Re: [xmca] last on concepts

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Steve:
 
We need a distinction here, and I think it is equivalent to the omnirelevant distinction Vygotsky makes between higher, culturally mediated, and lower, biologically endowed, psychological functions.
 
Martin says (and I agree) that SOME forms of practical thinking are purely sensorimotor: always have been and always will be. I think that is true, but that when we examine those functions we find that they are utterly uninteresting to historico-cultural psychology except insofar as they form the basis for higher, culturally mediated functions.
 
I guess I would include the "jump" you create when you fire a gun next to somebody's ear (they jump before realizing that it is a gun), the sickly feeling you get when you look down from a very tall building or come around a trail bend and see a coiled snake, and eidetic memories (the "after vision" you see when you shut your eyes after looking at a bright light). 
 
I think that if these were all there were to psychology, historico-cultural pscyhology would be a bizarre branch of philosophy, or an obscure literary practice, and the reactologists would have been right after all. There is, however, a second kind of practical thinking which is functionally similar, looks structurally similar, but is genetically utterly different and therefore, in the final analysis (e.g. under conditions of pathological degeneration as in old people with Alzheimer's) it is also structurally different.
 
These are the hand-to-eye "reflexes" we see in driving, in computer games, in piano playing, and in a wide range of societal practices that are manifestly symbolic manipulations. They are semiotically consequential for other people (not just for the biological organism). 
 
But they do appear for all the world like "automatic" reflexes (a term that I think Vygotsky would avoid, except for metaphorical usages), actions into which consciousness does not (any longer) appear to enter. These are the actions I would like to call "post-verbal" or "de-verbal" thinking rather than "pre-verbal" or "non-verbal" thinking.
 
Vygotsky's example is tying a knot. It's not that this is unconscious (you are not asleep when you tie your shoes, and you are not even in a trance). It is that it is largely non-conscious, because your attention is focused on the result of the action and not on the activity itself. You can, if you wish, focus on the activity, and in this sense it is structurally quite different from what happens when I unexpectedly fire a gun next to your ear.
 
You cannot, no matter how hard you try, focus on the jump that you involuntarily make when you hear an unexpected gunshot. The same is true of the other examples as long as they are unexpected, although of course people can and do culturally mediate their vertigo and deliberately train for eidetic memory, after which we can no longer call it a lower psychological function. 
 
I think that all kinds of history, including ontogeny, know instances of what in phylogenesis is called convergent evolution. The wings of birds, insects and airplanes are functionally and even structurally similar, but they are only externally related; that is, related because of their very different adaptation to the functional needs and to the environment. I think that pre-verbal and post-verbal "automatism" has the same type of resemblance: a phenotypical rather than a genotypical one. Let me end on a practical note that suggests how this genotypical difference might be made salient and even relevant. 
 
I think that, contrary to what Andy says in his Johannesburg lectures, one of the major tasks before an adolescent is not to try to get adults to stop treating him as a child. This is more or less what Karpov and the "Neo-Vygotskyan" approach argues, and I think Bert van Oers' dismantling of the approach in the last issue of MCA is spot on. Adolescents don't look like children, and in general capitalist society is quite willing to confer upon them all the status of the objects of sexual and/or economic exploitation that they so readily appear to be.
 
The war within is a different story. When you and I were adolescents, one of the great struggles we had to go through was the control of pre-verbal sensations (sex, drugs, and most promisingly, rock and roll), mastering them by converting them into deliberate, culturally mediated, volitionally partionable emotions. (I remember that for me a period of extreme party discipline was important, and if I had not been a red, I would have probably joined the Marines.)
 
Now, in some ways, I think the current generation has a similar problem with computer mediated technology. Many computer games and much social networking has been quite deliberately designed to be automatic, highly addictive, intellectually unconsequential (and, not coincidentally, highly profitable). I think that one of the major tasks of historico-cultural psychology today is:
 
a) To critically review work (e.g. that of James Paul Gee, and our own Jay Lemke) that overoptimistically saw this technology as a quick fix to much more profound psycho-social problems (illiteracy, cliquism, tribalism) and which missed its far greater potential. given extant social conditions, for making these problems worse. (I think, but I am not sure, that "Facebook" was originally designed to allow horny Harvard freshman to distinguish "hot" chicks from "not", and that is actually why it has a name that hints ineluctably at a lower psychological function).
 
b) To understand the SIMILARITIES between, say, drug addiction, compulsively violent behavior and computer addiction (e.g. the psychological reductionism, the "schizophrenic" complexive thinking it fosters, and the subsequent "tribalism" of social relations) and not to minimize them. 
 
c) To understand the DIFFERENCES as well! It seems to me that precisely BECAUSE computer-mediated games and also some forms of computer mediated communication are a post-verbal rather than a pre-verbal form of thinking, it DOES offer at least the theoretical possiblity of conscious, deliberate, voluntary control. Perhaps xmca is a good example of that possibility. But there's a very good reason why our stuff doesn't exactly read like Twitter.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education .
 

