Re: [xmca] activity (was concepts)

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

On 23 April 2011 21:48, Vera John-Steiner <vygotsky@unm.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
> I have been thinking about this distinction between act and product.


Hi Vera,
I have generalized my response to process and form.


> It seems to me that the process is primary but of course if it were not
> engaged with some more stable aspects of our reality, it would ethereal. So
> we move, constantly betweenrapid change, slow change, and tempory entities
> which reveal  no dsicernable change.
>

I need a bit more context here please, Vera.

One way to think of the process/form distinction is the distinction between
verb phrases and noun phrases (I'm sorry if this is "teaching to suck eggs",
as I was a bit surprised by the "blank looks" from a few responses to this
stuff).  That is, verb phrases describe systems of action and noun phrases
described systems of form.  Hence when using a gerund, e.g. the noun
'learning' in "I like learning", we are referring to the classification of
acts of learning which, to us, is a system of form, as opposed to instances
of learning which is a system of process.  For me this has bearing upon
language learning (and use) in infants.

As far as I can see, the process/form distinction only makes sense if we
apply it in the context of agency (i.e regulatory systems).   If we have a
series of interacting processes and forms:  P- F - P - F - P there is
nothing to stop us thinking of this as F - P - F - P - F other than our
treatment of Form as encoded as a static thing.  Even the noun 'process' as
in "the process" refers to a thing whose identity does not change with
respect to the context of use.


> But we do know, that if we think along a long time-scale "products" too
> will be processes. This is why I am not afaraid to use the notion of
> concept.


For me, the most useful notion of concept is concept-as-model.  It's not
clear to me why it's useful to have a technical  name for something that is
both concept-as-model and some other meaning without having a unique term
for concept-as-model.


> Those are minimally changing processes within a particular activity system.
>

Sorry, I didn't take your reflections any further.  An example might help me
here.



> All this may have been said before, but we are still exploing
> concept-activity so this brief message may be relevant.
>

Yes.

