Re: levels

From: Ana Marjanovic Shane (anashane@speakeasy.net)
Date: Wed Jul 04 2001 - 23:47:39 PDT


Mike, I agree with you in many ways. There are even levels to this
discussion we are entering in.
On one had we can discuss, like Bill tries whether we will even call it
levels or not and on the other hand
we can go to a "lower level" and start discussing, as I started, the
hierarchy between the levels.

However, our task - the way you put it - is just to move the "mainstream"
scientific world toward seeing the existence and the role of the social
"level" (whatever) in the process of human development. And not just
individual development but the development of the human species as such.
And possibly the development of other species (phylogeny) that lead to us.

Well, for me - no amount of biological development can explain a jump
between sensory awareness (even sensory memory) and being able to cross the
line between here and now and be able to imagine and talk about phenomena
which are not immediate and contagious to the communication.
This is why I personally think that the role of play is greatly
under-estimated even among the CHAT-ists. I think that play - with its
Batesonian switch of the mode of reference is the first place where the
mediation happens. Vygotsky put that in a different but very similar
format: in supposing that in play meaning dominates an object or an action
while in reality the object (action) dominates its meaning.
I think that the play frame enables a link between the "me", the "you" and
the "it" into an act of making meaning. both ontogenetically
and philogenetically - play is the first act of reflection - it is not a
mere reaction. While in the so called "real life" biological organisms ACT
and REACT to each other and the objects - play is a communication which is
ABOUT something else - it is REFLECTIVE.
A non-historical (non cultural species) can and does possess an ability to
communicate - that this a given for ALL species - even single cell
organisms. But you cannot imagine two bacteria (or for that matter even
chimpanzees) communicating ABOUT something that is not immediately present.
They can certainly relate to each other and they do; they can certainly
relate to objects in their environment - and they do. But they cannot
communicate to each other ABOUT those objects unless they are a part of
their immediate ACTION (not activity!!)
I think that the activity theory has to look for the origin of mediation -
both in the ontological development, and in the phylogenetic development.
And I believe that play is the key.

Ana

At 04:26 PM 7/4/2001 -0700, you wrote:

>Ana-- You write:
>
>As I understand Thibault: in the theory of scalar hierarchies, each level
>(L) co
>ntains unique processes and forms. The levels are then organized so that
>the the
>y provide a system of mutual constraints - a higher level (L+1) provides
>constra
>ints (boundary conditions) to the focal levele(L); while an immediate
>lower leve
>l (L-1) provides constituents for the focal level L.
>
>OK - logically I have no problem with this.
>
>What I want to know is do we have to suppose that social processes are of
>a high
>er level order to the level of individual higher mental processes?
>Likewise, why do we have to suppose that individual mental processing
>belongs to
> a higher level than neurological processing??
>
>Bill's note on scales and levels follows yours, and I would really like to
>hear from Jay and others who have dealt with systems/scales/levels more than
>I have, but let me try say something useful here.
>
>#1 he wants to get Edelman to move outside the brain and individual
>development
>in a serious way to consider SIMULTANEOUSLY the socio-cultural environment
>which is either L+1 or L+2 to what Edelman does. The notion of "higher"
>in this case, for me at least, means that it includes cultural mediation
>which means an historically accumulated set of constraints/affordances
>that are literally beyond the indivdiual scope in time and spatial extent.
>The spirit of this effort to get a cultural-historical "top-->down"
>element into Edelman seems right to me.
>
>But I think that in Bill's terms, I have been conflating scale and level.
>
>In the early connectionist modelling, the notion of levels was pretty
>straightforward and built into the programs. L1=features, L2=lettes, L3=words
>and they were working on letter recognition. The found they needed the L3,
>top down constraint, to make the models work.
>
>We argued that the models were drastically underspecified for higher levels
>which were represented as a trident plunging from the top of the figure as
>if, we wrote, thrown by Zeus. In real classrooms with real literacy
>acquirers, the specification of those "higher" (more inclusive.... am I
>slipping on a scale peel here?) levels were supposed to be sentences,
>paragraphs, whole texts which were NOT modelled. There has been some
>progress since then, but not all that much.
>
>With respect to the indivdiual/social "levels" I too would be suspicious
>of hierachy; can't have one without the other so you could turn the whole
>thing upside down and not hurt my feelings.
>
>Mostly, I wanted to get XMCA-o-cats to put out some ideas on how to deal
>with phylogeny in our theorizing. In that I seemed to have failed.
>
>I am interested in this because it is foundational to a CHAT approach to
>assume the interweaving of different historical domains in ontogeny but
>the phylogenetic domain goes under attended, Now evolutionary developmental
>psychology, with no concept of culture worthy of the name, so far as I can
>tell (counterevidence welcome!), is getting a giant play. They don't have to
>do experiments to get legitimacy in psych departments because they are
>"biological." I am not anxious to abandon the field to them.
>mike



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