[Xmca-l] Re: Отв: Отв: Re: Ilyenkov, Marx, & Spinoza

[Andy Blunden]

I love your intervention, Ivan, especially being a blackbird 
lover in South-eastern Australia. But I won't spoil it by 
interrupting, but look forward to David's riposte!

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 4/08/2017 7:58 PM, Ivan Uemlianin wrote:
> Dear David
>
> Please could you explain a bit more your (and/or 
> Vygotsky's) argument against conventionality, and what you 
> mean by "natural" in this context?  I don't understand how 
> the blackbird example fits.
>
> I have three problems with the blackbird example:
>
> 1. Russian has no word for blackbird.
>
> Russian uses the phrase чёрный дрозд, literally, "black 
> thrush", so it seems strange for Vygotsky to use the word 
> "blackbird" as an example.  If you were reading in English 
> translation, perhaps the translator was taking liberties?
>
> 2. black + bird does not imply blackbird.
>
> Not all black birds are blackbirds; not all blackbirds are 
> black birds.  In British English, blackbird refers 
> specifically to the Turdus merula; in American English, 
> blackbird refers to any of a number of small birds --- the 
> so-called New World blackbirds --- none of which is the 
> Turdus merula (and not all of which are black birds, e.g. 
> the yellow-shouldered blackbird).  Other black birds --- 
> e.g. crows, rooks and ravens --- are not blackbirds at all.
>
> 3. As you put it, "other languages do it differently".
>
> Your argument about "black" + "bird" only applies to 
> English.  The French for blackbird is not "noiroiseau" or 
> even "oiseaunoir", but "merle" (from the Latin merula, 
> which isn't black+bird either).
>
> The half-enculturated German child might see a blackbird 
> and use the phrase "schwarz Vogel", but a 
> slightly-more-enculturated German child would use the 
> German word for blackbird, which is "Amsel".
>
> Putting #1 aside, the limitations and variations in #2 and 
> #3 can be explained by looking at the history of the 
> communities using the term.  But surely convention is an 
> artefact of history, so a historical explanation would be 
> closer to "conventionality" than "nature".  The only 
> non-conventional aspect I can see is the geographical 
> distribution of Turdus merula (basically Europe, New 
> Zealand and a bit of Eastern Australia).
>
> Best wishes
>
> Ivan
>
>
> On 02/08/17 22:47, David Kellogg wrote:
>> Dear Sasha:
>>
>> Thanks for the reply. I took the time to read the English 
>> version of your
>> paper with great interest and large areas of agreement. 
>> But the areas of
>> disagreement, which I'll talk about in another post on 
>> "free will as
>> infinite selection", were actually the zones of greatest 
>> interest.
>>
>> I think Vygotsky doesn't accept conventionality as a 
>> pervasive principle in
>> language, and neither do I. Take, for example, Vygotsky's 
>> example
>> "blackbird". We can say that the phonemes/graphemes (the 
>> language-specific
>> sequence of vowels and consonants) is conventional; we 
>> know this because
>> other languages do it differently. But once we take the 
>> "salto mortale" of
>> accepting that "black" means the (original) color of ink 
>> and "bird" means a
>> winged animal descended from the dinosaurs, the pairing 
>> of "black" and
>> "bird" to describe the blackbird is natural and not 
>> conventional: it obeys
>> laws that are clear even to the half-enculturated child.
>>
>> I think that is why Vygotsky can give many examples of 
>> "child made"
>> language ("mazoline", etc.) that are non-conventional and 
>> why he can link
>> these Mondegreens to actual etymological processes and 
>> actual words
>> ("sidewalk"). Saussure's principle applies to language in 
>> only one place,
>> and it happens to be the only place in which Saussure was 
>> completely
>> competent as a linguist: sounding. Saussure's principle 
>> does not apply to
>> either wording or meaning: these are not purely 
>> conventional but natural.
>>
>> I think Vygotsky did not accept Pavlov as a human 
>> psychologist, but only as
>> an animal behaviorist. Of course, he was deferential, 
>> just as you or I
>> would defer to Mike (who was once an animal behaviorist 
>> himself), and just
>> as Mike himself would defer to a Luria or a Bernstein. 
>> Mere bad manners
>> doesn't make you an original thinker. I will agree to 
>> call this deference
>> discretion: Vygotsky didn't like to pick fights and lose 
>> them.
>>
>> I think that's why Vygotsky concentrates his fire on 
>> Watson, and Thorndike
>> and not Pavlov, why he points to Pavlov the animal 
>> behaviorist's insightful
>> remarks about the sign to shame his psychologist 
>> colleagues (this is
>> similar to what he does in shaming Piaget and Freud with 
>> the biologizing
>> Bleuler), and why he uses Pavlov's metaphor of a 
>> "telephone switchboard"
>> for his own purposes
>>
>> I didn't just include the Chuck Berry song in memory of a 
>> great musician; I
>> think that the lyrics show us the very point you are 
>> making about the sign.
>> You are certainly right that by itself, treated as just 
>> another instrument,
>> the sign doesn't have the power to confer free will on 
>> the human marionette
>> that Watson, Thorndike--and Pavlov--imagine. If a human 
>> is a puppet on a
>> string, it doesn't help to put another puppet in control 
>> of the string and
>> then put the human in control of the other puppet.
>>
>> But that's not what signs do. That's only what casting 
>> lots, tying knots,
>> and counting on your fingers APPEAR to do. When humans 
>> have do these
>> things, they try to go beyond the appearance. They 
>> imagine that casting
>> lots conveys messages from God, that knots tie themselves 
>> (as the Russian
>> formalists said), and that counting on fingers taps into 
>> some World Three
>> of eternal discoveries (Popper).
>>
>> And when they have been giving these unlikely 
>> explanations for thousands of
>> years, some humans begin to notice that the voice of the 
>> gods sounds very
>> familiar, that the knot tying of one child is unlike that 
>> of another, and
>> that some cultures count toes and elbows. Dorothy looks 
>> under the curtain
>> and realizes that the Wizard of Oz is only a wizened old 
>> man, and it turns
>> out you don't need his help after all. Soon people are 
>> making decisions in
>> their own heads, remembering with imaginary knots, and 
>> memorizing Maxwell's
>> equations.
>>
>> Of course, you and I get the joke. This is no more 
>> happening "inside the
>> head", with an "individual" memory, than it is happening 
>> in a lot, a knot,
>> or on your fingers. It's happening in a whole 
>> culture--many thousands of
>> years of thinking. But the thinking isn't "passed on" 
>> through language;it
>> is recreated and re-elaborated with every generation. The 
>> telephone
>> switchboard, like the conventional phoneme/grapheme, is 
>> useful at one point
>> and one point only: helping the caller get in touch with 
>> Marie. But the
>> actual communication between father and daughter is not 
>> conventional or
>> automatic at all. It's natural; i.e. it's hard work.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Macquarie University
>>
>