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Re: [xmca] activity (was concepts)
Hi Vera,
I completely agree! I think we have given far too little attention to 'generalization,' when in fact it is a central topic, a little red thread, that runs through T&S. LSV tells us that verbal thinking and thoughtful speech both generalize, and concepts too. But what is generalization?
People who actually speak Russian will correct me if I am wrong, but I think the term that is translated as 'generalization,' Обобщение, also means “synthesis.” Or, as you put it, unification. LSV argues that just as communication is impossible without signs, it is impossible without meaning, because to communicate means to appeal to a class of phenomena, in other words to generalize. Word meaning is the unity of thinking and speaking because both involve 'unification'; LSV proposes that word meaning is also the unity of generalization and communication. Communication “presupposes” generalization, and so the ontogenesis of word meaning “is made possible” by the historical development of communication. It is as the child becomes able to communicate explicitly with others that they become able to think in terms of generalizations.
What LSV was studying in chapter 5 was the child’s developing ability to ‘put things together,’ to synthesize or unify things into a unity. At first, the child puts together blocks with superficial pairwise similarities. But with time, they put together things which have shared underlying relational properties. Their perception has burrowed beneath the superficial and particular, penetrated to the underlying and relational. For LSV, this is to have formed a concept. And, of course, it is to generalize, unify, in a more profound kind of way.
I agree that it is crucial to keep in mind that for LSV generalization (synthesis; unification) is itself an act, and that thought is always in service of practical problems and work. This must mean that a concept is not some kind of object in the mind. To 'use a concept' is to have the capacity to generalize in a specific kind of way, related to ones practical actions and intentions. LSV argued in Crisis that it is crucial that concepts and material objects not be “separated by an unbridgeable gap.” For him, a concept (it seems to me) is a mode of grasping a real object in thought, so as to unify it in a specific way that is relevant to a practical task.
Martin
On Apr 21, 2011, at 12:30 PM, Vera John-Steiner wrote:
> Hi Andy, Anna et all,
> It seems to me that what we are neglecting in our conversation is the concept of unification which is a dialectical process. For the novice speaker for whom nouns are easier to produce than verbs, early words stand for a phrase "Bottle" stands for "give me the bottle"where the speaker intends to benefit from an action.. Even at this simple level there is a unification of the object with the subject's intent, The reason why Vygotsky's unit of analysis is useful as a model rather than the specificity of word meaning is because of this quality of unification. If we thought of concepts as an extension of these cognitive acts rather than reducing them to objects, we would be more at ease with their use. I know that a solid object is the result of underlying Brownian motion, but I do not need to keep that in mind when I try to decide whether I can move it. Our concern for appropriating cognitivist approaches is so everpresent that it can inhibit our ability to use freely what we have learned and what we can add tothe thought activity of our "distant teachers."
> Vera
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 9:39 AM
> Subject: Re: [xmca] activity (was concepts)
>
>
> Good ol' Lev is never that unambiguous is he, though? Consider this:
>
> “This justifies the view that word meaning is an act of speech. In
> psychological terms, however, word meaning is nothing other than a
> generalization, that is, a /concept/. In essence, generalization and
> word meaning are synonyms. Any generalization – any formation of a
> concept – is unquestionably a specific and true act of thought. Thus
> word meaning is also a phenomenon of thinking” (Vygotsky Volume 1: 244).
>
> Andy
> Martin Packer wrote:
>> Eric,
>>
>> No need to defer - like Anna, I appreciate disagreement! I doubt I'm the better scholar; perhaps the more obsessive. And my ability to understand Russian is entirely mediated by Google Translate!
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> On Apr 21, 2011, at 9:17 AM, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Martin:
>>>
>>> I will have to defer to you as I believe you to be the greater scholar as well as better in translation ( as I alas know only english and pig latin)> However, instinctively I believe concept to be the dialectic that allows thinking and speech to merge and become what LSV refers to as higher psychological processes.
>>>
>>> eric
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Date: 04/20/2011 11:30 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] activity (was concepts)
>>> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 20, 2011, at 3:47 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Eric,
>>>>
>>>> I don't know, I think LSV makes it pretty clear that word-meaning is not
>>> the concept. He criticizes Ach, who:
>>>
>>>> "identifies concept and word meaning, and thus precludes any possibility
>>> of change and development in concepts" (T&S chapter 6, para 16).
>>>
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Eric,
>>>
>>> I apologise for my curt message earlier today. As it happens I had been sitting in a cafe for a couple of hours musing over this very issue, and when I returned home to read your message I couldn't resist a quick reply.
>>>
>>> It seems to me that one way of thinking about what LSV does in T&S is that he defines what word-meaning [Значение] is by explaining successively what it is not. That does seem a bit dialectical, doesn't it? And one of the things that word-meaing is not is concept (ch 7). It is also not sound (preface and ch 1). Is it not objective reference (ch 2).
>>> And I think this clarifies some of the issues in reading the book. For example, when in chapter 5 LSV borrows Frege's & Husserl's distinction between 'sense' and 'reference,' Sinn and Bedeutung should translate as Смысле and Значение, but LSV has the *former* term as Значение. So Frege's distinction becomes 'meaning' and 'objective referent.' Why? Because LSV is using this distinction to make the point that the meaning is not the object the word refers to, which is a commonsense view and also that of several psychologists whose work he is critiquing.
>>>
>>> In chapter 7, however, when LSV introduces Paulhan's distinction between 'sense' and 'signification' it is the *latter* term which he calls Значение, while the former is Смысле. Why? Because although LSV gives credit to Paulhan for introducing the distinction, he criticizes him for not solving the problem of the relationship between the two terms. And meaning, for LSV, is neither Paulhan's sense nor his signification.
>>> Here is the paragraph in full:
>>>
>>> Our research has been able to establish three fundamental characteristics which are linked amongst themselves and which constitute the originality of the semantic aspect of inner speech. The first fundamental characteristic is the predominance of the sense [смысла] of a word over its meaning [значением] in inner speech. Paulhan has rendered a great service to psychological analysis by introducing the difference between the sense of a word and its meaning. The sense of a word, as Paulhan has demonstrated, represents the ensemble of all of the psychological facts which appear in our consciousness thanks to a word. The sense of a word is in this way a dynamic, fluid, complex semantic formation which has several zones of different stability. The meaning is only one of the areas of sense that the word acquires in a given context, but it is the zone which is most stable, most unified, and most precise. As is well known, a word easily changes its sense in different contexts. The meaning, in contrast, is the immobile and immutable point which remains stable in diverse contexts. This change in sense in the word is what we have established as the fundamental fact in the semantic analysis of speech. The real meaning of a word is not constant. In one operation, the word has one meaning, and in another it takes on a different meaning. This dynamicity of meaning brings us to the problem of Paulhan, that is to say the relationship between meaning and sense. The word, taken by itself in the dictionary, has only one meaning. But this meaning is nothing other than the potential which is realized in living language; this meaning is only the foundation stone of sense.
>>> LSV's word meaning is not signification because it is not a fixed, dictionary definition. But it is not Paulhan's sense either. Sense is an important phenomenon, especially for understanding inner speech and its relation to thought on the one hand and social speech on the other. But it is not word-meaning. For one thing, LSV points out that Paulhan shows that sense can actually be detached from the word.
>>>
>>> So here too the emphasis is on what word-meaning is not. Not sense, not sound, not referent, not concept.
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>>
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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
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