Re: [xmca] Narratology and Concepts

[ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org]

Hello Andy:

When I use 'meta' I am referring to a person's ability to understand that 
they are thinking, in essence "thinking about thinking".  I believe a 
scientific concept is only possible within this framework.

what do you think?
eric




Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
03/19/2010 08:26 PM
Please respond to ablunden; Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, 
Activity"

 
        To:     "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [xmca] Narratology and Concepts


I might say, Eric, that it is this aspect of Vygotsky's 
idea, I mean, that concepts belong to institutions and 
systems of activity and systems of concepts, whereas 
spontaneous 'concepts' are acquired outside of the 
originating system, is (in my view) the aspect of the matter 
which was picked up by AN Leontyev and first persuaded me of 
the value of activity theory. It is very important not to 
forget the *Activity* aspect of a concept.

What do you mean by "meta" here?

Andy

ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:
> Peter:
> 
> You have certainly clarified things for me in regards to the interplay 
> between "spontaneous concepts"  and "scientific concepts":  that the 
> dialectic allows for the development of what has been labled "higher 
order 
> thinking".  I geuss I am still wondering about the 'meta' aspect of 
> concepts because sometimes in activities there is the operation that 
> completes the task and sometimes there is the "metathinking" that 
revolves 
> around specifically complicated completion of activities.  What has 
gotten 
> me thinking about this is Martin's contributions pertaining to 
qualitative 
> research methods.  "old school" qualitative methods were likert scale 
> questionaires that required a metacognitive aspect for responses.  Just 
> thinking off the cuff and perhaps not making sense.
> 
> thank you for your clarifications pertaining to 
> everyday/spontaneous/informal and scietific/classroom/formal concepts.
> 
> eric
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Peter Smagorinsky" <smago@uga.edu>
> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> 03/19/2010 10:32 AM
> Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> 
> 
>         To:     "'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'" 
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>         cc: 
>         Subject:        RE: [xmca] Narratology and Concepts
> 
> 
> Good question Eric. I've always interpreted the distinction as,
> spontaneous=everyday without formal rules that allow for application to 
> new
> settings; scientific=academic/formal without experiential documentation. 

> But
> it's important to remember that although LSV distinguished between the 
> two,
> he argued as follows (from Smagorinsky, P., Cook, L. S., & Johnson, T. 
S.
> (2003). The twisting path of concept development in learning to teach.
> Teachers College Record, 105, 1399-1436.):
> 
> Vygotsky (1987) argues that this interplay between formal knowledge of
> principles and knowledge gained through activity enables people to think
> about problems beyond their range of experience. He maintains that the
> "process of concept formation requires . . . acts of thought which are
> associated with free movement in the concept system, with the 
> generalization
> of previously developed generalizations, and with a more conscious and
> voluntary mode of operating on these existing concepts" (p. 181).  The
> development of a scientific concept thus relies on formal
> instruction--usually in an academic setting but available through
> communities of faith, apprenticeship relationships, organized sports, 
and
> other explicit and systematic instructional settings--and on the 
learner's
> conscious awareness and volition.  It further relies on interplay within 

> the
> learner's conceptual field, with a dialectical relation developing 
between
> scientific and spontaneous concepts, those that involve "situationally
> meaningful, concrete applications, that is, in the sphere of experience 
> and
> the empirical. . . . Scientific concepts restructure and raise 
spontaneous
> concepts to a higher level" (p. 220).  The formal principles of the
> scientific concept create cultural schemata that enable a greater
> understanding of worldly experience.  This worldly experience has been
> described at length by sociocultural theorists who refer to it as 
cultural
> practice, the next area that we outline.
> 
> Peter Smagorinsky
> Professor of English Education 
> Department of Language and Literacy Education
> The University of Georgia
> 125 Aderhold Hall
> Athens, GA 30602
> smago@uga.edu
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] 
On
> Behalf Of ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
> Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 10:21 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Narratology and Concepts
> 
> I certainly have more thoughts about this post then the next question 
but 
> while I am thinking of it I am typing it:
> 
> Does "scientific concept" have metaprocessing involved and "everyday 
> concept" lack the meta aspect?
> 
> Don't know the answer but it definitely goes back to the question of, 
"Is 
> a fiddle always a fiddle or can a fiddle be a table in some contexts?"
> 
> eric 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> 03/19/2010 02:46 AM
> Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> 
> 
>         To:     xmca <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>         cc: 
>         Subject:        [xmca] Narratology and Concepts
> 
> 
> (Pardon the previous premature posting--I hit the wrong button!)
>  Narratology! 
> 
> I have an eighteenth floor flat facing an amazing sunrise through Seoul 
> smog, near Kwanak Mountain on weekends. But on weekdays I have to be out 

> of my apartment well before the golden moment, and this morning as I 
> bundled into the subway car with all the other commuter cattle, this 
piece 
> 
> of poetry popped up from my memory:
> 
> Leave, my love, before the morning
> Drains the darkness from the pane
> Others who ignored this warning
> Did not live to love again
> 
> Romeo and Juliet, of course. But a sinister whiff of Bluebeard's Castle 
> too, and, more bathetically, a reference to the self-consciousness and 
> fear of shopper's remorse we sometimes all feel the morning after the 
> night before.
> 
> No, no, no. I am happily married, which means that even bathos is rather 

