[Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical

Fri Mar 23 14:36:23 PDT 2018

Sorry about that. I got off into a rant which I found half-baked. Here it
is.

Here in Korea the curriculum is being reformed (for the eighth time since
1949). The new government of Mun Jae-in has a progressive bent, and the
curricular reforms were brought in during the mass movement which removed
Bak Gunhye from power (and sent her predecessor, Yi Myeongbak, to prison
for environmental crimes yesterday). And the new curriculum, based loosely
on constructivist, Deweyan ideas but also on the ideas of "hongik ingan"
(human interests broadly conceived), has four goals:

a) People who can live with others (this is also the name of the ruling
party, the "People-Living-With-Others Democrats")
b) People who are cultivated and encultured
c) People who are creative and intelligent
d) Peole who are self-regulating and autonomous

Now, one way to look at this--and this is, alas, the current
interpretation, is that we are talking about four different kinds of
people, or four separate instances of "multiple intelligence", like
four superheroes locked in the child Clark Kent.

That is not Vygotsky's way. Vygotsky's way would be to see this as a kind
of pyramid, where a), which is an instinct the child has at birth and which
probably IS genetic, is the foundation for b), which is a set of habits
("conditional responses") which the child grows into. This is the basis for
c), which iinvolves adaptation to the social environment, but doing so in a
way that, unlike habits, can cope with unprecedented problems. And all of
this forms the pre-requisite for d), the exercise of free will.

I think this is the real solution to the problem that Peter (Feigenbaum)
raises: determining the role that consciousness plays in the rise of higher
forms of behavior. Yes, instincts like a) arise completely without
consciousness. But in every other case, there is a conscious and deliberate
decision, even if it is made for reasons other than the ultimate function
that the higher form of behavior must serve in human progress (e.g.
political economy, and also speech). This conscious, and deliberate,
decision is always the result of the process Andy has laboriously
documented, collective decision making. That is how cultures are created,
and it is also--pace German Romanticism--how all artistic creativity and
scientific innovation comes about: it is a concerto in which the solo part
is played an afterthought and a reflection upon the work of the full
orchestra. Even the creation of free will is a collective achievement.

You can see why I cut all that stuff, David. Not even my students are
interested in it, and they have to pass a test on the curricular reform
(but not on my imaginary Vygotskyan interpretation of it) which will
determine whether their whole education has been in vain and the rest of
their life will be a struggle, or whether they will be one of the three
people in our department of fifty who will be licensed to teach in
secondary schools. So instead I was going to try to develop a distinction
between phonetics, which is very much the product of our hereditary
endowment, and which will leave archaeological evidence that can be
recovered (as Peter notes in his note on Lieberman's work) and phonology,
which won't. Since most people don't understand the difference between
phonetics and phonology, I tried to present it as a difference between
musical instruments (which do leave an archaeological record) and the music
we play on them (which leave no record at all until the advent of literacy
and musical notation). That's why the earliest known melody is this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W113BDpFLBI

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Recent Article in *Early Years*

The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and the
child’s first interrogatives
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>

Free e-print available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full

On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 4:59 PM, WEBSTER, DAVID S. <d.s.webster@durham.ac.uk
> wrote:

