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Re: [xmca] last on concepts
Martin - I'd be more than happy to pay your 2 cents back with at least
a penny for more of your thoughts! LOL
Thanks for you summary of Ch 4, which is where I am especially puzzled
about some things.
Some questions I am pondering:
1) .... What are the four moments you are referring to in Ch 2 ...
2) .... When Vygotsky talks about "what is commonly called practical
intellect" v1 p 115 as being included in the "large range of thinking
that has no direct relationship to verbal thinking," what are your
thoughts on how Vygotsky might have responded to the following question:
a) Is this the same kind of mental operation or "practical intellect"
that humans share with the higher animals? If it is, then
b) doesn't human labor require more than just practical intellect,
since human social production requires more than what Vygotsky
considered animal social communication?
I may have my wires crossed somewhere in there.
Vygotsky himself of course makes part of this point on p 48 when he
says "Human speech ... [is] ... a system that emerged with the need to
interact socially in the labor process."
So my question, asked a different way, is exactly what kind of
thinking is Vygotsky referring to - and not referring to - when he
says "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." v1 p 115
3) .... Prior to those sentences is Vygotsky's description of the
convergence of thinking and speech as two circles intersecting.
I have question about that diagram - do I have his scheme right -
verbal thinking occupies the intersecting area, and pre-intellectual
speech is represented by the remaining area of one of the circles, and
pre-speech thought is represented by the remaining area of the
other ... v1, page 115. Is that what Vygotsky meant?
4) .... If that is what Vygotsky intended, where do non-verbal sign-
mediated forms of communication fit onto that diagram? I am referring
to non-verbal, sign-mediated forms of communication such as music,
diagrams, etc.
5) .... On the Capuchin monkeys and other marvelous examples of animal
intellect and intra- and inter-species cultural exchange - there seems
little room for doubt that Kohler and Vygotsky's explanations about
the limitations of animal tool-use are way out of date and need
serious revising. These aspects have actually been out of date for
some decades now.
My fifth penny for your thoughts, Martin, and anyone's: while they
certainly change what we know about animal **tool** use, including the
use of planned operations, what reasons might these discoveries give
Vygotsky, or someone following his line of reasoning, to dispute what
LSV said about **sign** systems?
For example, when Vygotsky says:
"... social interaction mediated by anything other than speech or
another sign system -- social interaction of the kind that occurs
frequently in non-human animals for example -- is extremely primitive
and limited." v1 p 48
and, when discussing Kohler's research with chimps, LSV says:
[Human] "Speech requires another type of intellectual operation, *not
one of the type or degree* that is present in the chimpanzee. Nothing
that we know of the chimpanzee's behavior indicates the presence of
this type of operation." v1 p 107
.... is there now new information that indicates that any animals **in
the wild** besides hominids have developed and use what Vygotsky would
have called a "sign system?"
6) .... And related to that - oops, I'm up to six pennies now, will
stop here - do you or anyone view our experiences with Washoe, and now
Koko - (thanks to all for the recent video links, some of it was new
to me) - not to mention swearing parrots and the millions and millions
of pets, and trained and domesticated animals that have been highly
integrated in human society for many years now - in your opinion, do
these remarkable animals - and their amazing trainers and caregivers -
give us **new reasons** to dispute (or agree) with Vygotsky's
essential differentiation between animal and human communication?
- Steve
On May 10, 2011, at 12:41 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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