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Re: [xmca] functions of testing

Jay,

Yes!
I've long been interested in the "g" factor in intelligence tests; the notion is that when they try to control for all the appropriate variables (age, education, economic status, language, etc.) there still seems to be an unexplained factor. My sense has always been that it really measures competence with the Western rhetorical norms that are necessarily built into the tests.
The direct tests of literacy have always shown a bias, as well, for the norms of middle class behavior. Even with attempts to make the tests culture neutral, there are underlying assumptions that shape the goals and thus the outcomes.
Having jumped through all the hoops to get a doctorate, there is no question at all that I've been socialized into an institution that houses (and thereby controls) the "intellectual" capital of Western culture. As faculty in a business college, I probably have a better view than many of the complicated relationships between academia, political interests, and the business community, and the degree to which my current "tests" --grant writing, promotion and tenure binders, and so on-- must serve the interests of those with the power and money in order to GET either power or money.
Whether it's an unrealized bias of rhetorical norms, an intentional, perhaps even well-meaning, attempt to locate the "best" of a culture, or even the residual tricks of a conspiratorial Illuminati, the result is that we are all tested TOWARD something. 

dale

Dale Cyphert, PhD
Associate Professor and Interim Head
Department of Management
University of Northern Iowa
1227 W. 27th Street
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-1025
319-273-6150
dale.cyphert@uni.edu

Jay Lemke wrote:
As long ago I used to do quite regularly, I'm updating the subject line of this thread again. Maybe it will continue and maybe not.
But I was fascinated by Valerie's reference to Bucky Fuller and the thesis that elaborate testing, and by extension (or inclusion) the emphasis on being able to write the "right sort" of essays and other genres in academia and so many specialized fields can also serve the function of managing and controlling, dividing and conquering, really bright people.
There are after all two sorts of principal threats to the ruling class. One is the great mass of working people who can stop, strike, rebel, etc. And we know of course a lot about the mechanisms of control, from hegemony to mystification, ideology, policing, etc. used in this case. But the other are the specialist elites, who are often given enough to make us feel we're doing "ok" under their system, though nowhere near what the ruling class appropriate for themselves. We are co-opted, bought out rather cheaply (by their standards), and very occasionally even promoted to positions of real power. But there must also be much less visible strategies at work, and I think that the system of academic (and later, professional, career) rewards is one of them. An illusion of local-scale meritocracy under the much bigger system of social injustice and maintenance of status quo power.
And in some ways, I think, testing, even the best testing we can imagine (like my Gold Standard proposal yesterday) is a key means of this system of control. Those of us who do well on tests are even more likely to believe that this reflects our merit, our talent, our hard work -- even when maybe we doubt that those who do poorly do so because of a lack of these qualities. If the children of the oppressed do poorly for reasons having little to do with their innate talents or potential efforts, then should we not also reason that we do well for reasons equally unobvious, equally not to be attributed solely to us as individuals?
We do well insofar as we are pre-tuned, pre-adapted to the needs that determine what is tested for and what is valued. Not our needs generally, nor those of the mass of people. We are selected because we are potentially useful to people who pay us, who fund us, who fund our institutions, who pay our policymakers. In some cases we fit with new needs, in some cases the traditions that define our usefulness are very old and represent long-unchanged aspects of the larger political economy and social system. I think an interesting history of testing could be written from such a point of view. Has it been?
Valerie also noted the ways in which testing implements the divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to useful specialists. As a relatively small group numerically, with much less social diversity overall than the whole mass of the population, we ought to be able to more easily organize and unite, but we don't. We do well on very different measures of our usefulness, most obviously, say, between humanist scholars and scientists, and while one could point to much larger patterns of activity and discourse that split us apart, our modes of testing or of judging the value of work and productivity are still quite good guides to the history of how we have been "managed". No? 

JAY.


Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke




On May 10, 2009, at 11:42 AM, Valerie Wilkinson wrote:


Referring to some of the threads:
"Why don't people talk about wisdom anymore?" is definitely a rhetorical question that makes the tacit assumption that they/we don't. But wisdom, like love, is abstract until informed by examples.
I could ask the question, "Why do we shun the Platonic ideal?" I fear it wouldn't kick off much of a conversation. But is the idea of "organic" learning any more informative? It is strictly environmental, but the environment may include religious education and symbolic organizational practices which support the dominant paradigm or the people who make the rules or the people who watch out for everyone's safety.
David Kellogg said: "Here are some countervailing facts to consider, before we leap to conclusions about the malign effects of Confucianism (which, like most truly ancient cultural traditions, has an irrepressibly creative and humanist core) on dysfunctional American education." YES! and well, uh - it works if you can play the game - and there is always a dialectic going with Taoism somewhere.
It is so hard to get outside of a system you are in. And if you are in international academia, you are committed to a system in some guise that employs you or publishes your papers or creates the forum where you may share your ideas. To get talking points in that system you have to be able to talk to the talk. To talk the talk, it is best, but not requisite, to have grown up in the system.
Much of what we are talking about has been talked over in various fora - from IQ and differentiated intelligence to language and manners and then the whole cultural marginalizing process that forces some to accept a role which "native intelligence" could easily overcome - since experiential learning toward mastery is ascendant - except for the weights and burdens of various kinds laden upon the underprivileged by various social mechanisms, some of which are designed to do just that, weigh them down, keep them oppressed.
If "we" locate and export the gifted (alpha) to another level and focus the lowered tiered learning towards acceptance, satisfaction with a guarantee of "enough" - many gifted people (of the other intelligences besides articulated declarative knowledge) will spend the rest of their lives struggling to make ends meet, to pay their mortgages, take care of their kids ---
Interestingly, Bucky Fuller described the purpose of the elaborate written testing system, the complex poetry and memorization of classical texts to "manage" the more gifted in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Since the "pirate captains" vanished (but did they?) there isn't any proof of his wonderfully provocative claims, but I'm pretty sure that the demand for "specialization" is one of the great causes of failure to communicate from group to group. It's crippling to have jargon barriers.
This note may seem to have gotten off the track of learning in kindergarten and the whole thing - but I believe that radical return to experiential learning from breast to bicycle to doing stuff with your friends will ground much learning experience. Of course we have to keep up with the books and specialize - but we have to do the other as well or more, or more in the beginning and always some - because experiential learning is integrative and inclusive. 
(was this a rant?)
Valerie Wilkinson

On 2009.May.7, at 12:41  AM, Jay Lemke wrote:
I think that we mostly agree, Eugene, given different emphasis because of our different backgrounds.
I did think it was interesting that you noted that in totalitarian discourses the leakage across a binary division can be made to undermine basic moral principles. I suppose that there are times when one needs a way to undermine other people's, and maybe also one's own, moral certainties. But clearly doing so can also be very destructive, depending on the circumstances and the consequences.
So we have to tack between stronger binaries and weaker ones, and that takes a measure of wisdom. Why don't people talk about wisdom any > more?
As to the defense of science, of course it depends on what we want to mean by science or scientific. If it is just systematically gathered empirical information, then I think we always have to take it into account, but not necessarily be ruled by it. Realities exist, but they can also change and be changed. If it means some particular way of doing research, then I am less favorable, and more Feyerabendian. If it means honestly trying to examine alternative interpretations and proposals, then count me in! If it is defending a particular current scientific theory, say neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, then I have to look carefully at a wide range of circumstances to make my choice. 

"Complex process of mutually informing" sounds just right to me!

JAY.


Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke




On May 4, 2009, at 2:50 AM, Eugene Matusov wrote:


Dear Jay and everybody--

Thanks, Jay, for most helpful reply. Let me offer two comments:
1) Although I agree with you that contextualists are against any unversalism 
either pro- or against binary, we should be aware that Western
contextualists have much stronger anti-binary bias than pro-binary. This is 
justified by the Western experience where up to recently scientism and
positivism have been very strong. However, this has not been true for
historical experiences of other people -- those who have experienced
communist totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism. The recent historic experience in the USA with the Bush administration challenges the idea that 
the West is immune to totalitarianism and fundamentalism. Both
totalitarianism and fundamentalism are against scientism and positivistic binary and against science enterprise per se (e.g., just remember Lysenko), 
but, for course, not completely any more. Although, totalitarianism and
fundamentalism apply their own ideological binaries, they like to use
leakages of meaning to confuse the reality. I'd even dare to say that their leakages aiming at destroying any moral compasses in people might be more dangerous than their oppressive binaries. I just want to remind that it were scientific binaries that fought successfully religious fundamentalism in 
past.
I respectfully but strongly disagree with the President Obama who wants to put the past of the Bush administration behind us. Those who do not learn history will force to repeat it. And I think we should take the recent past 
8-year historic experience seriously.

2) We should integrate defense with critique of modern science. The
comfortable assumption that in modern Western societies defense of science 
is not needed has been proven wrong. I like Jay's point,

On
our side, I think we have a measure of confidence that, left to its
own devices, science's findings will at least not contradict our
values and political prescriptions (or maybe we'd even reconsider our
positions if they did).


It sounds like instead of the positive method ensuring the truth, Jay
proposes a certain political and discourse regime of freedom that ensures 
that science practice would be healthy. Although, I think that science
should not just be compatible with our values and political prescriptions 
but also inform them through a complex process of mutual informing.

What do you think?

Eugene


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Jay Lemke
Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 11:38 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus AND BINARIES


Really, I am the last person to state, too seriously, unconditional
propositions, whether pro-binary or anti-binary! I am all for
complexity and the need for Both/And vs. Either/Or logics. (There is a
lot of very interesting discussion of the Both/And approach in  the
work of Anthony Wilden, who sought a synthesis of Bateson and Lacan.)

I did write, re synthesizing approaches to the integers, and
synthesizing into coherent master narratives generally, that they can
do good for us and also can mislead us.

I don't really identify binary logic with scientism, because binarism
is far more widespread. Of course there is a lot of breath expended
over one binary, True/False, but I believe that the focus on this one
evaluative dimensions, and depriving it of the key feature of having
degrees (say, of freshness), common to all evaluations in English
semantics, is quite ideological and intellectually counter-productive.
It's also really quite abstract because it implies that all
propositions that are called True are true in the same sense, which I
do not believe. Many different classes of proposition are demonstrated
to be true or not by very different procedures, and so, concretely, I
take them to be true in different senses. This is turn means one has
to be rather cautious about metaphors comparing different sorts of
truths, as for example freshness vs honesty or whatever Bulgakov was
on about. (I have not read the novel, and maybe I will now.)
So I liked Mike's strong version of what is not so much, I think, anti- 
binarism as anti- Black-or-White-ism, meaning not only that we are
presented with only two mutually exclusive choices,  but that
everything on one side is reduced to an equivalence class,
homogenized, stereotyped, and so also on the other. Which gives rise
to such very unhappy binaries as White vs Black, or non-White
(racially), or Gay vs Straight, or American vs un-American, or Us vs
Them. Less abstraction and more attention to local, specific, concrete
realities (life, in Mike's terms) restores the messiness, requiring at
least a fuzzy logic (i.e. the technical one, not merely sloppy
classical logic), with degrees of membership in classes, and more
desirably, explicit clustering of diverse elements on both sides.
Which in turn tends to subvert the radical mutual exclusivity of the
two sides (Mike's leakage), because now we begin to see that some of
the concrete elements on one side actually do have important (values!)
qualities in common with some of the elements that have been put on
the other side. From the inevitability of binarist war, we find some
potential grounds for a modus vivendi.