> Bound to agree with you re Gans and anti-Zionism/ antisemitism. Whatever
> the strengths of his anthropology, firstness and resentment  cannot cope
> alone (if at all) with explaining contemporary socio-political situations
> least of all those in the Old Testament lands. His dogmatism here has
> pushed him to the right and that is to be regretted. Not sure I understand
> your musical example...
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
> mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
> Sent: 21 March 2018 21:27
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
>
> One reason for Jews like me to be sceptical of Gans is his apparent
> Zionism (i.e. his insistence that there is a Jewish archaeological claim to
> the land of Israel, and is conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-semitism in
> the "Love and Resentment" blog).
>
> I am teaching phonetics and phonology this term, and one of the first
> things we learn is the difference between the highly musical instrument
> that we share with all of our conspecifics and the peculiar way in which we
> compose music for it (including the chords of notes, the intonational
> melodies, and the stress rhythms) which we share only with our speech
> community. The late, great Dmitri Hvorostovsky was charged with hubris for
> referring to his own mellow baritone as "the perfect instrument", but what
> he really meant was that we humans have evolved our music tastes around a
> universal, ideal, non-existent human voice (like Daniel Jones' cardinal
> vowels, which are not the vowels of any known language).
>
> But I am also sceptical of Andy's desire for archaeological evidence of
> language development--I agree with Gans that the question of the origins of
> language is solveable by other, more indirect means (e.g. studying child
> language and looking at how mitochondrial DNA changes correlate with
> language dispersion). But for that very reason I think the "Jewish" claim
> to Palestine is about as strong as the European claim to the Rift Valley in
> Kenya.
>
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> Recent Article in *Early Years*
>
> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and the
> child’s first interrogatives <https://www.tandfonline.com/
> doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>
>
> Free e-print available at:
> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 11:35 PM, WEBSTER, DAVID S. <
> d.s.webster@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > Andy, dear heart;  busy will be tomorrow, hand excavating a Neolithic
> > ditch with mattock and trowel  - there might even be some flints to find!
> > Academic writing is pure relaxation..
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > David
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
> > mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> > Sent: 21 March 2018 13:26
> > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
> >
> > In short David, because I am writing. If something caught my
> > imagination I would make time for it. At the moment, like everyone
> > else I suspect, I am busy. But I am still up for hard news of a
> palaeontological kind.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Andy Blunden
> > ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > On 22/03/2018 12:15 AM, WEBSTER, DAVID S. wrote:
> > > Why read Wikipedia when you can just as easily read Gans? Sceptical,
> > fine, why?
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > > [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> > > Sent: 21 March 2018 12:49
> > > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
> > >
> > > Wikpedia gives a fair picture of Gans's ideas, David. I'm sceptical.
> > >
> > > Andy
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Andy Blunden
> > > ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > > On 21/03/2018 8:24 PM, WEBSTER, DAVID S. wrote:
> > >> As it happens there Gans offers a  blog associated  with the
> > >> journal 'Chronicles of  Love & Resentment' but his story start with
> > >> his first book 'The origins of language'. Unfortunately,
> > >> palaeontological evidence  philosophical  speculation and semiotics
> > >> are blended throughout if with shifting focus. Not much directly on
> > >> tool use if memory serves but that tends to follow on in one way or
> > >> another  from the rest. There was no expectation that anyone would
> > >> need to digest the whole of the archive but it takes little effort
> > >> to dip in and see what may catch your interest or ire and start
> > >> from there. You might start your Gansian journey with 'The little
> > >> big bang' (i.e. event of
> > >> language) http://anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0501/gans-2/
> > >>
> > >> -----Original Message-----
> > >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > >> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> > >> Sent: 21 March 2018 08:35
> > >> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
> > >>
> > >> Sorry David. You directed us to the home page of a journal.
> > >> I am chuffed that you have actually read some of my work, but I
> > >> think
> > in general people on xmca don't usually go further than reading an
> > article of a few thousand words if it is relevant to a discussion. A
> > whole journal archive?
> > >>
> > >> But if you can direct me to the article which correlates
> > palaeontological evidence and speech  and tool origins (not
> > philosophical
> > speculation) I will be all over it. (I love philosophical speculation,
> > but not on this question just now).
> > >>
> > >> Andy
> > >>
> > >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> > >> Andy Blunden
> > >> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > >> On 21/03/2018 7:10 PM, WEBSTER, DAVID S. wrote:
> > >>> Please forgive my impatience but I have already directed you all
> > >>> to a
> > site where all the points you (collectively) have so far made,  and
> > all the one that you are ever likely to make on this subject, have
> > been raised and comprehensively worked over by Gans and those many
> > scholars who have engaged with him. The nub is the progressive
