Re: [xmca] Tools, thought, & signs (Bruner, Peirce, Newton)

My thought, too, Peter. I believe that all artifacts are sign/tools in
different fuzzily specifiable mixes. Tools for thought.action. We are
close to agreement here, but bears and beers aside, we trip over the
imprecisions of thoughtlanguage.
mike

On 7/9/07, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering, then, what's the difference between the construct of
> toolsforthought and Mike's use of the term artifact to refer to what
> others
> refer to tools and signs? p
>
>
>
> Peter Smagorinsky
> The University of Georgia
> Department of Language and Literacy Education
> 125 Aderhold Hall
> Athens, GA 30602-7123
> smago@uga.edu /fax:706-542-4509/phone:706-542-4507/
> http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/faculty/smagorinsky/index.html
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of David Williamson Shaffer
> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 9:40 PM
> To: 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
> Subject: RE: [xmca] Tools, thought, & signs (Bruner, Peirce, Newton)
>
>
> FWIW, I think in some ways the issues Tony raises at the end of his post
> (or
> near the end) is central from a theoretical perspective:
>
> >> There seems no reason for trying to sort things into categories, as
> >> being either "tools" or "signs" — the question, rather, would be
> >> whether we are presently concerned with something as it participates
> >> in the activity of sign-relations, or as it functions within
> tool-relations.
>
> Ontologically, Katie and I are arguing, as you suggest here, there is no
> difference between sign and tool--a position which we note contrasts with
> Vygotsky, but as you point our (and as we discuss in the paper) is not
> unique.
>
> I think this matters, in part, because of Mike's reply below. He writes:
>
> >Re 2: Tools may or may not amplify. But they certainly re-mediate--
> >they change the morphology of action, in a sense, they "deform" "natural"
> >action.
>
> I think the point Katie and I were trying to get at in toolforthoughts
> (both
> the term and the paper) is that there is no such thing as "natural"
> action.
> All action is deformed (to use Mike's term here).
>
> Actually, to be fair, we argue, although not in these terms, that we can
> *assume* such a thing as "natural" action, but that we have to recognize
> this is just an assumption--and of course a cultural-historically
> determined
> one at that.
>
> Mike is correct in saying (as he did in an earlier post) that this
> analysis
> applies equally to both non-computational tools and computational ones.
> But
> computational tools open up new possibilities for action--or to use Mike's
> terms again, new kinds of deformations. As Mcluhan suggests, we tend to
> see
> new deformations as unnatural--the old ones have already been naturalized,
> after all.
>
> Mike, I'd love to talk more about this last point over a bear, but
> wildlife
> being scarce at least for the moment and certainly as long as Bush is in
> office, let me say for the moment that I agree--and I think Donald would
> too--that the point of "cognitive cultures" is less to suggest that we can
> characterize thinking in one age or another by a particular cognitive
> form,
> than it is to identify when substantially new deformations appear. (Donald
> argues that the human mind is a palimpsest--he calls it a "hybrid"--where
> old forms are retained with the new.)
>
> That matters because in a time of rapid change in the nature of available
> deformations, we have to be especially careful about these
> assumptions--because assumptions about what is natural and what is
> deformed
> have pedagogical consequences.
>
> Thanks again for the thoughtful comments and perspectives....
>
> David
>
>
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> >On Behalf Of Mike Cole
> >Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 7:24 PM
> >To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >Subject: Re: [xmca] Tools, thought, & signs (Bruner, Peirce, Newton)
> >
> >Thanks for the synoptic discussion, Tony.
> >
> >I think Bruner is at least partially mistating things at the beginning
> >of your post:
> >"What is most characteristic of any kind of tool-using," he wrote, "is
> >not the tools themselves, but rather the program that guides their use.
> >It is
> in
> >this broader sense that tools take on their proper meaning as
> >amplifiers of human capacities and implementers of human activity." ….
> >
> >What bothers me about this well known formulation, even though I
> >initially thought it just fine, is two things: 1) the strong boundary
> >between the "program that guides the action" and the tool; 2) the
> >notion of amplification.
> >
> >Re 1: See Bateson, (and, I believe, both Merleu-Ponty and Heidegger)
> >using the blind man and stick metaphor about "where the mind ends."
> > Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick. I go tap, tap, tap.
> >Where do I start? Is my mental system bounded at the hand of stick? Is
> >it bounded by my skin? Doe it start half way up the stick? Does it
> >start at the tip of the stick? ((Steps to an ecology of mind, p. 459).
> >
> >Bateson goes on to discuss how "the mind" slides up and down the stick
> >and out away from the stick, "depending."
> >Wertsch, in Mind as Action spends a lot of time discussing about a unit
> >of analysis he calls "person acting with mediational means in cultural
> >context." The short form of JSB's idea here belies that unit of
> >analysis and the fusions it points to.
