Re: [xmca] nice, short article illustrating prolepsis

From: Mike Cole (lchcmike@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 18 2006 - 19:53:26 PDT


I guess I was more focused on the idea of constraints than determinations,
Don. You can guide
a horse to water, but..........

And in general, the idea that constraints are both enabling and restricting
makes a lot of sense to me,
despite the seduction of relapsing into determinism.

It seems to me that the main thrust of the idea of prolepsis is to
introduced the idea that the (imagined, pro-jected)
future can influence the present. It speaks to the linkage between cultural
mediational theories of development and
the idea of NON LINEAR dynamic systems. As I understand it (inadequately, I
am certain), cultural contributions to
human nature and action are non-linear, creating uncertainty and the
possibility of agency all the time, even if our
common sense tells us it aint so.

Why else would anyone try to speak truth to power?

In the recent Middleton and Brown book there is a great discussion of
Bergson's ideas. he is much maligned, by, among
others, Russian cultura-historical psychologists. And of course, he can be
interpreted in ways that make his ideas laughable....
(he is not alone in this respect!). But Middleton and Brown have some nice
material on the way that Bergson pointed to the
ways in which the built environment (like kids' rooms) influences their
mental life. In a recent article by cultural psychologists
Kitayama and ?? they discover that some of the differences between west and
east that they assume come from the differently
built environments without realizing that Rheingold and Bergson were there
before them.

No need for police but the discussion sure is worthwhile, for me at least.
mike

PS. I will cc Barbara Rogoff on this exchange. I wonder if she interprets
the idea of "guided participation" to imply that the
guidance determines the response.

On 4/18/06, Cunningham, Donald James <cunningh@indiana.edu> wrote:
>
> I did, actually. I was struck by the phrase (on page 462) that the
> parents were "guided by some more compelling set of principles".
>
> What would the OED make of that?
>
> Don Cunningham
> Indiana University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Mike Cole
> Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 10:19 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] nice, short article illustrating prolepsis
>
> Don-- Did you read the article?
> Anyway, who needs word police when we have the oed:
>
> Determinism: 1)The philosophical doctrine that human action is not free
> but
> necessarily determined by motives, which are regarded as external forces
> acting upon the will.2) The doctrine that everything that happens is
> determined by a necessary chain of causation.
>
> Prolepsis: 1) The representation or taking of something future as
> already
> done or existing; anticipation; also, the assignment of an event, a
> name,
> etc. to a too early date; an anachronism, prochronism. 2) A figure in
> which
> objections or arguments are anticipated in order to preclude their use,
> answer them in advance, or prepare for them an unfavourable reception;3)
> The
> anticipatory use of an attribute.
>
> What do the police think of this? Do we need to call in Ragnar
> Rommetveit to
> adjudicate?
> mike
>
> On 4/18/06, Cunningham, Donald James <cunningh@indiana.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Hello Peter. The word police here. What is the difference between
> > prolepsis and determinism?
> >
> > Don Cunningham
> > Indiana University
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > On Behalf Of Peter Smagorinsky
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 1:55 PM
> > To: xmca@ucsd.edu
> > Subject: [xmca] nice, short article illustrating prolepsis
> >
> >
> > Rheingold, H. L., & Cook, K. V. (1975). The contents of boys' and
> > girls'
> > rooms as an index of parents' behavior. Child Development, 46,
> 459-463.
> > Retrieved April 18, 2006, from
> > http://www.jstor.org/view/00093920/ap030175/03a00210/0.
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