> > transformation from analogue to digital required for information
> > transfer between different systems operating at differing time scales.
> > What Gans described in his 'originary hypothesis' is the same
> > transformational operation that was used to  teach deaf and alingual
> > children at Zagorsk that involves taking the actions of appropriation
> > (actions for life skills) and paring them down to a digital code -
> > dactylic signing. For Andy: the Urpraxis, solidarity in your telling,
> > arises at the originary scene of language (in Gans's telling) through
> the formation of a in-group out-group relation.
> > >>>
> > >>> Rant Over
> > >>>
> > >>> Ps its not that I agree with all Gans argues, But he does attempt
> > >>> to
> > cover all bases where origin of language /human culture is concerned
> > and in a non-sectarian/non-egotistical fashion and I therefor worth
> engaging with.
> > No need to reinvent the wheel here.
> > >>>
> > >>> -----Original Message-----
> > >>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > >>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> > >>> Sent: 21 March 2018 05:39
> > >>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > >>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical
> > >>>
> > >>> I think that the thesis that *mime* (to generalise beyond
> > >>> signing) is a plausible precursor to spoken language, and there is
> > >>> are
> > substantial anthropological arguments to support that thesis. It seems
> > to me that stone tools are precursors of tools more generally, and
> > mime may be a precursor to spoken language, while the anatomical
> > prerequisites to speech are evolving. How did speech become such a
> > necessity that it drove anatomical change, and when/why did
> > tool=making "take off" after stagnating for millennia?
> > >>>
> > >>> But I'm only guessing, as are you David!
> > >>>
> > >>> This is not a palaeontologists' list, so I guess I was
> > >>> over-optimistic
> > to think I'd get a decisive answer to this.
> > >>>
> > >>> Andy
> > >>>
> > >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> > >>> Andy Blunden
> > >>> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > >>> On 21/03/2018 4:24 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> > >>>> I meant deaf people. There's a strong argument being made by deaf
> > >>>> linguists--which I agree with--that holds that spoken languages
> > >>>> are an offshoot of sign rather than the other way around. This
> > >>>> sheds some light on Andy's problem: people developed spoken
> > >>>> languages when they found they had other things to do with their
> > >>>> hands, like
> > hold tools.
> > >>>> But I also think that pre-linguistic children are an important
> > >>>> minority that prefers the visual channel, at least for taking in
> > >>>> information, just as we adults who get most of our information
> > through reading do.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> There are some scripts that are more visual and others that are
> > >>>> more auditory--and within the same script we find elements that
> > >>>> are more visual (Chinese radicals) and others that are more
> > >>>> auditory (the phonetic components of Chinese characters). Even in
> > >>>> English there are some elements that are visually salient but not
> > >>>> auditorily salient (e.g. punctuation, variations in handwriting
> > >>>> styles, fonts,
> > >>>> etc.) and other elements that are more auditory (the
> > >>>> International Phonetic Alphabet which is really English based and
> > >>>> which has sought, for over a century, a perfect match between
> > >>>> phonemes and graphemes). Phonics is based on the idea that
> > >>>> English has evolved towards a one phoneme-one grapheme match; in
> > >>>> fact, it has evolved
> > away from it.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> David Kellogg
> > >>>> Sangmyung University
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Recent Article in *Early Years*
> > >>>>
> > >>>> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises,
> > >>>> and the child’s first interrogatives
> > >>>> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.14318
> > >>>> 74
> > >>>> >
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Free e-print available at:
> > >>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
> > >>>>
> > >>>>
> > >>>> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 1:11 PM, Helena Worthen
> > >>>> <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
> > >>>> wrote:
> > >>>>
> > >>>>> David, what is the important minority that you’re referring to:
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> "... the lowering of the vocal tract was phenomenal to language;
> > >>>>> it was only an epiphenomenal circumstance which made the
> > >>>>> majority of humans choose the vocal channel for language while
> > >>>>> an important minority choose the visual channel” — ?
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> And how can we see what can be seen in the visual channel?
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Helena Worthen
> > >>>>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> > >>>>> Berkeley, CA 94707 510-828-2745
> > >>>>> Blog US/ Viet Nam:
> > >>>>> helenaworthen.wordpress.com
> > >>>>> skype: helena.worthen1
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>> On Mar 21, 2018, at 8:37 AM, David Kellogg
> > >>>>>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> Andy has a knack for winkling brilliant insights out of early
> > Vygotsky:
> > >>>>> he
> > >>>>>> remarks somewhere that "Ape, Primitive, Child: Studies in the
> > >>>>>> History of Behavior," a book which I really didn't care much
> > >>>>>> for, taught him that whenever we decide on some essential
> > >>>>>> distinction between human and non-human behavior, we
> > >>>>>> necessarily find rudiments of it in non-human behavior. To
> > >>>>>> which I would only add that the circumstance that the rudiments
> > >>>>>> of human behavior are linked  to non-human behavior doesn't
> > >>>>> make
> > >>>>>> them indistinguishable. On the contrary, it is really only
> > >>>>>> because human behaviors are distinct that we can speak of them