Thanks,
Huw


> Vera
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Huw Lloyd" <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 7:40 PM
>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] activity (was concepts)
>
>
> On 21 April 2011 17:11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
>  On Apr 21, 2011, at 2:17 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>>
>> > * The quotes you give seem to confirm for me that as a unit of an
>> activity, "act" is exactly the right term for his use of "word meaning."
>>
>>
>>  I would say that making a meaning is an act.   That speaking a meaning is
> an
> act.  But that the meaning itself is the product of an act.  Likewise, I'd
> say that knowing as engaging with meaning is an act.
>
>
>  Hi Andy,
>>
>> LSV nowhere suggests that word meaning is an act. Word meaning, he says,
>> is
>> the "unity" of thinking and speaking, because when one uses a word (or
>> words) in speaking, one is necessarily generalizing, and generalization is
>> an act of thinking. That has the consequence, he argues, that by studying
>> word meaning as the unit of analysis one is able to investigate the
>> (dynamic, complex) relationship between speaking and thinking.
>>
>> So what is word meaning?
>>
>> LSV tells us it is the "inner form" of the word. LSV himself used the
>> notion of inner form before, in the Psychology of Art, where he explained
>> that a word has not two but three basic elements: its sound, or “external
>> form”; its meaning or significance [does anyone have the Russian to check
>> the translation here?]; and its “inner form.” This third aspect, he says,
>> is
>> to be understood as the etymological form that expresses the content. It
>> is
>> often forgotten or displaced. For example, the Russian word for "mouse"
>> once
>> signified "thief", and only by means of the inner form have the sounds
>> acquired the meaning “mouse.” The inner aspect is the “image” that a word
>> contains; it can be said to be the link *between* sound and meaning,
>>
>
>
> If the ascii 'art' below appears badly formatted, try looking at it in a
> fixed sized font (such as courier).
>
>
> Form                Process (Act)
> -------                                   -----------------------
>
> Meaning
>           < --
>                   Make a meaning
>           -- >
> Inner Form
>           < --
>                   Make an "impression"
>           -- >
> Sound
>           < --
>                   Make a sound (speak a meaning)
>
>
>
>  between signifier and signified. The fact that LSV could also write of the
>> 'inner form' of a statue makes it clear that 'inner' here does not mean
>> 'inside'- for there is nothing special inside the marble. The form is
>> 'inner' in the sense that it is the 'internal' relation between material
>> and
>> idea (in the case of the statue) and between sound and meaning (in the
>> case
>> of the word). It mediates, in other words, between the *material* and the
>> *ideal* aspects.
>>
>> But the term "inner form" is much older. Dilthey pointed out that
>> Aristotle
>> wrote in his Poetics of the “inner structure” of the tragedy, in an
>> analysis
>> that LSV knew well. Von Humbolt wrote of “innere Sprachform” as the way a
>> language shapes both the perception and the conceptions of its speakers.
>> (He
>> seems to have been rethinking the Kantian relationship between receptivity
>> (sensibility) and creativity (reason); the forms that Kant proposed are
>> imposed by mind were, for Von Humbolt, provided by language.) Potebnya
>> argued that words carry not only a meaning, but also the past experience
>> of
>> the individual and the nation, through which all new experience is
>> filtered.
>> Consequently a word usually has three aspects: an external form, a
>> meaning,
>> and an internal form. In many cases the internal form is rooted in myth
>> and,
>> hence, acts as a bridge between folklore and modern language. With time
>> the
>> consciousness of a word's internal form fades, and one of the tasks of
>> literature is to restore this consciousness.
>>
>>
>>  Nice work, Martin.  I previously interpreted Cassirer's "Mythical form"
> (influenced by Humbolt) to be representationally equivalent to feeling,
> which, if it holds, implies something like this:
>
>
> Form                             Act
> ----                             ---
>
> Concept
>                   < --
>                                Thinking
>                    -- >
> Inner Form
>                   < --
>                                Feeling
>                    -- >
> Vygotsky's Category?
>                    <--
>                                Experience
>
>
>
>
>
>  An alternative analysis, though, might be that there are systematic
>> metaphoric substitutions in any language, such as “love is a journey.”
>> This
>> of course is Lakoff's example, and Lakoff argues that metaphor is "a
>> conceptual system underlying" language, that provides an "ontological
>> mapping across conceptual domains." LSV doesn’t seem to be interested in
>> metaphor. To raise this point is to risk confusing our discussion, though,
>> because what Lakoff calls 'conceptual' here is not what LSV considers
>> conceptual. The kind of knowledge that metaphor provides through its
>> mappings is what LSV considers to be word meaning.
>>
>>
>
> Extrapolated from Beer, Decision and Control, page 111:
>
> Form                   Act
> -------                ----
>
> Isomorphic Identity
>               <--
>                      Make a scientific comparison
>               -->
> Analogy
>               <--
>                      Make a "philosophical" comparison
>               -->
> Metaphor
>               <--
>                      Make a poetic comparison
>
>
>  This is not to say that there are no problems with LSV's account of
>> word-meaning. One problem is that, if meaning is ‘in’ a word, it is not
>> clear how it can differ for child and adult. It turns out that there is a
>> considerable literature on this issue in the context of Frege’s
>> distinction
>> between sense [which LSV translates as 'meaning'] and reference, and it
>> suggests one possible solution to the problem. Frege considered senses to
>> be
>> abstract entities, distinct both from referents, which are real objects,
>> and
>> from ‘ideas,’ which are psychological. Senses, then, occupy a “third
>>  realm”
>> that is neither mental nor material. LSV did not draw such a clear
>> distinction, so that ‘meaning’ for him at one moment seems something
>> linguistic, at other times a matter of what someone “thinks.” According to
>> most readings of Frege each sign has a single, invariant sense which all
>> speakers of a language will “grasp” in the same way. But Frege
>> acknowledged
>> that people can differ in what they can “bring to mind” of a sense (I'm
>> drawing here on the work of philosopher Robert May, at UC Irvine). The
>> solution to the problem of framing LSV’s claims in Frege’s terms would be,
>> then, to suggest that child and adult necessarily grasp the same sense in
>> a
>> word or expression (because there is only one sense to grasp), but they
>> bring to consciousness different aspects of this sense.
>>
>> That's quite enough for one message, I think!
>>
>>
>>  I don't know Frege and Lackoff is on my shelf unread.  Are there
> particular
> pieces you'd recommend?
>
> Huw
>
>
>  Martin
>>
>>
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