ride, but you still need to be on a bicycle to do it, I suppose. It is a
bit like the distinction between a "potential concept"
and a "true concept." A potential concept can be acquired as a system of
actions organised around a tool, but it is still only potential. Once the
same activity is organised even when the tool is not present, but by means
of a true, semiotic representation of the tool, then you have a "higher
psychological function."

I don't think there is any easy way of representing Vygotsky's thought
here in English and I suspect not in Russian either. He is not saying that
there are two types of psychological activities, higher and lower; there
are two types of concept, potential and true; there are two types of
artefact, semiotic and material, even though this is precisely what he says
on numerous occasions. He is talking about opposite tendencies and sources
in *processes*, and the language doesn't offer us many means of
communicating this other than saying "there are two types of ..." And
because the distinctions he is making are brand new and original, he has to
really hammer the distinction to the point of a "clear-cut dualism"
in order to make his point, which is, in my opinion, not really about
dualisms at all. I think the same goes for learning and development.

That's my take,
Andy



mike cole wrote:
Hi David-- Thanks for all the re-minding.

Why does Vygotsky reject bicycle riding (learning a phonetic alphabet
to read for meaning too?) as an example of a developmental change? It
is a qualitative change in the organization of consituent functions,
it reorganizes not only the system of psychological/psychomotor
functions, it is mediated by culture, it brings about a simultaneous
change in the person's relationship to his/her environment.

Seems to qualify. What's wrong here?
mike

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:16 PM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:


  Greg--



The funny thing is that in Korean there is an identical expression:
"halka malka". And in Chinese the yes/no question is essentially
nothing but an elaboration of "willy-nilly".



It's hard to imagine that there is NOTHING at the basis of the
legal-juridical model of human action except contractualism, just as
it's hard to imagine that Saussurean linguistics is ONLY based on an
infinite number of curiously non-negotiable agreements about word
meanings.

It seems to me that there's just a kernel of truth here. In order to
engage in any semiotic behavior at all, you have to recognize that
something is a sign. And in order to recognize that something is a
sign, you have to recognize that it was intended to stand for
something else. And in order to recognize that sometime was intended
to stand for something else, you have to recognize that there is
intelligent life out there after all.



I guess if I were looking for a single "a-ha!" moment, a moment where
one can point to a hair and see a beard, that would be it!



Mike--



"Riding a bicycle" is a perfect example of where our bicycle built
for two meets a fork in the road.



Bike riding is actually one of the activities that Vygotsky
explicitly rules out as instances of development (along with typing and
playing golf).
It is an instance of learning, but not development. So I thought we
ought to reserve the term "microgenesis" for only those types of
learning which in a given social context (that of education) can be
linked to the ontogenesis of mind. And that meant, after the age of
one, those types of learning that are centrally about language.



Unfortunately, I think that unreadable book review by me in MCA is
the only written record of our conversation on whether microgenesis
was a kind of learning or learning a kind of microgenesis. It was
mostly over the telephone. I had just discovered Mescheryakov's
brilliant article on Vygotskyan terminology (in the Cambridge
Companion) and I was looking, in my usual little-boy-with-a-toy-hammer
mode, for ways to over-extend it:

1) Natural functions are acquired before cultural ones, but within
cultural functions...

2) Social functions are acquired before individual ones, but within
individual functions...

3) Extramental functions are acquired before intra-mental functions,
but within intra-mental functions..

4) Spontaneous, everyday functions are acquired before
nonspontaneous, academic ones



I thought all of these could be seen as instances of a very general
principle "Outside-in!" so long as we accept "outside" as referring
to the environmental and "inside" as referring to the semiotic. It
could then be differentiated according to:



1) The phylogenetic zone of proximal devleopment (caves before
houses, hair before clothes)

2) The sociogenetic zone of proximal development (discourse before
grammar, speech before verbal thinking)

3) The ontogenetic zone of proximal development (egocentric speech
beore inner, finger counting before mental math)

4) The microgenetic zone of proximal development (in
English--Germanic vocabulary before Latinate and Greek, in Korean,
pure Korean words before those of Chinese origin)



You pointed out to me that this assumed that microgenesis was a
rather special kind of microgenesis--the kind that linked learning to
ontogenetic development. And you said, correctly, that this was not
the way the term is normally used. You then recommended that I review
this book, and I did. I also wrote an article on the subject (which
was indignantly rejected by MCA but eventually published by the Modern
Language Journal).

*
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01236.x/a
bstract
*<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01236.x
/abstract>



The problem with the microgenesis book I reviewed was that I didn't
really find the discussions of exactly when a person could be said to
have perceived a dot as a man very enlightening, and I found that
some of the studies in the book were of activities that were clearly
not linked to mental development in any way (e.g. murder and suicide).



Of course, people do tend to prefer their own inventions, and I found
myself sticking to my own understanding of microgenesis, that is,
that microgenesis should really be reserved for the kind of learning
that leads to ontogenesis, just as iin Vygotsky the ontogenesis of
mind is really reserved for the kind of growth that culminates in
sociogenesis or socio-re-genesis rather than simply growth in general
(and, of course, sociogenesis should be reserved for forms of culture
which increase man's mastery of his environment as well as of that
part of the environment which is his own behavior).



Now, I know that this is the kind of selective and directed
developmental view which many people on the list reject. I have been
thinking a bit about why this is so, since it seems to be at the
bottom of my inability to integrate my own thinking with that of
people to whom I otherwise feel a very strong intellectual affinity
(e.g. you and Martin). It seems to me that, since the 2008 collapse
in particular, there has been a strong tendency amongst Western
intellectuals to REVERSE the millenium old assumption that we had
about nature and nurture, according to which if something is natural
there is nothing to be done, but if something is "socially
constructed" then it can be easily deconstructed and re-constructed.
Since 2008, we have had almost the reverse prejudice: if something is
natural, it may easily be altered; our tragedy is that we cannot seem
to change our own behavior.

Needless to say, there is a great deal of truth in this insight; I
think it is one of the great insights of our time. The problem is
that I seem to be stuck in an earlier time, when the semiotic
behavior of Chinese people was very  far in advance of their ability
to control the environment, and mass literacy simply meant that large
quantities of materials which might otherwise have been usefully
employed as toilet paper, could now only be read, simply because in
order to shit you have to be able to eat.

(My mother-in-law, who survived the famine, still thinks of food as
the only real private property, and then only when it has actually
been eaten.)



David Kellogg

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies






<kellogg59@hanmail.net>
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*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts

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--
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*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts

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