I saw online the other day Obama speaking to the National Academy of
Sciences. He got the biggest round of applause, not for his
announcement of lots of new funding for research, but for a statement
that in his administration the practice of subjugating science to
ideology would end. While there was not a lot of media attention to
this issue during the Bush presidency, it was widely known in the
scientific community, and in the education research community, that
there was an unprecedented amount of serious political interference in
the conduct of research based on right-wing political ideology. While
I am against Science making quasi-religious claims to universal Truth,
as much because it is bad in the long run for the goals of science as
because it is intellectually distasteful to me, I do agree, Eugene,
that sometimes we do also need to support, conditionally and on a case
by case basis, some of the normative canons of scientific
investigation, even when those include what I might call "provisional
binaries". Sometimes it is just heuristically useful to investigate
something as if there were an absolute binary involved. It occasions a
risk to the research that it will miss something else important by
doing so. And the culture of science believes that sooner or later, if
there is a problem with the binarist assumption, someone else will
point it out and we can come back and re-do things as needed.

We also have a serious practical political issue here. Scientism, or
just the credibility of scientifically-derived statements of "fact",
can be a wonderful weapon to use against ideologies we passionately
disagree with. It is nice to have it in reserve, just in case our
moral-political arguments are not enough, or the balance of material
and media power is against us. The reason that the Bush conservatives
were interfering in scientific research was as much to try and insure
that no such weapons fell into their opponents' hands as to try and
generate "facts" that fit with their own ideological prejudgments. On
our side, I think we have a measure of confidence that, left to its
own devices, science's findings will at least not contradict our
values and political prescriptions (or maybe we'd even reconsider our
positions if they did). Personally, I think most scientific findings
or conclusions are already so larded with interpretations that there
is always a lot of leeway between anything I'd call a "fact" (say, a
reading on a measuring instrument) and anything that can be construed
as bearing very directly on a political or moral issue. So I am not
too worried about the inevitability of a certain "realpolitik" when it
comes to the credibility of Science.

JAY.

Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke




On May 3, 2009, at 4:28 AM, Eugene Matusov wrote:


Dear Mike and everybody—



Mike, I am not interested in playing intellectual games either
(e.g., I do
not like playing a chess game). But I liked your challenge or my own
challenge: to find out if there are any unconditional statements
that I
would agree. I almost believed that you offered one… but, at the
end, it did
not pass my final test. Since, I’m trying to be consistently
inconsistent,
consideration of truth, whatever it leads me, does not bother me.
I’m happy
that you did not play the game either (although, you would not
offend me if
you did).



I think I respectfully disagree with you and maybe with Jay that the
binary
logic is inherently (and unconditionally) bad while contextual
statements
involving leakage of sides are inherently (and unconditionally)
good. I
think (=expect) that you agree with the latter but might still
disagree with
the former. I admit that at times, I have conversations with my
computer
despite the fact that I agree with you that it is an oxymoron ;-) It
is also
oxymoron to speak to myself – what new I can say to myself that
myself/I do
not already know? Despite this apparent paradox (and my
inconsistency), I
have conversations with myself and with my computer.



I think that our suspicion of the binary logic comes from our
criticism of
positivism and scientism. There is nothing wrong in this suspicion,
especially, when the binary logic is treated as the universal one
but I
think we should be careful in not overdoing our criticism. There is
a danger
that our post-modernist criticism of modernist, positivistic
science, aligns
with pre-modernist criticism of modernism. However, as we all know,
enemy of
my enemy is not necessary my friend but it can be an even bigger
enemy.
Bush’s premodernist critique of science should be also criticized
from a
post-modern position rather we should join him.



As your question about freshness and Jesus, I think that there is
only one
freshness: the first and the last one (very binary! J). I do not
know about
Jesus, but I believe that Kot Begemot would agree with me (for non-
Russian
audience, Kot Begemot was a part of the Devil’s court from
Bulgakov’s novel
“Master and Margarita”, literally “Tom-cat Hippo”, a very cunning,
ironic,
and smart character). I wonder what Dewey or Vygotsky would say
about it…
;-)



Take care,



Eugene







From: Mike Cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 9:23 PM
To: Eugene Matusov
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; PIG;
backontrack@wwscholars.org; Zoi
Philippakos
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus



I am a Cretan, that anyone can tell you, Eugene. As to Sandra
"having a
conversation with Ella(Z):

I have long taken it as axiomatic that the phrase, "Conversation
with a
computer"
is an oxymoron. Sort like an oxy-Cretan (poor people from Crete-
judging
from the
size of their houses when Zeus was roaming around, they were very
small and
led difficult lives).

