Picking at these threads, here is a comment from Barbara Rogoff.
mike
Hi Mike,
Nice to hear from you.
I very much like the idea of prolepsis, and have written a bit about
concepts of time, a decade or so ago. Basically, echoing the idea from
Pepper that the present contains both the future and the past (rather than
thinking of bounded linear time from past to present to future). Pepper, I
recall, gives the example of how we form our sentences -- each moment in
time anticipates what we are going going to say after that as well as
reflecting what we just said.
I think that people's anticipation of their futures (and unspoken and even
un-thought) expectations are a really important feature of child development
(and life in general). For example, I think that a community's expectations
for how people act are enormously influential, without people even being
aware of many aspects of these expectations unless they have experience
across contrasting cultural communities. The role of
anticipation/expectation has received little empirical attention, and
warrants a lot of empirical attention.
You asked at the end of your message whether I think guidance*
determines*the response. No. I don't like the idea of any one thing
determining the
rest, as it implies unidirectional influence -- which most of my work has
tried to argue against. For example, see my (and others') argument that
cultural and individual aspects of events are mutually constituting (in many
pubs, e.g.,* The Cultural Nature of Human Development*, 2003, and my 1998
chapter in the* Handbook of Child Psychology*).
Hope this addresses the question -- feel free to share it on xmca.
Best regards,
Barbara
On 4/19/06, Cunningham, Donald James <cunningh@indiana.edu> wrote:
>
> Aren't we (we who study learning and development) determinists by
> nature? Don't we want to understand the "causes" of things? Why is this
> fatalistic? "Constraints" is just another version where we limit the
> options to a manageable number without opening the Pandora's box of free
> will. But the idea of cause is still implicated. There are causes for
> things. Or do they just happen and we mere mortals try to figure out
> why? Hobbes is no doubt spinning in his grave as I write!
>
> One of the links I made from the article Peter forwarded was to some
> work Sandra Scarr did a generation ago. If my creaky memory is correct,
> she was looking at the literature on parenting and IQ. The usual
> analysis looked at whether certain parenting styles led to kids with
> higher IQs. Scarr looked at the opposite, whether kids with certain IQs
> "caused" certain parenting styles. Which is the future, which is the
> past?
>
> A little exercise I offer my students is to pretend that they now have
> their Ph.D and are _experts_. They are asked a simple question, should I
> spank my children. They all have strong opinions about the issue, what
> leads to what, with both sides of the issue well represented. Then I
> have them read a series of articles from 2002 (Elizabeth Gershoff wrote
> the original piece) as well as news releases (including one from "Focus
> on the Family") at the time. Do they now feel more confident in
> answering the question? Most don't. They say things like, "It depends"!
> So, the more we know, the more uncertain we are? Was Anthony Giddens
> correct all along? Do we manufacture uncertainty? I'm not sure. Maybe it
> depends............djc
>
> Don Cunningham
> Indiana University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Mike Cole
> Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 10:53 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Cc: Barbara Rogoff
> Subject: Re: [xmca] nice, short article illustrating prolepsis
>
> I guess I was more focused on the idea of constraints than
> determinations,
> Don. You can guide
> a horse to water, but..........
>
> And in general, the idea that constraints are both enabling and
> restricting
> makes a lot of sense to me,
> despite the seduction of relapsing into determinism.
>
> It seems to me that the main thrust of the idea of prolepsis is to
> introduced the idea that the (imagined, pro-jected)
> future can influence the present. It speaks to the linkage between
> cultural
> mediational theories of development and
> the idea of NON LINEAR dynamic systems. As I understand it
> (inadequately, I
> am certain), cultural contributions to
> human nature and action are non-linear, creating uncertainty and the
> possibility of agency all the time, even if our
> common sense tells us it aint so.
>
> Why else would anyone try to speak truth to power?
>
> In the recent Middleton and Brown book there is a great discussion of
> Bergson's ideas. he is much maligned, by, among
> others, Russian cultura-historical psychologists. And of course, he can
> be
> interpreted in ways that make his ideas laughable....
> (he is not alone in this respect!). But Middleton and Brown have some
> nice
> material on the way that Bergson pointed to the
> ways in which the built environment (like kids' rooms) influences their
> mental life. In a recent article by cultural psychologists
> Kitayama and ?? they discover that some of the differences between west
> and
> east that they assume come from the differently
> built environments without realizing that Rheingold and Bergson were
> there
> before them.
>
> No need for police but the discussion sure is worthwhile, for me at
> least.
> mike
>
> PS. I will cc Barbara Rogoff on this exchange. I wonder if she
> interprets
> the idea of "guided participation" to imply that the
> guidance determines the response.
>
>
> On 4/18/06, Cunningham, Donald James <cunningh@indiana.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I did, actually. I was struck by the phrase (on page 462) that the
> > parents were "guided by some more compelling set of principles".
> >
> > What would the OED make of that?
> >
> > Don Cunningham
> > Indiana University
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > On Behalf Of Mike Cole
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 10:19 PM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] nice, short article illustrating prolepsis
> >
> > Don-- Did you read the article?
> > Anyway, who needs word police when we have the oed:
> >
> > Determinism: 1)The philosophical doctrine that human action is not
> free
> > but
> > necessarily determined by motives, which are regarded as external
> forces
> > acting upon the will.2) The doctrine that everything that happens is
> > determined by a necessary chain of causation.
> >
> > Prolepsis: 1) The representation or taking of something future as
> > already
> > done or existing; anticipation; also, the assignment of an event, a
> > name,
> > etc. to a too early date; an anachronism, prochronism. 2) A figure in
> > which
> > objections or arguments are anticipated in order to preclude their
> use,
> > answer them in advance, or prepare for them an unfavourable
> reception;3)
> > The
> > anticipatory use of an attribute.
> >
> > What do the police think of this? Do we need to call in Ragnar
> > Rommetveit to
> > adjudicate?
> > mike
> >
> > On 4/18/06, Cunningham, Donald James <cunningh@indiana.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello Peter. The word police here. What is the difference between
> > > prolepsis and determinism?
> > >
> > > Don Cunningham
> > > Indiana University
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > > On Behalf Of Peter Smagorinsky
> > > Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 1:55 PM
> > > To: xmca@ucsd.edu
> > > Subject: [xmca] nice, short article illustrating prolepsis
> > >
> > >
> > > Rheingold, H. L., & Cook, K. V. (1975). The contents of boys' and
> > > girls'
> > > rooms as an index of parents' behavior. Child Development, 46,
> > 459-463.
> > > Retrieved April 18, 2006, from
> > > http://www.jstor.org/view/00093920/ap030175/03a00210/0.
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