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Re: [xmca] last on concepts
Martin, your quote from Ch 5 below is very interesting.
Its emphasis on a **sequence** of processes corresponds to the
equivalent passage in The Vygotsky Reader on p 257, ch 9, translated
by Prout, which covers many of the same passages as in v1 Ch 5.
Minick's version v1 p 164 Ch 5.18 actually blunts that very idea,
lumping the processes together more as a pile than a temporal sequence.
It is very helpful to see your reasoning (movement from situation -
sense - word meaning - concepts - etc.). If there are other passages
that have been leading you in the direction of thinking of that
specific sequence, or others, I'd be interested.
Your last paragraph, I will have to give some thought to. The idea
that word-meaning has a signifying **function** while the concept is a
signifying **structure** is an interesting opposition to think with -
if I am understanding you right.
I have been thinking that the two opposing processes that form word
meaning, at the level of concept formation, are object-relatedness and
signification (v1 p 152, 255). I hadn't before considered the two
processes you are describing - or how these two different perspectives
on word meaning relate to each other. So what is obvious to you isn't
yet obvious to me!
- Steve
On May 10, 2011, at 4:48 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
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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