I have two questions for Jay. The first is a matter of clarification
and the second is more substantive.
(1) Many of us on XMCA are interested in traditionally "psychological"
phenomena that turn out to be social in some important ways -- learning,
self, personality, etc. Within your framework, are such things best
understood as systems, sets of processes at various time scales that
interact regularly? Should we think of learning, for example, as
afforded by (partial) regularities in material artifats, biochemistry,
cognitive representations, interactional patterns, signs, larger social
processes, etc. -- each of which contributes some sort of organization
that allows the organism to behave differently (ie, learn)? Or is the
learning something that happens at one or two longer timescales, but
which requires analysis at several levels to explain? Perhaps this is
just a definitional issue of what we choose to call "self" or
"learning." But I am also trying to figure out how to use the term
"system" most productively within your framework.
(2) How does an event at a shorter time scale become an instance of a
regularity at a longer scale? There seems to be substantial
indeterminacy in this process, and I am wondering if this indeterminacy
is particular to semiotic systems or not. In order to tell whether an
utterance is an insult, or flirtation, or a joke, one needs to know
something about an emergent pattern of relevant contextual features. If
A says "your mother wears army boots" to B, participants and analysts
will interpret the (longer scale) meaning or relational implications
differently, based on the existing relationship between the
participants, the setting, other things they say, etc. Reframing of
such interpretations is common in everyday life, and it is the bane of
"competence" or rule-based accounts of social action. I am wondering if
you see this sort of indeterminacy as a general feature, or one specific
to certain sorts of processes and systems.
Stanton
-- Stanton Wortham Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania 3700 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216 (215) 898-6307