--- On Wed, 5/11/11, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> wrote:


From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2011, 3:28 AM


David,

Thanks!  This explanation and rework of that paragraph on p 115 is exactly what I needed - your response addresses exactly what I was missing.

Question: is what you are referring to as "practical intellect" and "post-verbal" behavior equivalent to what Vygotsky refers to as automatic behavior or activity, such as in his discussion of Claparede's law, v1 p 183?  "This law states that difficulties or impediments encountered in automatic activity lead to conscious reflection on that activity." p 70  (Vygotsky seems to accept this law, but only as a functional law - his criticism is that it only indicates whether the need for conscious awareness is present or absent in an individual, not how conscious awareness itself emerges. v1 p183)

A classic example of automatic activity versus behavior guided by conscious awareness is of course comparing the driver who is used to changing gears with a stick shift to someone just learning how to do that.  The coordination of the gear shift with the clutch eventually becomes habitual and only rises to consciousness when there is a problem for the first driver, but initially requires constant attention from the second one.

- Steve




On May 10, 2011, at 5:16 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

> Steve:
> 
> One of the things we did when we translated T&S into Korean was to carefully compare every single paragraph with the Minick translation into English. We found quite a few differences. Here's the original Vygotsky:
> 
> Отношение мышления и речи в этом случае можно было бы схематически обозначить двумя пересекающимися окружностями, которые показали бы, что известная часть процессов речи и мышления совпадает. Это . так называемая сфера &Lt;речевого мышления&Gt;. Но это речевое мышление не исчерпывает ни всех форм мысли, ни всех форм речи. Есть большая область мышления, которая не будет иметь непосредственного отношения к речевому мышлению. Сюда следует отнести раньше всего, как уже указывал Бюлер, инструментальное и техническое мышление и
> вообще всю область так называемого практического интеллекта, который только в последнее время становится предметом усиленных исследований.
> 
> Here's an English translation, with some of the differences with Minick in parentheses:
> 
> "(It would be possible to) schematically designate the relation of thinking and speech (in this case) by two intersecting circles, (which would show that a certain part) of the processes of speech and thinking do coincide. (Here is the so-called sphere of “verbal thinking”. But) this verbal thinking exhausts neither all the forms of thought nor all the forms of speech. There is the large area of thinking, which will not have direct relation to the vocal thinking. (Here one should relate first of all as already indicated Bühler, instrumental and technical thinking and generally the entire region of so-called the practical intellect, which only recently becomes the object of those intensified studies.)"
> 
> Now, Minick dislikes Vygotsky's tendency to say the same thing three times, and like Hanfmann and Vakar he often prunes in the hope of producing a stronger and clearer image. Martin doesn't like Vygotsky's love of striking, and often spatial, images (and I certainly agree with Martin that they ARE dangerous sometimes, as in the idea of four "planes" that so struck you, Professor Mack, and Colin, which I think is a complete misunderstanding).
> 
> I like both, and I think they are related. I think that we are supposed to take both with a block of salt, the way a cow does. I think that we take Vygotsky's slightly different redundancies and his not quite overlapping images not as Galton photographs (where similarities reinforce each other and differences obscure) but as frames in a moving picture, verbal approximations of something that is changing as we speak.
> 
> So here we have the image of two intersecting circles. Vygotsky says it's only one of several ways to imagine this (and in fact he has already described it as the intersection of two lines, as a tangled skein, as two "currents" that flow into each other, etc. So it is right and proper to begin with "It might be possible" or "it may be possible" or "it would be possible" which is what Vygotsky really does.
> 
> He's talking about speech functions in ADULTS, which is why he says "in this case". Think of an adult driving a car. This is an almost perfect example of practical, mechanical intellect. Vygotsky is surely right to suggest that it has no DIRECT relationship to verbal thinking; if you describe what you are doing while you are driving, you are probably going to have an accident.
> 
> But it's not at all like PRE-verbal nonverbal thinking, is it? We can see this in a number of ways. First of all, we find conversation a little burdensome when we are driving unless it is actually connected with the driving task (e.g. a GPS). This suggests positive and negative interference, doesn't it? Secondly, we do LEARN to drive in a verbal way, from instructions, instructors, and ultimately verbal tests. So perhaps we should say that structurally, genetically, yea, even functionally, driving is POST-verbal or DE-verbal rather than PRE-verbal. And this DOES suggest an INDIRECT relationship to verbal thinking.
> 
> Here's some other stuff, earlier in the chapter, worth looking at in this context:
> 
> Так, Бюлер со всей справедливостью говорит: &Lt;Действия шимпанзе совершенно независимы от речи, и в позднейшей жизни человека техническое, инструментальное мышление (Werkzeugdenken) гораздо менее связано с речью и понятиями, чем другие формы мышления&Gt; (13, с. 100). Дальше мы должны будем еще возвратиться к этому указанию Бюлера. Мы увидим, что действительно все, чем мы располагаем по этому вопросу из области экспериментальных исследований и клинических наблюдений, говорит за то, что в мышлении взрослого человека отношение