> too melodramatic to describe my waking life. This bit of poetry is 
> something that was written for a radio contest on the BBC about twenty 
> years ago, and I heard it on my shortwave in China and forgot about for 
> twenty years. 
> 
> The real reason this thing popped up was that yesterday one of my grads 
> was having trouble distinguishing between "until" and "by" (and also 
"for" 
> 
> and "in" with reference to "two hours" or "two o'clock"). 
> 
> Now, we can explain this problem with a simple two by two matrix:
> 
>                               OBJECT OF PREPOSITION (+/- duration)
>                               e.g. "two hours"      "two o'clock"
> VERB (+/- duration) 
> 
> e.g. 
> 
> "I love"                    for 2 hrs.          until 2:00
> 
> "I leave"                   in 2 hrs.           at/by 2:00
> 
> You can see the CONCEPT (that of durativity, or instantaneity" is the 
> same, whether we are applying it to the object of the preposition ("two 
> hours" or "two o'clock") or to the verb. In fact we can even apply it to 

> space, because the distinction between (e.g.) "at the corner", "on the 
> river", and "in the room" has to do with spatial dimensionality, and 
time 
> durativity is a metaphorical (as well as a literal) extension of this.
> 
> But you can also see that everyday life, for the most part, has NO NEED 
of 
> 
> this kind of matrix or even this kind of concept. Martin is absolutely 
> right to say that it arises sociogenetically (for that is my preferred 
> term for the phylogenesis of culture) in the minds of scientists and 
only 
> ontogenetically in the classroom. Martin is even more right (were that 
> possible) to say that it is of the same psychological substance whether 
it 
> 
> is generated in the laboratory or in the classroom. 
> 
> But perhaps we differ on the conditions of USE. I think my little matrix 

> is really only useful in the classroom, to generalize and abstract 
certain 
> 
> aspects of everyday use outside the classroom. 
> 
> Now, of course, the classroom IS part of the real world, and the 
concepts 
> we have in the classroom are "real" concepts. But a laboratory, in which 
a 
> 
> Russian psychologist is setting up a blocks experiment in order to 
> describe concept formation, is ALSO part of the real world, too. It's 
just 
> 
> that the conditions of use are quite different when we are talking about 

> laboratories, classrooms, subway cars and bedrooms.
> 
> Concepts, as Rosch says, arise in use; they are not structureless nodes 
of 
> 
> a Cartesian matrix (like LSV's "measure of generality") or my two by two 

> crosstab matrix. If that were true, the only true concepts would be 
> numbers.
> 
> As a consequnce of use, concepts have structure which is describable in 
> terms of prototypes, where one type of concept "rubs off on" another. 
> Classrooms make it possible to put make their structure VISIBLE, to 
place 
> the structure of concepts BETWEEN concepts rather than hidden with them.
> 
> I didn't mean to equate scientific concepts with artificial concepts, 
> Andy. That would be banal; of course ALL concepts are artificial 
> concepts. But Vygotsky DOES write, in Chapter Six, that his work with 
> science concepts follows on from his work with EXPERIMENTAL concepts. 
> 
> I think this is because a science concept (actually, an 'academic 
> concept') is a concept for a special type of environment, an 
artificially 
> engineered rather than a naturally occurring next moment of development 
> (oh, all right, call it an artificially engineered zoped). 
> 
> The fact that what Jay calls the "thematic relations" of science 
concepts 
> are EXTERNALIZED, stored outside the concept rather than as protypical 
> variations within exponents of the concept, is both the cause 
> (ontogenetically speaking) of their teachability and the result 
> (sociogenetically speaking) of their teachedness.
> 
> One of my grads is teaching her sixth graders a lesson called "Where is 
> York Street?" where the kids have to give each other very simple 
> instructions (basically, it's just a Skinner maze, with one street, 
called 
> 
> "Apple Street" meeting another called "York Street") such as "go 
straight 
> and turn right/left". The stuff, written ten years ago, is now far too 
> easy for the kids so she wants to teach a map of downtown Manhattan 
> instead, as a way of introducing the concept of the Cartesian matrix 
> (avenues and streets) and eventually longitude and latitude. That way, 
the 
> 
> language they learn may be used iteratively, starting absolutely 
anywhere 
> and ending absolutely anywhere else.
> 
> Last night, as it happens, it snowed (as the weather announcer says, 
"the 
> snowflakes envy the cherry blossoms"). This morning you could see, in 
the 
> fresh snow, trails taking shape in an entirely haphazard manner, as this 

> neighbor steps out to buy the milk and that neighbor to take her five 
year 
> 
> old to a before school piano lesson, driven by everyday use.
> 
> If you look at a map of Seoul, you can see that large parts of it grew 
> roads in precisely this way: it is a city draped over seven mountains, 
> rather like Amman in Jordan, where I lived in my early twenties. But you 

> can also see that parts of it are laid out in a Cartesian grid, rather 
> like Manhattan, Washington DC, Brasilia, or Beijing, so that anyone can 
go 
> 
> anywhere just by visualizing the relationships on a measure of 
generality. 
> 
> It goes without saying that both concepts are part of the real world. 
They 
> 
> are both part of the same city!
> 
> David Kellogg
> SEOUL National University of Education 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, 
Ilyenkov $20 ea

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