Re: minds and artifacts
Charles Bazerman (bazerman who-is-at humanitas.ucsb.edu)
Sat, 5 Jul 1997 19:41:49 -0700 (PDT)
I step back from the role of moderator to put my own two cents in.
The discussion of minds and artifacts seems to touch on a crucial issue of
what makes for a cultural psychology rather than a cultural account of
social interaction--and that has to do with the role of culture and
artifacts in the shaping of mind. Being embued with minds (I am not sure
wherther this is the same thing as "having" them, but I do mean a place of
gathering perceptions and sensations within a personal motivated
orientation and which can reconsider motives and activities in light of
the world it perceives and senses itself to be in, and which in turn
directs and monitors behavior around those goals, motives and
perceptions), we become different sorts of participants in situations than
artifacts--although we may appear as artifacts to others. It is the
exploration of this "mind" that gives Mike's inquiry a psychological cast.
And for the others of us not in psychology, it gives a
psychological/cognitive/affective dimension to those activities and/or
systems we consider.
Another aspect of our "mind" is that it develops
(in the modes of activities, perceptions, concepts, sensations, and other
dimensions) in relation to the ambient worlds it finds itself in and the
activities its bearer participates in--that is in relation to the
situations and activities it orients toward, and to encomapss and act with
those artifacts that it perceives as available to extend the person's
range of activity.
This motivated participation, reorientation, and
incorporation of artifacts which it works through and with, characterizes
mind from other kinds of entities, even those those entities may bear the
residue of the intentions and motivated work of other mind-bearing
creatures who have influenced the shape of the received artifacts and
other entities. Thus mind is culturally embedded and culture carries the
accumulation of mind, but yet each bounded mind is individual, carrying
the motives and history of the singular individual who grows up into and
lives in the social and material world.
This is the spin I give to Mike's (and what I take to be all
cultural-historical approaches') putting culture in the middle.
Chuck
p.s. back in the role of moderator. Although discussion seems to be
proceeding in what we might call a contemplative pace, it is proceeding.
I also have had a substantial number of communications from people who
suggest they have been doing the reading and have been following the
discussion, even though they have not been jumping in on the conversation.
One of the virtues of email discussion over the classroom is that even if
everyone does not have their hands up waiting to be called on, we can wait
quietly for hours and even days while we wait for thoughts to bubble up to
the surface, as they have been doing.
After the July 4 break we will nominally move on to chapter 7, although of
course the issues of chapter 5 can still hold our attention for as long as
we have things to say.
On Sat, 5 Jul 1997, Mike Cole wrote:
> distributed in a bunch of ways that have been discussed here a lot
> over the past few years.
> And, sure (contra Latour?) I think it is important to distinguish
> between the way in which mind is attributed to humans and the way in which
> it might be attributed to artifacts." Among other things, the material
> features of humans and artifacts differ (and that of artifacts differ
> wildly among themselves).
>