Re: [xmca] last on concepts

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Steve got me rooting deeper into the text, since the account that LSV gives of the "four moments" were thinking and speaking meet is (1) very early - at 1929, chapter 4 is the oldest in the book, and (2) very brief - the key, stage 3 (the stage of the "external sign") is only one short paragraph.

How does the capacity to understand and use signs arise? And how does this lead to the capacity for "ideation"? LSV actually makes some very clear statements in chapter 5. He says clearly there that the formation of concepts is done with the aid of words (of speech). Words are used to point out and abstract relevant features, and they are also used to form syntheses of these features in generalizations. 

Words have two functions: indicative, and signifying. The indicative comes earlier to a child; the significative, later. We can use words to indicate or point out; we can use them to signify or stand for. Intellectual processes of both abstraction and synthesis are necessary for the formation of a concept - or, if you prefer, content (what has been indicated and thereby abstracted) and form (what is synthesized and signified) are unified in a concept. 

Once the child has differentiated sound and inner form the word has become a sign [знак]. But this sign can be used in different ways. It can serve as a tool, a means, for a variety of intellectual operations, and it is these different intellectual operations, performed with the help of the word, that result in the basic difference between the complex and the concept.

LSV explains how the blocks task enabled him to see this process "live":

"During the experiment, we had occasion to see repeatedly that the primary function of speech, which could be called an indicative function, as the word indicates a certain feature, is genetically older than the signifying function [сигнификативная функция], substituting for a series of visual experiences and their meaning [и означающая их]. Since in our experiment the meaning [значение] of a senseless [бессмысленного] word first applied to the visual situation, we were able to observe how word meaning [значение слова]  first arises, when this meaning [значение] is given there. This assignment of words [speech? слова] to well-known features, we can study in living form, watching, as the perceived, standing out and synthesizing, becomes the sense [становится смыслом], word meaning [значением слова], becomes the concept [становится понятием], then - how these concepts are expanded and extended to other specific situations and how they are then realized."

He seems to be saying that the situation that the child perceives, itself meaningful, provides the basis first for sense, then for word meaning as the word is assigned to known features of the blocks. Then in turn concepts arise, and finally there is conscious realization of concepts.

In short, while a word has a “signifying” [сигнификативная] function; the concept is a “significative [сигнификативная]  (signifying) structure. It is obvious from all this that concept is not the same as word-meaning. The word, as sign, is used in order to form the concept, and used in two different ways, by two different intellectual functions, in order to form the concept. The concept is not the word (which has signifying *function*), it is a special signifying *structure*, a union of abstraction and synthesis, of content and form, of abstract and concrete. As signifying structure it is used in acts of thought, to grasp reality in a specific way. This is why conception transforms perception. And that is why thinking that is not verbal has nonetheless been transformed by language, because it is conceptual.

IMHO

Martin

On May 10, 2011, at 2:41 PM, Martin Packer wrote:

> Steve,
> 
> I'll throw in my 2 cents here...  In chapter 4 LSV traces the phylogenetic roots of both thinking and speaking, albeit in the somewhat indirect way of turning to studies of primates and other animals. (The direct route would be the study of hominids, which is still not easy to do - though the recent work on the evolution of language from a single source in Africa around 60,000 years ago is a fascinating step in that direction.) 
> 
> His conclusion is that there is evidence in animals both of a practical, instrumental kind of problem solving that goes beyond mere trial-&-error, and a kind of communication using sounds and gestures. But chimps, for example, show no evidence of "ideation," which he defines as the capacity to operate on the basis of non-actual or absent stimuli. (Had he seen, though Richard Attenborough's videos of Capuchin moneys drying pine nuts for a week and then skillfully using huge stones which they transport considerable distance to crack them? I think not.) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3udzhDvsG-s>
> 
> And animal communication, he argues, is primarily that of emotional reaction, and the sounds made do not function as signs. (There is considerable debate over this issue today, too.)
> 
> Then, in the same chapter, he returns to ontogenesis and argues that in the young child too there is speech that is not yet intellectual, and thinking that is not yet verbal.  Stern had claimed that child language has three roots, a tendency to express feelings, a tendency to communicate with others, and an "intentional" tendency, that is to say, an ability to represent objects on the world, which is unique to humans and cannot be found in any animal. LSV had rejected this explanation as empty, presuming what it needed to explain - the capacity for semiosis. His explanation of this capacity is that it is the consequence of the meeting and interaction of the two lines of development. He reviews his own research on inner speech, introduced in chapter 2, to describe the four moments of this meeting. It is still possible for an adult to have speech without thinking, or thought without speaking. But LSV's principle interest in T&S is the interaction of the two lines that leads to verbal thinking.
> 
> Martin
> 
> On May 9, 2011, at 5:10 PM, Steve Gabosch wrote:
> 
>> David,
>> 
>> Thanks for your always intriguing comments, such as the ones from a couple days ago, copied below.
>> 
>> I've been needing some help understanding the last statement in the following paragraph from Vol 1, p 115, the Minick translation.  It relates directly to your comments (and also a question Jay asked a couple weeks ago, if I remember), about practical activity and verbal thinking.
>> 
>> The meaning of the final sentence puzzles me:
>> 
>> "Moving now from the issue of the genesis of inner speech to the issue of how it functions in the adult, the first question we encounter is one that we have addressed earlier in connection with issues of phylogenesis and ontogenesis: Are thinking and speech necessarily connected in the adult's behavior"  That is, can the two processes be identified with one another?  All that we know that is relevant to this issue forces us to answer this question in the negative.  The relationship of thinking and speech in this context can be schematically represented by two intersecting circles.  Only a limited portion of the process of speech and thinking coincide in what is commonly called verbal thinking.  Verbal thinking does not exhaust all the forms of thought nor does it exhaust all  the forms of speech.  There is a large range of thinking that has no direct relationship to verbal thinking.  In this category, we could include the instrumental and technical thinking that has been described by Buhler and what is commonly called practical intellect."
>> 
>> According to the last sentence, Vygotsky appears to have included "the instrumental and technical thinking that has been described by Buhler and what is commonly called practical intellect" into the category of non-verbal thinking.
>> 
>> Could you or someone help me understand this statement?
>> 
>> - Steve
>> 
>> 

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