> >
> >Re 2: Tools may or may not amplify. But they certainly re-mediate--
> >they change the morphology of action, in a sense, they "deform" "natural"
> >action. Peg Griffin and I wrote about this in an article called
> >"Cultural amplifiers reconsidered" which is not in electronic form.
> >Anyone interested we can get it into such form. The basic idea is to
> >think of amplication as increased amplitude of a signal without change
> >in its form; that is not human, artifact-mediated, activity.
> >
> >Very interesting about Newton. It gives one pause to think when one
> >hears discussions of human progress. Now uneducated farmers can kill
> >hundreds, and soon thousands, with some simple apprenticeship in
> >killing, but they stand on the shoulders of giants of course.
> >
> >Thanks Tony, thought provoking once again.
> >mike
> >
> >On 7/8/07, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> Before we move on to the next article, there are things I've said
> >> about tools, thought, and signs that were offered more or less as
> >> assertions, without the explanation needed to make sense of them.
> >> This longish post attempts to remedy that.
> >>
> >> A much more readable version (layout, formatting, live links, and
> >> even a photo of the inscription that was minted on the edge of
> >> Newton's coins)
> is
> >> posted at
> >> http://postcog.net/2007/06/16/tools-thoughts-signs/
> >> I would suggest that anybody who wants to read this post should read
> >> it there, and come back here if you would want to discuss anything
> >> from it
> on
> >> this email list.
> >> ------------
> >>
> >> This post relates to a discussion of Shaffer and Clinton (2007) on
> >> the eXtended Mind, Culture and Activity discussion list (XMCA) in
> >> June and July of 2007.
> >>
> >> 1. Bruner and tools for thought
> >>
> >> In the toolforthoughts article, computer technology is the focus of
> >> discussion about tools in relation to thought. Noting Levi-Strauss'
> >> observation "that totems (e.g., animals and other natural objects)
> >> were not chosen because they were good to eat, but because they were
> >> good to think with," Paul Dillon implicitly raised a question of
> >> tools for thought as something more general than computers in the
> >> world we live in.
> >>
> >> Other examples are suggested in Peter Dow's account of a curriculum
> >> development project headed by Jerome Bruner (circa 1965):
> >>
> >> Concern with teaching about technology had been a persistent [p.
> >> 87] theme from the beginning at ESI Social Studies. …. Bruner linked
> >> technology to the development of man's conceptual powers. "What is
> >> most characteristic of any kind of tool-using," he wrote, "is not the
> >> tools themselves, but rather the program that guides their use. It is
> >> in this broader sense
> that
> >> tools take on their proper meaning as amplifiers of human capacities
> >> and implementers of human activity." ….
> >>
> >> Early efforts to define the technology unit and translate these
> >> general notions into effective classroom materials bogged down in
> >> debates over
> how
> >> broadly to define the term tool. Should the discussion of tools be
> >> restricted to physical objects, or is a logarithm a tool? Is the
> >> Magna Carta a tool? Is E = mc2 a tool? Should the technology
> >> materials include perspectives from disciplines as diverse as
> >> mathematics and history? One of the difficulties in trying to
> >> construct a unit on this topic was the lack of a clear conceptual
> >> structure for defining what technology is and for considering its
> >> social implications. Here, as with the other topics, some of the most
> >> interesting issues and questions fell outside of the framework
> of
> >> established academic categories. … (Dow, 1991, pp. 86-7)
> >>
> >> 2. Peirce, thought, & signs
> >>
> >> Schaffer and Clinton draw from Latour's strategy for correcting what
> >> Latour sees as the problem of treating the human and the non-human
> >> asymmetrically.
> >> It seems to me, though, that what Latour sees as a problem arises
> >> from an assumed Cartesian dualism. The problem does not arise, in the
> >> first
> place,
> >> within a Peircean perspective that does not presume that kind of
> >> dualism between the human and the natural, or the human and the
> artificial.
> >>
> >> Peirce recognized the world as constituted semiosically, with humans
> >> ourselves emerging within our participation in the semiosis that was
> >> well underway before we got here. Peirce understood the entire
> >> universe as "perfused with signs":
> >>
> >> It seems a strange thing, when one comes to ponder over it, that
> >> a sign should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning;
> >> but the explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the
> >> entire universe — not merely the universe of existents, but all that
> >> wider universe, embracing the universe of existents as a part, … that
> >> all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed
> >> exclusively of signs (Peirce, CP 5.448; cf. Whitson, 2007, p. 322 ).