Computers, and chatbots, are artifacts created by other humans (or
other
computer programs created by humans) and are, eventually, in the
sequences
of
mediations, connect to other humans. I agree with the conclusion,
but am
saddened by the lack of orientation to the discourse that generated
this
journal.

I was not playing Gotcha. I was trying to explore the way in which
categories
create insides and outsides and generalize and in so doing, err. But
if I
lost a game
of gotcha and it brings you pleasure, go for it. Thanks for the new
insight
into that
issue of two kinds of people. Diversity uber alles, up to the point
where it
causes blood to flow. Then it start to worry me a lot, but I am a
worrier.

Do you think that Jesus believed there were only two degrees of
freshness of
fish?
What would Kot Begamot think about this issue?
mike

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu>
wrote:

Dear Mike and everybody—



Mike, you almost got me! Very good challenge – thanks!, “And, as you
know,
there are only two kinds of people in the world --- those who
believe there
are only two kinds of people and those who think there are more.” I
almost
unconditionally agreed with your statement and then I noticed its
meta-statement, “there are only two kinds of people in the world….”
that is
congruent with “those who believe there are only two kinds of
people…” thus
the person who stated this claim that I had initially liked belongs
to the
first category him or herself… It is like, “One Cretan said that all
Cretans
are liars.” Very smart, indeed! ;-) Thanks for this Sabbath’s puzzle
(I did
not know it)…



Have an unconditionally tasty fish,



Eugene

PS I like to hear more about your reading of discursive psychology
and their
use of the terms “activity” and “culture” and about reasons for your
wonderment. Can you share more, please?







From: Mike Cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 7:37 PM
To: Eugene Matusov
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; PIG;
backontrack@wwscholars.org; Zoi
Philippakos


Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus



da net! Eugene. :-)

Of course there are several degrees of freshness. This is a trout
fisherman
writing.
And a resident of the coastline of California. Caught and cooked on
the
spot/ caught and
frozen and taken home safely through the desert/bought at my local
fish
store on thursday,
bought at my local fish store on monday..........

But I love your example and the novel is one of my very favorites.

And, as you know, there are only two kinds of people in the world
--- those
who believe there are only
two kinds of people and those who think there are more.

conditionally speaking
mike

PS-- Reading about discursive psychology in the interims and
wondering why
the word activity is
used as it is and where the word culture is, and what Lois thinks of
it, and
mostly wishing I had more
time to read it!




On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu>
wrote:

Dear Jay and Mike and everybody--

Conditionally, Jay, I like Mike's statement as well,


It
is the
heterogeneity within the "two parts" and leakage between them and
their
relations to "their context" that IS life.


but only conditionally. There are situations when this statement is
deadly
but binary logic is on the side of life. I remember a famous

allegoric

statement from Russian novel "Master and Margarita" by Michael
Bulgakov. In
short, in the novel's plot, the Devil visited Stalinist Russia
(Moscow to be
exact) in the 1930s during the Stalinist worst purges. Among other
things
the Devil visited a theater to make familiar with New Soviet people.
In
theater buffet, the Devil noticed rotten fish with the label, "Fish
of the
third [degree] freshness." The Devil told the buffet salesperson,
"Dear
salesperson, somebody has lied to you. There is no such thing as
'fish of
the third-degree freshness. Fish can be only one degree of
freshness: either
it is fresh or not. Respectful, your fish is not fresh, it stinks."
This
short exchange revealed the deception of Stalinist "leakage" of two
parts
(namely, life and death). The binary logic presented by the Devil
here was
on the side of life, while non-binary Stalinist discourse of making
'white'
black and 'black' white (that at that time often referred as
'dialectics')
was on the side of death.

