Re: [xmca] Types of Generalization: concepts and pseudoconcepts

[Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>]

Andy is not the only one lagging behind in sorting out these difficult  
issues. I have been taking to heart Mike's repeated call for  
clarification of what we all mean by "concept". And usefully starting  
with what we take LSV to have meant.

I've not yet gone through the Davydov and Andy's account of it, but  
maybe this weekend.

Meanwhile, not having the famous chapter 6 of Speech and Thought to  
hand (the online LSV archive has only one bit of it, transcribed by  
Andy in fact) and my library still in storage as I've just moved to  
San Diego, I went to some other sources: the 1934 Tool & Symbol in  
Child Development by LSV and Luria, and from the van der Veer &  
Valsiner Vygotsky Reader, the Development of Thinking and Concept  
Formation in Adolescence, which is the main source on pseudo-concepts,  
etc.

I happened on the first of these somewhat by accident, but it colored  
by reading of the rest. LSV and Luria in this piece are not focused on  
the relationship between thought and speech as such, but rather on the  
relationship between speech and action. In fact my reading is that the  
overall point is that concepts emerge from and as the coordination of  
verbal speech (outward or inward) and practical action. Indeed that is  
what they are and all that they are. It doesn't get more anti-idealist  
than that. And a long way from any notion of general abstract ideas.

The logic of the method of double stimulation is thus to study  
changing relationships between means and ends, where means are always  
symbolic mediators, and ends are solutions to tasks and problems. And  
the argument is that this is also what is going on in everyday life,  
if more slowly and circuitously. So indeed there is acting-with- 
concepts in everyday life and "scientific" concepts does not mean just  
those in formal scientific categorial reasoning. Indeed thinking-in- 
concepts, or to avoid the Cartesian baggage, acting-with-concepts is a  
broader notion than that of "scientific concepts". I am not sure, and  
it may differ in different texts, whether "true concepts" and  
"scientific concepts" always mean the same thing.

This get us into the detailed arguments in the Adolescence paper,  
where I am mainly interested in what the various distinctions have to  
say about the meaning of the notion of "concept". As Andy and other  
note, the distinctions from pseudo-concepts is the most germane, but  
also the most difficult to articulate. Functionally almost the same in  
terms of outcomes and uses, but logically and analytically very  
different in terms of how the use of language is integrated into the  
action of problem-solving activity. So it is not just that verbal  
signs are mediating the solving activity, but how. So a true concept,  
or true acting-with-concepts depends on using language (or other  
mediating signs) in particular ways in our activity.

Evidently the observable key to this only comes from having seen/heard  
a lot of kids and adolescents or adults at different ages doing  
different things in the categorization (blocks, double stimulation)  
tasks, and seeing a Gestalt, a pattern and its changes. Even from  
verbal reports and explanations or interviews it is probably not  
possible to directly see the differences in how verbal signs are  
working at different stages. In fact, one of the key criteria, that  
for complexes or pseudo-concepts the kinds of semantic connections  
made are heterogeneous (more like Wittgenstein's family resemblances)  
while for true concepts they are homogeneous (like formal logical  
category systems), is likely correct developmentally, but we then  
discover that such true concept systems are also limited in their  
functional uses and we need to allow heterogeneity back in (as with  
Wittgenstein, or with Latour's networks). Of course it is functionally  
different now, because it builds on top of the homogeneous base  
concepts.

The ways that true concepts and second-order complexes (Wittgenstein- 
Latour complexes) get mixed may also tell us a lot about cultural  
differences in thinking and the relationships between mythic-symbolic  
thinking (cf. Levi-Straus) and scientific thinking. As usual, I think  
it would be wrong to identify non-Western, or even everyday thinking,  
that mixes different modes with the pre-adolescent developmental  
stage. My assumption is that all adults (except maybe for those with  
some brain disorders) use some true concepts, maybe a lot. They also  
mix this with something else, but that something else is not the same,  
though it may share key features, with developmentally early  
complexes. There is also a historical issue here, as Foucault raises  
it, regarding pre-scientific "associative" thinking (e.g. medieval  
systems of correspondences). Just because a ways of acting with  
symbolic mediation is heterogeneous in its ways of connecting, does  
not mean it is an unchanged survival of developmentally early modes.

In fact I think there may be a lot to be learned by trying to  
understand more carefully the relationships between the  
developmentally earlier modes, the historically earlier modes, the  
more everyday modes, and the culturally alternative modes to Western,  
adult, modernist, true-concept-only "scientific" acting-with-semiotic- 
mediation.

JAY.

PS. Thanks to Etienne Pelaprat for some offline dialogue that helped  
with the Levi-Straussian connection.

PPS. Despite the convenience of the word "thinking", it's  
theoretically misleading. Please replace it everywhere with the more  
cumbersome but accurate "acting-with-symbolic-mediation-to-get- 
something-done".

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





On Sep 11, 2009, at 5:51 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:

> I have prepared a response to Davydov's book, but it is 4,000 words,  
> so I have attached it in a Word document. But here is a synopsis.
>
> Davydov claims that in his analysis of the Sakharov experiments,  
> Vygotsky fails to demonstrate any real distinction between a true  
> concept and an abstract general notion (what is usually and  
> mistakenly taken for a concept in non-Marxist thought).
>
> I claim that he has a point, but Vygotsky is guilty only of some  
> unclarity and inconsistency in his language, and makes the  
> distinction very clear. And Davydov should pay more attention to  
> what Vygotsky says about the relationship.
>
> Davydov works with a mistaken contrast between scientific concepts  
> and the general notions derived from everyday life. Scientific  
> concepts are by no means the only type of true concepts and everyday  
> life is full of concepts.
>
> Nonetheless, Davydov has a point. It is evident that Sakharov, the  
> author of the orignal, oft-cited report evidently is guilty exactly  
> as charged by Davydov. And no-one seems to have noticed!
>
> Although Paula and Carol are consistent and correct in everything  
> they say in their paper, they err on one occasion only when they  
> cite Kozulin citing Hanfmann. It is as if people equate logical use  
> of generalized empirical notions with conceptual thought, never in  
> their own words, but only by means of citing someone else's words.
>
> I think this is the legacy of a lack of clarity in Vygotsky's  
> brilliance.
>
> 4,000 words attached. And apologies for not entering the discussion  
> of Paula and Carol's paper earlier, but I was not clear in my own  
> mind on these problems, and Davydov helped me get clear. Better late  
> than never!
>
> Andy
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/davydov/generalization/
> http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/concept-really-concept.htm
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/sakharov.htm
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media) Orders: http://www.erythrospress.com/store/main.html#books
>
> <concept-really- 
> concept.doc>_______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

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