Re: [xmca] Monism Is Not Reductionist

From: Martin Packer (packer@duq.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 11 2007 - 16:03:16 PST


David,

I think youıre correct to say that generalization is central to concept
development. To use a word, Vygotsky says, is to generalize. ³A word does
not relate to a single object, but to an entire group of class of objects.
Therefore, every word is a concealed generalization.² ŒCatı is never this
particular animal, but a group or class of animals. The generalization that
the use of a word always involves is also ²a verbal act of thought.² But
the character of the generalization turns out to change, to develop over
time. This, says Vygotsky, is the ³primary result² of his work. As the child
moves from heaps to complexes to concepts, she ³moves from primitive forms
of generalization to higher and more complex forms.²

And this change is also a change in consciousness: Vygotsky writes of ³the
transition from sensation to thought² and of the way that ³reality is
reflected in consciousness in a qualitatively different way in thinking than
it is in immediate sensation.²

The block task is certainly all about generalization. The child picks up a
block, a big black circle, and the adult says, thatıs a MUR. Can you find
another?² The child generalizes ­picks another block that appears, to her,
to be a member of the same group, referred to by the same word. A smaller
black circle. The adult says, ³No, thatıs a FIK.²

To be able to play this game successfully, to pick the blocks the way the
adult names them, the child has to begin to notice attributes she hasnıt
noticed before. She has to see each block in a different way. She has to
learn to see certain blocks *as* MUR, and others *as* FIK.

So when Peter wrote ³Probably the action underlying the concept is the
action of choosing a block labeled LAG, right?² I completely agree with him.
When you stop to think about it, there is no Œconceptı as a entity, existing
either in the world or in the mind. (In fact Iım increasingly coming to read
Vygotsky as insisting that there is such realm as Œmind.ı There are
physiological processes and physical actions ­ material practices ­ each
with varying degrees and qualities of consciousness. Period. To talk of
Œmindı rather than of mental (read psychological or even psychical)
processes is to risk falling back into the dualism that he is so critical of
in Crisis.) A concept is a particular process of activity, a practice of
grouping and naming objects. As a result of participating in this activity,
the child comes to see the world differently. Itıs hard to describe this
without sounding dualistic ­ what I mean is that the objects in the world
change. To develop the concept of LAG the child has to see the blocks as
different kind of objects. The world changes. This can happen because it is
a social world ­ a culture. In fact we have no way of naming things (or
thinking of them, or being conscious of them) outside culture. When I
objected to your statement, David, that ³what is in the block is... wood² my
point was that *every* statement about what the block *is* is always already
a conceptualization, already a social practice. What we call a concept is a
practice of naming by adults that invites the child, or requires the child,
to see the world in a new way, to be conscious in a new way.

So when Andy writes ³If you mean that concepts do not exist other than in
connection with human minds, then I agree,² I think what he *ought* to have
said, perhaps what he meant to say, was that concepts do not exist other
than in connection with human *practices*. I think weıd agree that a
Œcommodityı exists in the social world, not merely in a personıs head. The
Œcommodity formı is defined, created, by social practices, not in and by
individual minds. As Lukacs once noted, a collapse in the stock market is
just as real as being hit by a truck (and sometimes feels very similar).

You asked what concerns me. Iım concerned to avoid what I think are two
common misreadings of Vygotsky. The first is the view that internalization
is for Vygotsky the *general* mechanism of development, kind of the
equivalent for him of assimilation and accommodation for Piaget. The second
bolsters the first: it is the assumption that internalization *must* be what
occurs in development, because development is a process of gaining knowledge
about the world, and the world is full (only) of objects, while the mind is
full (only) of knowledge.

I believe that Vygotsky refers to internalization relatively sparingly, and
I believe that he does so in a nondualistic way. Thatıs to say, Iım
*interpreting* it nondualistically; as Iıve suggested, I think a lot of
people read it dualistically, and mistakenly. To be honest Iım not clear
whether your interpretation is dualistic or not. Letıs assume itıs not. The
change that Vygotsky gives most emphasis to is becoming able to accomplish
oneself what originally required the involvement of others. Thus social
speech becomes egocentric speech. Once the child is able to accomplish an
activity unaided, it can become Œinternalı physiologically. Thus egocentric
speech can become silent speech. (Itıs not generally noted that the ³general
genetic law of cultural development², which most of us are familiar with
from Mind in Society, a statement about the change from ³intermental² to
³intramental² functions, is not, in its original location, associated with
internalization, but with ³Hegelıs analysis² of Œin-itself, Œfor-others,ı
Œfor-itself.ı)

Let me cite a relatively lengthy passage that shows this emphasis, and use
of the terms Œexternalı and Œinternalı not to refer to Œworldı and Œmindı
but to Œsocialı and Œindividualı:

³Every higher mental function necessarily passes through an external stage
of development because function is primarily social. This is the center of
the whole problem of internal and external behavior. Many authors have long
since pointed to the problem of interiorization, internalizing behaviorŠ.
But we have something else in mind when we speak of the external stage in
the history of the cultural development of the child. For us to call a
process Œexternalı means to call it Œsocial.ı Every higher mental function
was external because it was social before it became an internal, strictly
mental function; it was formerly a social relation of two people. The means
of acting on oneself is initially a means of acting on others or a means of
action of others on the individual.² (1931/1997, p. 105)

Actually, as I noted in an earlier message, Vygotsky helps to confuse us by
using Œinnerı in two ways. As he himself noted: ³Speech becomes inner
psychologically before it becomes inner physiologically. Egocentric speech
is speech that is inner in function. It is speech for oneself, speech that
is on the threshold of becoming inner. It is already half incomprehensible
to others. At the same time, it is still external in a physiological sense²
(T&S 114).

