Re: [xmca] When Form Doesn't Follow

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

My first reaction reading Steve's note was that "function" was being used at
entierely different levels of generality. David's comment confirms this. But
what is the point of setting up the activity/artifact and close-up live
views, David? Every distinction is a porous membrane at some level of
analysis.

At least in my own work, I get a strong sense of the two way traffic and
transformation and I get it too, in yours, David. Andy is working with
materials of a different sort. Presumably what we need is polylogue, which
is what we sometimes have!
mike




On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 8:14 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> Steve, Andy:
>
> I think Andy likes to take a helicopter's eye view of things, and I prefer
> something a little more down to earth; this is why Andy likes a
> super-category like "artefacts" or "activity", and I find that every
> distinction Vygotsky makes (e.g. "tools", "signs") is a porous membrane,
> across which traffic must flow, but crossing which traffic must be utterly
> transformed.
>
> That's why I was so taken with the Rogers and Ehrlich article that I was
> willing to overlook their remark about language change. The distinction they
> make between features of the canoe that "interface with the environment" and
> those which are purely decorative is IDENTICAL to the way in which Volosinov
> distinguishes between tools and signs.
>
> Volosinov points out that a hatchet can be covered with elaborate
> engravings that give it symbolic meaning. But the engravings are not a
> necessary part of its interface with the environment, any more than the
> sharpness of the blade is part of the symbolic function of the hatchet. They
> are functionally different.
>
> Rogers and Ehrlich argue that they develop at very different speeds, too.
> Polynesian canoe features which are linked to the environment evolve quite
> slowly and in a consistent direction, such that we can see the same features
> in completely separate Polynesian societies with no apparent contact. But
> symbolic features develop much more rapidly and much less deterministically.
>
> This means, I think, that if tools and signs were originally part of a
> single thing called "artefacts", they will not be so for long. And what is
> true of engravings must be doubly and triply true of speech. It's not a
> matter of different velocities of development. It's a matter of different
> rates of acceleration and different degrees of directionality in
> development.
>
> The disagreement that Andy has with Vygotsky is real. Andy wants
> development to be about "activity" and "artefacts" and wants to include
> child development in that. That is a good helicopter's eye view, but it's
> not a practical way to describe living children.
>
> Here's an example. My grad student Eunsook is driving her three-year-old
> son. Traffic is bad, and Eunsook has just learned to drive, so she is trying
> to concentrate. In the back, strapped to a safety seat, little Taeyong has
> more important things on his mind; he is trying to reach a toy giraffe that
> has fallen to the car floor and he cannot reach it.
>
> Taeyong: Um-ma! (Mommy!)
> (Eunsook pays no attention.)
> Taeyong: Yo-bo!!! (Darling!)
>
> Here are three possibilities:
>
> a) Taeyong does not know what "Yo-bo!" means. He thinks it means "Mommy".
> b) Taeyong does not know what "Um-ma!" means. He thinks it is his
> mother's name.
> c) Taeyong does not know what words mean. He thinks that it is just an
> economical way of crying for attention that doesn't get tears and snot all
> over your clothes.
>
> Obviously, these explanations are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive. But
> the main thing about them is that they are developmentally linked, linked to
> the development of thinking, and they can succeed each other and even be
> superimposed on each other in a very rapid way that is impossible for tools
> that are mired in a given environmental function, which must be replaced by
> other tools.
>
> Vygotsky says: "...the role of speech, which we identified as the basic
> point in the organization of the practical behavior of the child, is curcial
> for understanding not only the structure of behavior but asloits genesis:
> speech stands at the very beginning of development and is its most important
> and decisive factor."  (Volume 6, p. 20, "Tool and Sign in the Development
> of the Child")
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 3/11/11, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>
> From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] When Form Doesn't Follow
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Friday, March 11, 2011, 1:09 AM
>
>
> I wasn't disagreeing with anything David said, Steve, and I appreciate your
> observation that Vygotsky talks against such a dichotomy. That would seem to
> me to be far more true to his own approach.
> Andy
> Steve Gabosch wrote:
> > Andy, I am curious what you are actually disagreeing with in David's
> comments, or in Vygotsky's analysis of tools and signs.  In Vol 4 p 60-63
> Vygotsky discusses both "points of contiguity" between the use of tools and
> signs, as well as "points of divergence."  Except for leaving out the aspect
> of mastering nature along with mastering self and culture, as far as I can
> tell, Vygotsky would not disagree with your general point about artifacts -
