[Xmca-l] Re: Conditional and Conditioned

[David Kellogg]

So in Chapters 3-5 of HDHMF, Vygotsky takes up Buhler's distinction between
instinct (unconditional response), habit (conditional response), and
intelligence (essentially, an unstimulated response). He criticizes Buhler
for over-extending the distinction. On the one hand, he points out that
these are not equally present in animals and humans (as Buhler claims) and
on the other he notes that they are ALL present in the very first year of
human life, alongside acts of free will (necessity's recognition and
re-cognition as choice). Acts of free will are completely senseless: they
are neither intelligent, nor habitual, nor instinctive.

I think, Henry, your man Harris would do well to read over Vandy's
admittedly rather cryptic comments on Bateson, on dicing logic, on the
inability of binaries to explain how you get a binary in the first place.
Really, to say that religion is bullshit is like saying science is bunk,
because religion is essentially pre-science. Obviously, cooking is
different from ordering from the menu. But if you can't explain how you get
binaries in the first place, you are really in the same position as
Christians who argue for the eternal co-existence of a Trinity, or Muslims
who argued that Allah and the Quran are equally eternal. No one is more
dualistic than a synoptic monotheist.

The problem is explaining how instinct is different from habit, how habit
differs from intelligence, and how intelligence from free will. Instinct is
given at birth, and in that sense it is "unconditioned" as well as
unconditional. Habits are learned, and in that sense they are both
conditioned and conditional. I think Mike was objecting to "conditioned"
because it turns what was essentially a logical claim ("If p then q") into
a purely genetic one (conditioned and unconditioned response arise under
different conditions). But for Vygotsky the logical claim is too broad to
be useful, and the genetic one too narrow. Besides, it's the genetic
approach and only the genetic approach that really helps us explain how the
two things can be both linked and distinct.

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

On Sun, May 20, 2018 at 12:36 AM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>