[Xmca-l] Re: Conditional and Conditioned

[HENRY SHONERD]

David and Vandy,
How about free will here? I listen to a podcast very often called “Waking Up” with Sam Harris. Two things he is always saying: “Religion is bullshit” and free will and choice are not the same. At the point that David describes in the classroom: " There is absolutely nothing preventing the child from emancipating himself or herself from peers, teachers, and even a pre-determined right answer. The continuation of development beyond this point of self-emancipation cannot be at all.” At this point, is it free will, choice, or some mix? 
Henry


> On May 18, 2018, at 9:32 PM, vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp wrote:
> 
> 
> It's May, mid semester in Japan, and how are all of you?
> 
> David K. says: "So what is the difference that makes a difference?"
> And it gives me a chance to stick my figurative oar in, saying "them's 
> Bateson's words."
> Bateson's definition of "information" in Mind And Nature: A Necessary 
> Unity 
> is exactly, "Any difference that makes a difference."
> 
> Dicing logic fine, working with binaries in organismic systems, 
> sometimes creates polarities that polarise 
> rather dynamic interaction that produces new avenues of connection.
> 
> As always, David's quick take is illuminating, evocative, and 
> informative.
> Kind regards,
> Vandy
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
>> Mike makes the point, in an earlier thread, that if we do not 
> understand
>> what Pavlov meant by "conditional response"--if, for example, we 
> assimilate
>> it to operant conditioning on the one hand or reflexology on the other
> --we
>> do not understand the type of claim that Pavlov was making, nor the
>> position that Pavlov's work takes up in Vygotsky's development.
>> 
>> So what is the difference that makes a difference? Pavlov takes the
>> response as given by natural conditions rather than by a conditioned
>> system (e.g. designed and designated rewards and punishments). At the 
> same
>> time, Pavlov takes the response as being neurologically ordered rather 
> than
>> simply reflexive and mechanical (and so potentially open to explaining
>> language through a "second signal system").
>> 
>> Pavlov is working in a good old Russian interpretation of Darwin which 
> was
>> (as Loren Graham points out) a kind of "Through the Looking Glass" 
> version
>> of our own. 19th Century America happily accepted the Spencerian 
> formula
>> "survival of the fittest" but rejected the mutability of species; 
> Russians
>> came to precisely the opposite conclusion (as did Darwin himself).
>> 
>> Pavlov sees species as endlessly mutable, and the conditional response 
> is
>> part of that infiinite mutability. It includes the possibility of
>> self-mutability--something that, as Vygotsky points out, opens the 
> door to
>> a synthesis of Darwin and Lamarck, as far as cultural forms of 
> behavior are
>> concerned.
>> 
>> At the same time, there is something immutable in Pavlov that Vygotsky 
> in
>> turn rejects,  Pavlov sees the response as given by nature and the
>> condition as given by nurture, and for Vygotsky this division is too
>> elemental to be interesting in the understanding of cultural forms of
>> behavior: if the condition is both "natural" and "human", then it 
> makes no
>> sense to argue that the response is merely the former. A dog that can 
> ring
>> its own bell is a very different species indeed.
>> 
>> Take, for example, a classroom situation. If we take children's 
> responses
>> as conditional, their source is always in the classroom environment
>> (physical punishments, and tangible rewards, the real apple and not 
> the
>> apple of the imagination, as Bleuler says). But if we take chlidren's
>> response as conditioned, their source is ultimately the child (the
>> satisfactions of peer recognition, teacher praise, self-praise, or 
> simply
>> turning out to have the right answer).There is absolutely nothing
>> preventing the child from emancipating himself or herself from peers,
>> teachers, and even a pre-determined right answer. The continuation of
>> development beyond this point of self-emancipation cannot be explained 
> at
>> all.
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>> 
>> Recent Article in Language Sciences
>> 
>> A science for verbal art: Elizabeth Gaskell's contribution to a 
> critique of
>> political economy
>> 
>> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000117303534
>> 
>> Fang Li and David Kellogg.,
>> 
>> https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2018.05.001
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
>