The first transition is from social to individual. The second is from spoken
aloud to Œspoken silentlyı - ie. an entirely physiological process. I am
still digging through the texts to see, when Vygotsky does use the term
internalization, whether he refers consistently to one of these transitions.
But in *neither* of them is Œmindı involved.

Martin

On 3/9/07 5:38 PM, "David Kellogg" <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Dear Martin:
>
> The way I understand Chapter Five, it is almost entirely about
> internalization. At every stage of the emergence of the true concept from
> heaps and the various types of complexes, the explanatory principle that
> Vygotsky posits has something to do with generalization: the child generalizes
> one feature of to create a complex out of a heap, and then generalizes to a
> more abstract aspect to create a pseudoconcept, and finally situates this
> pseudoconcept in a network of abstract (that is, generalized) paradigmatic and
> syntagmatic relationships to create a true concept.
>
> When we examine in detail Vygotsky's concept of the word we see that it is
> based on Sapir's, not Saussure's. That is, the essence of a word lies in
> generalization, not opposition. But this generalization is an aspect of a
> word's meaning; it is not an aspect of the pronunciation or the orthography or
> the medium in which we find the word.
>
> There isn't anything dualistic in this. Vygotsky's solution to the "dual
> nature" of the word is not to reduce words to physical components of the
> outside world (the way that, for example, J.J. Gibson does in his theory of
> unmediated perception). Nor is it the upward reductionism of those who believe
> in conversation without cognition (e.g. Coulter, J. "Language without mind",
> in Potter and te Molder, Conversation and Cognition, CUP 2005).
>
> What Vygotsky does is to assimilate both the physical component of the word
> (the orthography and the pronunciation, which is what I referred to as
> "external") and the mental act of generalization that constitutes its meaning
> (which we may refer to as "internal" with some confidence, now that you have
> admitted that Vygotsky uses "internalization" in a non-dualistic way) to a
> single, larger whole. Pronunciation and meaning are linked, but distinct.
>
> Does Vygotsky ever SAY this? Yes, he does. The word "word" is used
> throughout Chapter Five: see Vol. 1, p. 159, p.163, p. 164, and above all on
> p. 165, where Vygotsky takes Buhler to task for assuming that concept
> formation takes place without internal integration and generalization and is
> purely external in its formation:
>
> "If, in fact, the concept arises on the basis of judgment or thinking, we
> might ask what distinguishes the concept from the products of concrete or
> active thinking practical contexts. Again, Buhler forgest what is central to
> concept formation. He forgets the word. He fails to take account of the word
> in his analysis of the factors that play a role in concept formation. As a
> consequence, he cannot understand how two processes as different as judgement
> an the combining of representations can lead to the formation of concepts."
>
> Does Vygotsky every EXPLICITLY link concept formation with the actual word
> internalization? Yes, he does; in his discussion of verbal thought and above
> all in his discussion of the adolescent's formation of a concept of self. In
> Volume Two, for example (p. 197) we find:
>
> "A game of rules serves as an example of (the formation of self-direction).
> Later, these forms of cooperation, which led to the the subordination of
> behavior to a given game's rules, become internalized forms of a child's
> activity, voluntary processes."
>
> In Volume Five, on p. 174, we find "The third direction in the development
> of self-consciousness is its internalization. The adolescent begins to
> recognize himself more and more asa single whole." This needs to be read in
> conjunction with his earlier discussion of the development of thinking and the
> formation of concepts in the adolescent, esp. p. 75, where he talks about how
> the metaphors of the adolescent differ from those of a schoolchild.
>
> In Volume Six, the translators have chosen the term "interiorization" rather
> than internalization, but the concept and the Russian original is clearly the
> same. Here the results of Chapter Five of Thought and Speech are referred to
> using "interiorization" and "exteriorization" quite explicitly. See p. 54:
>
> "Thus we come to the conclusion that every higher mental function inevitably
> initially has the character of an external activity. As a rule, at first th
> esign represents an external auxiliary stimulus, an external means of
> autostimulation. (...) The fact of "interiorizing" sign operations was
> experimentally trackedi ntwo situations: in group experiments with children of
> various ages and in individual experiments in long term experimentation with
> one child." (This is where he introduces the famous "parallelogram of
> development" that explains his forbidden colors results.)
>
> But I don't really fully understand why all this makes you uncomfortable,
> Matin. After all, if what you say is true, and Vygotsky uses the term
> internalization in a non-dualistic way, then why CAN'T he apply it to concept
> formation? We are not suggesting that internalization involves the creation of
> a Popperian World Three (which I've always thought of as a kind of Third
> World, a place of uneven and combined development where permanent revolutions
> invariably spill over into the first and second worlds!).
>
> Concepts (scientific concepts, for example) are created and shared (and
> accessed by the child) through language. Language is part of the world. But I
> don't see why we have to say that language is part of the world in exactly the
> same way as lions or death (by which I mean living, breathing lions and
> tangible, physical death, not the English word "lion" or the abstract concept
> of "death"). I'm not sure what such a statement would mean, since I don't
> think that meaning is part of the world in exactly the same way as
> pronunciation is. They are linked, but distinct, or at least distinguishable.
>
> The world is an extremely big place, and includes phenomena that are, for
> example, physical but not biological, or biological but not social, and even
> social and not linguistic. Linguistic phenomena seem to me to be a subset of a
> larger category of social phenomena, in much the same way as social phenomena
> are a subset of a larger category of biological ones and biological phenomena
> are part of a larger subset of physical ones. To say that they are all the
> same type of phenomena is not monism; it's just reductionism.
>
> Yes, I've read Bakhurst, and I applaud him; he was one of the first to stand
> up for Volosinov. I certainly agree that minds do confront reality directly.
> But that is not all they know how to do.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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