> as far as it goes.  Vygotsky touches on the psychological connections
> between the two kinds of activity, which, taken together, form what he
> labeled the higher mental functions, or higher behavior.  However, and this
> is the point I see David elaborating, and which I am curious what you object
> to, according to Vygotsky, the use of tools and signs fulfill significantly
> different **functions** in human activity and development.  To mention
> another thought-provoking statement in these passages, which I noticed
>  the other day when rereading some of this material, while the use of tools
> and signs are both significant forms of mediational activity, Vygotsky
> points out that they do not exhaust "the *whole* range of the concept of
> mediating activities, since the activity of the mind is not exhausted by the
> use of tools and signs." p 62.  Anyway, my question is, if we do not
> differentiate tools and signs as mediating devices with fundamentally
> different functions, and instead permit ourselves to "dissolve" them into
> "the general concept of artifacts or artificial devices" p 61, which LSV
> criticizes Dewey and others for doing, aren't we going to miss out on some
> key aspects of Vygotsky's emphasis on the specific role of signs and
> signification in human psychology?
> >
> > - Steve
> >
> >
> > On Mar 10, 2011, at 11:24 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> >
> >> Personally, David, I think Vygotsky was mistaken in making this
> dichotomous division between tools and signs. If instead, we take tool and
> sign to be archetypes of artefact, and understand that all artefacts are
> directed both towards mastery of the self and mastery of the culture, just
> two properties of any artefact, manifested when an artefact is mediated
> between a person and the existant culture, then I think it makes more sense.
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >> David Kellogg wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> In "Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child" that sign
> development is not at all the same as tool development because in the latter
> instance the object of mastery is the environment and in the former it is
> the self.  I think that ontogenesis is only a special case of a much larger
> regularity: In tool development, the form of the tool follows the function
> of the tool quite closely. This is to a MUCH lesser extent true in the
> development of signs.  In some ways, it's just the opposite: for example,
> functional words (articles, prepositions, modal verbs) change much more
> slowly than those associated with style (e.g. slang expressions, politeness
> forms)
> >>> There's a very interesting article on the evolution of Polynesian by
> Deborah S. Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich (yes, the Population Bomb fellow) in
> an old PNAS which uses a comparison of rates of change in functional
> modifications and stylistic modifications in Polynesian canoes. Rogers and
> Ehrlich argue that words that are related to to the "environment" change
> very slowly, while functors change much more quickly.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+html
> >>>  Doesn't this ENTIRELY depend on whether we are talking about a
> material or a social environment?
> >>> David Kellogg
> >>> Seoul National University of Education
> >>> In "Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child" that sign
> development is not at all the same as tool development because in the latter
> instance the object of mastery is the environment and in the former it is
> the self.  I think that ontogenesis is only a special case of a much larger
> regularity: In tool development, the form of the tool follows the function
> of the tool quite closely. This is to a MUCH lesser extent true in the
> development of signs.  In some ways, it's just the opposite: for example,
> functional words (articles, prepositions, modal verbs) change much more
> slowly than those associated with style (e.g. slang expressions, politeness
> forms)
> >>> There's a very interesting article on the evolution of Polynesian by
> Deborah S. Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich (yes, the Population Bomb fellow) in
> an old PNAS which uses a comparison of rates of change in functional
> modifications and stylistic modifications in Polynesian canoes. Rogers and
> Ehrlich argue that words that are related to to the "environment" change
> very slowly, while functors change much more quickly.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+html
> >>> http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+html
> >>> Doesn't this ENTIRELY depend on whether we are talking about a material
> or a social environment?
> >>> David Kellogg Seoul National University of Education
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>      __________________________________________
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> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> Joint Editor MCA:
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
> >> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
> >> MIA: http://www.marxists.org
> >>
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>
> -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA:
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
> MIA: http://www.marxists.org
>
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