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RE: [xmca] Tom Toolery

While I agree that 'tools' is useful as a superordinate category, the distinction between 'tools-for work', 'tools-for-convenience' (utensils, utvar) and 'tools-for-play' (Coleridge's 'play-withs' is a bit awkward but less limited than 'toys') is also important in some contexts. I'm sure the distinctions could proliferate further and that the distinctions would have their uses in particular circumstances.

Could a chat over coffee be described as a collaborative project? In which case utensils might be more appropriate than tools to describe the stuff with which the coffee is prepared and the stuff on which people sit while drinking it (and which may significantly afford opportunities for such interactions) COULD be called tools but might better be described as furniture.

I suspect that the use of 'tools' to describe all mediating artefacts has roots in a particular form of modernism but I am well out of my depth here!

All the best,

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Carol Macdonald
Sent: 19 October 2010 13:39
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Tom Toolery

To David

I am very concerned about the need to make a decision to require/invent a
new term, specifically "utensils". What's wrong with using the notion of
tools and then putting them in the context in which they are used?
Proliferating terms means they start to grow arms and legs and maybe violate
the axioms of one's theory. "Tools" has an impeccable ancestry.

In a collaborative project, what virtue would there be using "utensils"
rather than "tools"?

Larry, sorry for interrupting your conversation.  I just left too much time
to reply to David.

Carol

On 19 October 2010 14:22, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu> wrote:

> I have to admit, you folks are stirring up my inner Sapir-Whorf
> .....fascinating!
>
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:20 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Nothing, Andy. That's why I want to oppose the ideal to the real, and not
> > to the material.
> >
> >              ARTEFACT:
> > Tool-artefact       Utensil-artefact
> > (mass production)  (personal consumption)
> >
> >                 SIGN
> > Signal-sign         Symbol-sign
> > (thing-thing)        (meaning-meaning)]
> >
> >         MATERIALITY
> > Reality               Ideality
> > (percepts)          (concepts)
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> > --- On Mon, 10/18/10, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Tom Toolery
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Monday, October 18, 2010, 7:02 PM
> >
> >
> > What would be an example of something which is ideal but not also
> material,
> > David?
> > andy
> > David Kellogg wrote: ...
> > > It seems to me that if we follow Steve and Ilyenkov, and we see problem
> > after problem as a matter of establishing the interaction of "ideal" and
> > "material", we will need some kind of super-category for the indivisible
> > whole which both ideal and material make up. Otherwise we really do fall
> > into the worst kind of Cartesian dualism. ...
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________
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> >
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>
>
> --
> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
> *Assistant Professor
> Social Foundations of Education
> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> Georgia Southern University
> P. O. Box 8144
> Phone: (912) 478-5125
> Fax: (912) 478-5382
> Statesboro, GA  30460
>
>  *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
> midwife.*
> *-*John Dewey.
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