I think we might be careful in indorsing any universal statements
even when
they can be true, on average (in our sociocultural conditions). We
should be
also careful with our fight against scientific positivism that has
historically emerged in response to (religious) totalitarian
ideology of
manipulative "leakages". After the Bush administration reign, I have
become
even more careful about dissing positivistic science.... (By the
way, the
Bush administration used discourses that were convincingly based on
both the
binary logic and at the same time on the manipulative "leakages",
like, for
example, torture becomes not torture but rather a permissible grey
area of
an "intense interrogation technique"). Binary logic can bring life
sometimes, indeed....

What do you think?

Eugene



-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Jay Lemke
Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 4:46 PM
To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus

Right on, Mike!!

Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>







On May 2, 2009, at 8:37 PM, Mike Cole wrote:


What one I think is literally deadening, Eugene, is binaries with
uniformities on both sides. Under such conditions, change is
impossible. It
is the
heterogeneity within the "two parts" and leakage between them and
their
relations to "their context" that IS life.
mike

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu>
wrote:


According to Wikipedia, "Jackie Mason" was born Yacov Moshe Maza
(for what
it's worth).


On Sat, 2 May 2009, Michael Glassman wrote:



Eugene,

I would argue that the intonation is not so much related to
language as it
is to culture - in essence a part of cultural capital that can be
found in
Russia, but in a number of other places around the world with a
number of
different languages.  You use the example,

-?? (da-da) is a good translation from Mogenbesser's Jewish

English,

"Yeah, yeah" in Russian. As you, probably, know, Russian is very
intonation-based language - almost any word might have the
opposite meaning
with the right intonation. Like for example, "Have you my taken

my

book?" "I
need your book badly!" ("?? ?? ???? ??? ??????» --
«????? ??? ????? ????
?????!») - it is difficult to translate this Russian exchange

into

English
because the response has the intonation indicating the opposite
meaning that
its formal semantics suggests. One Russian (Soviet) poet

commented

that
Russian language does not support «?????» (i.e., report to a
secret police).

But anybody who has listened to Jackie Mason, not such a good
human being
but a pretty good comedian, has heard him using the type of
intonation you
are discussing brilliantly in English - so brilliantly you would
wonder how
it could work in any other language - but of course it could.

I'm

sure the
same intonation, or maybe different types of intonations
expressing meaning
but especially sense, could be used in almost any language as

long

as the
speaker was comfortable with it.   What is interesting about the
use of this
type of intonation is when somebody uses it - at least in English
- I can
make a pretty good guess about where they grew up in the United
States.
Some people who are really good at this can even limit it to

general

neighborhoods - and you immediately recognize certain cultural
qualities
about that individual and it cuts through a lot of other
information.  On
the other end of the spectrum somebody could use the intonation
perfectly in
Columbus Ohio and individuals would just understand the remark
based on the
more straight forward understanding (and might consider you a
little alien
for using the intonation).  What also might suggest the

intonation

being
part of cultural capital rather than the language itself is the
fact the I
think it is often time used as a form of intimacy, kidding, or
making fun in
a non-maliscious way.

Michael



________________________________

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Eugene Matusov
Sent: Sat 5/2/2009 1:31 PM
To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu
Cc: backontrack@wwscholars.org; 'Zoi Philippakos'; 'eXtended

Mind,

Culture, Activity'; 'PIG'
Subject: RE: [xmca] a minus times a plus



Dear Mike and everybody-



You wrote, "another example of binary logic which is anti-human".
I wonder
what makes this logic anti-human is not necessary that it is
binary, but
maybe the fact that it strives to be the universal,

unconditional,

disembodied, and decontextualized. I think that limited and
situated binary
relations can be humane. As you nicely put it before, the
universal answer
to any problem is, "it depends" ;-) The big problem, of course,
what it
depends on... (I always say to my grad students that the answer
for the
latter question will be addressed in a future Advanced Grad
Sociocultural
Seminar that I never teach J)

??

-?? (da-da) is a good translation from Mogenbesser's Jewish

English,

"Yeah, yeah" in Russian. As you, probably, know, Russian is very
intonation-based language - almost any word might have the
opposite meaning
with the right intonation. Like for example, "Have you my taken

my

book?" "I
need your book badly!" ("?? ?? ???? ??? ??????» --
«????? ??? ????? ????
?????!») - it is difficult to translate this Russian exchange

into

English
because the response has the intonation indicating the opposite
meaning that
its formal semantics suggests. One Russian (Soviet) poet

commented

that
Russian language does not support «?????» (i.e., report to a
secret police).