> > >>>>>> being linked (we don't talk of air-breathing in humans as being
> > >>>>>> linked to air-breathing in apes, because the process is really
> > >>>>>> one and the same; we do speak of language
> > >>>>> in
> > >>>>>> humans as being linked to ape vocalizations precisely because
> > >>>>>> they are distinct processes). If this is true of
> > >>>>>> anthropogenetic phenomena like
> > >>>>> free
> > >>>>>> will, language and literacy, it's also true of their
> > >>>>>> symptomatic epiphenomena, such as migration, culture, and
> > >>>>>> literature. I don't agree with Andy that the lowering of the
> > >>>>>> vocal tract was phenomenal to
> > >>>>> language;
> > >>>>>> it was only an epiphenomenal circumstance which made the
> > >>>>>> majority of
> > >>>>> humans
> > >>>>>> choose the vocal channel for language while an important
> > >>>>>> minority choose the visual channel, to which the majority again
> > >>>>>> reverted once alphabets
> > >>>>> and
> > >>>>>> literacy were invented (again, an exercise of some rudimentary
> > >>>>>> form of
> > >>>>> free
> > >>>>>> will).
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> Compare migration along a seacoast with migration into a
> > >>>>>> mountainous region. One requires no major change in productive
> > >>>>>> relations, while the other probably does. Similar with
> > >>>>>> migration along an East-West axis. This requires relatively
> > >>>>>> little free will, as the climate does not change and many of
> > >>>>>> the plants and
> > animals which provide food are probably the same.
> > >>>>> In
> > >>>>>> contrast, migration along a North-South axis, which involves
> > >>>>>> climate
> > >>>>> change
> > >>>>>> and corresponding adaptations, would require relatively more
> > >>>>>> communal discussion, the process Andy calls collaborative
> > >>>>>> decision making. I think that wandering out of Africa involved,
> > >>>>>> on the one hand, migration along
> > >>>>> the
> > >>>>>> Nile and coastlines and, on the other, migration out of a
> > >>>>>> mountainous region (the Rift Valley is pretty mountainous). But
> > >>>>>> it also involved migration along a North-South axis and not an
> > >>>>>> East-West one. Of course, staying put in Africa probably also
> > >>>>>> involved collaborative decision
> > >>>>> making
> > >>>>>> over millenia, but we don't have any record of the decision as
> > >>>>>> we do with leaving the home continent
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> David Kellogg
> > >>>>>> Sangmyung University
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> Recent Article in *Early Years*
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s
> > >>>>>> crises, and the child’s first interrogatives
> > >>>>>> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.143
> > >>>>>> 18
> > >>>>>> 7
> > >>>>>> 4
> > >>>>>> Free e-print available at:
> > >>>>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 9:07 AM, Martin Packer
> > >>>>>> <mpacker@cantab.net>
> > >>>>> wrote:
> > >>>>>>> David, they wouldn't have known they were leaving their home
> > >>>>>>> continent, would they? Some of them were just lucky enough to
> > >>>>>>> wander in the
> > >>>>> direction
> > >>>>>>> of a land bridge, instead of into the ocean. Like any species
> > >>>>>>> that
> > >>>>> spreads
> > >>>>>>> into a new geographical location, no conscious decision required.
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>> Martin, who wandered into South America
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> On Mar 19, 2018, at 7:50 AM, David Kellogg
> > >>>>>>>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > >>>>> wrote:
> > >>>>>>>> Somewhere in the discussion of Monica and Fernando's article,
> > >>>>>>>> Fernando
> > >>>>>>> made
> > >>>>>>>> the remark that history does not know "ifs". Similarly,
> > >>>>>>>> Monica implied
> > >>>>> at
> > >>>>>>>> one point that large technological changes must be taken as
> > >>>>>>>> given; they
> > >>>>>>> are
> > >>>>>>>> not something over which humans have control. But even if we
> > >>>>>>>> accept the "Out of Africa" story which this article
> > >>>>>>>> undermines, we are left
> > >>>>> with
> > >>>>>>>> the apparently conscious decision of early hominids to leave
> > >>>>>>>> the home continent, something none of the other great apes
> > >>>>>>>> ever
> > determined upon.
> > >>>>>>>> Vygotsky remarked that rudiments of all four forms of higher
> > >>>>>>>> behavior--instinct, enculturation, creativity, and free will
> > >>>>>>>> that is
> > >>>>> none
> > >>>>>>>> of these--appear even in infancy. So it appears that free
> > >>>>>>>> will was
> > >>>>> always
> > >>>>>>>> part of anthropogenesis, and consequently that
> > >>>>>>>> history--including
> > >>>>> present
> > >>>>>>>> history--knows nothing but ifs. We just don't see the others
> > >>>>>>>> because we
> > >>>>>>> are
> > >>>>>>>> sitting in one of them.
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> David Kellogg
> > >>>>>>>> Sangmyung University
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> Recent Article in *Early Years*
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s
> > >>>>>>>> crises, and
> > >>>>> the
> > >>>>>>>> child’s first interrogatives
> > >>>>>>>> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1
> > >>>>>>>> 43
> > >>>>>>>> 1
> > >>>>>>>> 8
> > >>>>>>>> 7
> > >>>>>>>> 4>
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> Free e-print available at:
> > >>>>>>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 7:33 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
> > wrote:
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>>> This synoptic story of the current state of research on
> > >>>>>>>>> human origins
> > >>>>>>> seems
> > >>>>>>>>> relevant to the cultural-historical folks around.
> > >>>>>>>>> mike
> > >>>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>>> https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/human-evolution-
> > >>>>>>>>> australia-asia/?utm_source=SAPIENS.org+Subscribers&utm_
> > >>>>>>>>> campaign=1b31c25316-Email+Blast+12.22.2017&utm_medium=
> > >>>>>>>>> email&utm_term=0_18b7e41cd8-1b31c25316-199570669
> > >>>>>>>>>
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>