> >>
> >> Peirce says "all thought is in signs," understanding "thought" as as
> >> an activity of the world (not just humans), and "signs" also in a
> >> sense that's not limited to human communication. From Whitson (2007,
> >> pp. 296-7):
> >>
> >> As distinguished from semiology [i.e., in the tradition of
> >> Saussure — including Greimas and Latour], as well as earlier historic
> >> forms of semiotics [e.g., with the Stoics], semiotics following the
> work
> of C. S.
> >> Peirce is today, first and foremost, the study of semiosis, or the
> >> activity of triadic sign-relations, recognizing that
> >>
> >> the whole of nature, not just our experience of it, but the
> >> whole of nature considered in itself and on the side of its own and
> >> proper being
> is
> >> the subject of semiosis — the process and product, that is, of an
> >> action of signs coextensive with and constructive of the actual world
> >> as well as
> the
> >> world of experience and imagination. (Deely 1994: 187-188)
> >>
> >> As Peirce observed, 'To say … that thought cannot happen in an
> >> instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every
> >> thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in
> >> signs' (CP 5.253). Once the semiosic character of thought is
> >> recognized, thought itself is understood in a more general sense,
> >> such that
> >>
> >> Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears
> >> in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical
> >> world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that
> >> the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there. … Not only
> >> is thought in the organic world, but it develops there. (CP 4.551)
> >>
> >> What exactly is it that Peirce says is 'really there' in the
> >> physical world, as undeniably as the colors and the shapes of
> >> objects? What Peirce is referring to is the semiosic action of
> >> triadic sign-relations:
> >>
> >> It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All
> >> dynamical action, or action of brute force … either takes place
> >> between two
> subjects
> >> …
> >> or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by
> >> 'semiosis' I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which
> >> is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its
> >> object,
> and
> >> its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way
> >> resolvable into actions between pairs. (CP 5.484; original emphasis)
> >>
> >> What, then, are tools, or toolforthoughts? Are they different from
> >> signs, species of signs, or what?
> >>
> >> 3. Newton, signs, and tools
> >>
> >> rough coinageAmong the problems tackled by Isaac Newton, over the
> >> course of his varied career, was the problem of preserving England's
> >> currency against counterfeiting and "clipping" (filing off precious
> >> metal from the edges
> of
> >> coins). As head of the Royal Mint, Newton oversaw torture to induce
> >> confessions, capital punishment, and even having offenders drawn and
> >> quartered to protect the value of the royal coinage.
> >>
> >> Newton's mint began the practice of making coins with ridges around
> >> the edge so that clipping could be easily detected; and also, at that
> >> time, actually engraving the edge with the words "DECUS ET TUTAMEN" —
> >> a phrase that
> might
> >> be literally translated as "an ornament and a safeguard," but which
> >> we might also recognize as an engraving that is announcing itself as
> >> "both a sign and a tool."
> >>
> >> 4. Of tools and signs (umbrella example)
> >>
> >> Let's try this example: Suppose I know that you always check the
> >> weather on your computer before you go out for lunch. Today I notice
> >> you picked up your umbrella on your way out the door. Without
> >> checking the weather for myself, I take my own umbrella with me when
> >> I go out. From a Peircean
> perspective,
> >> my action of taking my umbrella is one of the three terms in a
> >> triadic
> >> sign-relation: My action is an interpretant determined by your action
> (the
> >> representamen), interpreted as a sign of possible rain (the
> >> object-term
> in
> >> this triad). Here the umbrella participates in the activity of
> >> triadic sign-relations.
> >>
> >> When we get outside, either of us might be preoccupied with holding
> >> our umbrella in the right position so it doesn't get blown inside-out
> >> by the wind. Now our concern is with the umbrella in its
> >> tool-relations — or simply its instrumental use as a tool for keeping
> >> dry.
> >>
> >> There seems no reason for trying to sort things into categories, as
> >> being either "tools" or "signs" — the question, rather, would be
> >> whether we are presently concerned with something as it participates
> >> in the activity of sign-relations, or as it functions within
> tool-relations.
> >>
> >> What do you think?
> >>
> >> Dow, Peter B. Schoolhouse Politics: Lessons from the Sputnik Era.
> >> Cambridge,
> >> Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
> >>
> >> Peirce, Charles S. Collected Papers. Cambridge: Belknap Press of
> >> Harvard University Press, 1866-1913/1931-1958.
> >>
> >> Shaffer, David Williamson, and Katherine A. Clinton. "Toolforthoughts:
> >> Reexamining Thinking in the Digital Age." Mind, Culture, And Activity
> >> 13, no. 4 (2007): 283-300.
> >>
> >> Whitson, James Anthony. "Education à la Silhouette: The Need for
> >> Semiotically-Informed Curriculum Consciousness." Semiotica 164, no.
> >> 1/4
> >> (2007): 235-329.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
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Received on Mon Jul 9 12:14 PDT 2007