Ed made an interesting and thought-provoking point, "Social
relations
don't give rise to mathematics, but mathematics seems to give,
perspectivally, a rise to social relations." I think that in
general, it is
a chicken-egg problem but I suspect that social relations have
priority over
math. So, Ed, we have a respectful disagreement, indeed. The
reason for my
suspicion is that usually, although not always, social relations
have a
priority over everything else. For example, it seems that

historical

emergency of geometry was a result of a certain development of
private
property on land and conflicts associated with it. Certain (but
not all!)
mathematical questions could emerge only within certain social
relations..
One of these vivid examples can be mathematical division. I'm
always amazed
how difficult for Western kids to understand fractional division
leading to
a number bigger that divided. For example, 2 divided by ½ becomes
4. Western
understanding of fair sharing almost exclusively as splitting the
whole on
equal but smaller parts (private property) makes very difficult

to

consider
a possibility for collective sharing in which the more people
share the more
value the whole has. We have a PIG Lab of Internationally
Recognize
Excellence - the more people use it, the more valuable it becomes
(to a
point of course, ;-). By collective sharing, ten PIGgies

virtually

have 10
labs! Or 1 divided on 1/10 is 10. I think this fractional

division

reflects
collective sharing (and collective fairness) in contrast to whole
number
division based on private property sharing (and private property
fairness).
It is interesting to study this question empirically....



What do you think?



Eugene

PS I know that everyone in this XMCA discussion who replies to my
messages
gets bounced message from the PIG email list (no connection to

the

swine
flu!). I try to resend your messages to the my PIGgy colleagues.



---------------------

Eugene Matusov, Ph.D.

Professor of Education

School of Education

University of Delaware

Newark, DE 19716, USA



email: ematusov@udel.edu

fax: 1-(302)-831-4110

website: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu <http://
ematusov.soe.udel.edu/>  <
http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/>

publications: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/vita/publications.htm



Dialogic Pedagogy Forum: http://diaped.soe.udel.edu <
http://diaped.soe.udel.edu/>  <http://diaped.soe.udel.edu/>

---------------------







From: Mike Cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 10:01 PM
To: Eugene Matusov
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; backontrack@wwscholars.org;
Zoi
Philippakos; PIG
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus



That it works to think that the enemy of your enemy is your

friend

is
another example
of binary logic which is anti-human. Shit happens a lot, Eugene.

Your yeah yeah example is in the increasingly long and equally
interesting
trail of emails on
this thread.

da da
?
zhanchit?
mike

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Eugene Matusov

<ematusov@udel.edu>

wrote:

Dear Mike--

You wrote,


And for sure, Eugene, it is a cardinal error to believe that the
enemy
of
your enemy is your friend. Maybe, maybe
not. Like all laws of social science, it all depends.



Actually, it worked rather well during the WWII for the Allies
(US-
UK) and
the USSR. Their cooperation in opposition to the Nazi Germany was
governed
by the Arabic wisdom "an enemy of your enemy is your friend." It
can be
powerful indeed but as you said it is not universal.

As to the natural language and the formal logic (math), in

natural

language
(+1)*(+1)=-1, according to famous anecdote, "The most celebrated
[Sidney]
Morgenbesser anecdote involved visiting Oxford philosopher J. L.
Austin,
who
noted that it was peculiar that although there are many languages
in which
a
double negative makes a positive, no example existed where two
positives
expressed a negative. In a dismissive voice, Morgenbesser replied
from the
audience, 'Yeah, yeah.'"

Take care,

Eugene


-----Original Message-----

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-

bounces@weber.ucsd.edu

]



On Behalf Of Mike Cole

Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 8:38 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity



Cc: backontrack@wwscholars.org; Zoi Philippakos; PIG

Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus



Eugene, the mixture of plus and minus was the focus of my

inquiry.

Natural
language understanding
of double negatives solves that problem for 2 numbers, beyond
which I
assume
natural language needs
a notation system to keep track.

So far Jerry Balzano's mirror explanation seems like it has the
best
chance
with my grand daughter (in
part because i can actually imagine creating the demonstration

that

lines up
intuition and notation). I
have not had time to read all of the notes in this thread owing
to
heavy
teaching and extra lecture schedule
and a rash of recommendation letters out of season (which I will
accept
as a
sub for swine flu). But
simply in scanning could I make a plea for socio-CULTURAL
constructivism? If
we do not keep what is
essential to human forms of human sociality in the discussion,

we

might
as
well be talking about bonobos
who, at least, know enough to make love not war.

And for sure, Eugene, it is a cardinal error to believe that the
enemy
of
your enemy is your friend. Maybe, maybe
not. Like all laws of social science, it all depends.

mike


On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Eugene Matusov

<ematusov@udel.edu>

wrote:

Dear everybody--


In response to Mike's profound inquiry of why a minus times a
minus


is a


plus, I was thinking that it is a mathematical model of the

Arabic



wisdom


that "an enemy of my enemy is my friend." Of course, the latter

is



not


always true -- we have plenty of examples when enemy of our
enemy is


still


our enemy (or just indifferent) and, thus, for these types of
social
relations, the mathematical model of (-1) x (-1) =1 does not

work.



Just


consider, for an example, the relations among the US, Al-Qaida,
and


Saddam


Hussein.

The issue for me is why the Western civilization prioritizes
(and


then


mathematizes) social relations described in the Arabic wisdom.

One



answer


is
because "the real world" works according to these social

relations



(i.e.,


the social relations is just an example of the truth out

there).

An
alternative explanation is that the Western civilization can
afford


and


might be even benefit from imposing these social relations on

"the



real


world" that by itself is indifferent to any social relations
(and


thus


mathematical models). Any other explanations?

What do you think?

Eugene






-----Original Message-----

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-


bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]



On Behalf Of Ng Foo Keong





Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 12:23 PM

To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus



Is Mathematics _merely_ socially constructed, or is there
something

deeper and inevitable?

I think this deserves a new thread, but I couldn't manage to
start


one.



Let me try to draw out and assemble the line of discussion that



spun



off from the "a minus times a plus" thread.


In her inaugural post to xcma, Anna Sfard about talked "rules
of the mathematical game" among other things.

Then Jay Lemke said:-


...
I think it's important, however, to see, as Anna emphasizes,
that there is a certain "arbitrariness" involved in this, or
if you like it better: a freedom of choice. Yes, it's
structure-and-agency all over again! Structure determines

that

some things fit into bigger pictures and some don't, but
agency is always at work deciding which pictures, which kind
of fit, which structures, etc. And behind that values, and
culture, and how we feel about things.



-----
Then I (Ng Foo Keong) said:-

regarding structure and agency, arbitrariness:-

i think now it's time for me to pop this question that has
been
bugging me for some time.  i am convinced that mathematics is
socially constructured, but i am not so convinced that


mathematics



is _merely_ socially constructured.  if we vary across cultures

and different human activities, we might find different ways
in which patterns and structure can be expressed and yet we
might
find commonalities / analogies.  the question i am asking is:
is maths just a ball game determined by some group of nerds
who
happen to be in power and dominate the discourse, or is there


some



invariant, something deeper in maths that can transcend and
unite

language, culture, activity .... ?



Foo Keong,
NIE, Singapore

-----
Then Ed Wall said:-

Ng Foo Keong

As regards your question about mathematics being socially
constructed, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by
mathematics or what kind of evidence would convince you it


wasn't.



Suppose I said that there was evidence for innate subtizing.







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UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________

"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
             -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)



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Valerie A. Wilkinson, Ph.D.
Professor of Communication
Faculty of Information, Shizuoka University
3-5-1 Johoku, Hamamatsu, Japan   432-8011
http://www.ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp/~vwilk/
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