 интеллекта
> и речи не является постоянным и одинаковым для всех функций, для всех форм интеллектуальной и речевой деятельности.
> 
> So Bühler, (with entire validity), says “The (performances) of the chimpanzee are completely independent from speech, and (in the later life of man) technical, instrument thinking (Werkzeugdenken) is much less connected with speech and with concepts, than other forms of thnking” (13, p. 100). Further on we must again return to this indication of Bühler’s. (We will see), that actually everything that we now have available on this question from the areas of experimental studies and clinical observations (will confirm as a point of fact) that in the thinking of the adult person the relation of intellect and speech is neither constant nor identical (for all functions) and all forms of intellectual and verbal activity."
> 
> Again, we can easily imagine that the practical, instantaneous problem solving behavior we see in an adult human repairing a car was originally learnt from a repair manual, or from another more expert repairman; in other words, at one point the adult human’s thinking was virtually identical with written or oral speech and proceeded step by step alongside it.
> 
> 
> Finally, take a look at "Tool and Sign in Child Development", Steve (Volume Six). In the first chapter, first section, paragraph 11-12, Vygotsky and Luria go over this same ground. But this time they make an invidious comparison between Kohler, who really tries to show how human the chimp is, and Buhler, who is trying to show how chimplike the human is. And they draw attention PRECISELY to the MISTAKE of assuming that practical intelligence in later life is language free. Here's what they've got.
> 
> Эта тенденция остается неизменной и у всех дальнейших исследователей, за небольшими исключениями. В ней наиболее ярко выражена та упомянутая опасность зоологизирования детской психологии, которая, как уже сказано, является господствующей чертой всех исследований в этой области. Однако в исследовании Бюлера эта опасность представлена в наименее серьезном виде. Бюлер имеет дело с ребенком до развития речи, и в этом отношении основные условия, необходимые для оправдания психологической параллели между шимпанзе и
> ребенком, могут быть соблюдены. Правда, Бюлер сам недооценивает значение сходства основных условий, говоря, что действия шимпанзе совершенно независимы от речи и в позднейшей жизни человека техническое, инструментальное мышление в гораздо меньшей степени связано с речью и понятиями, чем другие формы мышления.
> 
> "This tendency, with a few exceptions, remains unchanged in the work of all following investigators. It is here that the danger of what might be called the ‘animalization’ of child psychology, mentioned earlier, finds its clearest expression as the prevalent feature of investigation in this field (see earlier reference). However, this danger is at its smallest in Bühler’s experiments. Bühler deals with the pre-speech period of the child, which makes it possible to fulfill the basic conditions necessary to justify the psychological parallel between chimpanzee and child. It is true that Bühler underestimates the importance of the similarities of these basic conditions when he states : ‘The chimpanzee’s activities are totally independent of speech, and in man’s later period of life technical, instrumental thinking is much less connected to speech and concepts than other forms of thought’,”
> 
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
> 
> --- On Mon, 5/9/11, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Monday, May 9, 2011, 3:10 PM
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> On May 7, 2011, at 11:17 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> 
>> Steve:
>> 
>> I think that thinking and speech have what we would call, in Korea, "jeong", or in China "yuanfen". "Jeong" and "yuanfen" are both indicate a fateful encounter that neither party can ever forget, no matter what their previous or subsequent history. Unsurprisingly, both "jeong" and "yuanfen" have romantic connotations, and both are symbolized by a red thread, which is something that Vygotsky likes to use too.
>> 
>> So Chapter Four, which is in some ways our most "schematic"and general chapter (because it mixes up the phylogenetic, the sociogenetic, and even the ontogenetic), describes how thinking becomes verbal and speech becomes rational, somewhere around age two.
>> 
>> This is, it seems to me, the genesis of verbal thinking. And once past that fateful point, neither thinking nor speech will ever forget each other, and neither can ever be quite the same again. Vygotsky explicitly REJECTS Buhler's idea that "Werkezeudenken" (practical activity) in adults is somehow non-verbal. Once thinking has been verbalized, you can never really go back to the pre-cultural, natural state of thinking; everything you think will be at least potentially and often really verbal.
>> 
>> The units in which verbal thinking takes place are verbal: they are word meanings, even if they sometimes do not actually leave the "palace of shadows". You may not have time to completely verbalize these word meanings, but they are nevertheless completely verbal in their psychological nature. After all, when you READ something, you are thinking in a completely verbal manner, even though you are going MUCH faster than you would ever be able to speak, and it is even possible to take in blocks of text in a non-linear manner.
>> 
>> Concepts are another example of how thinking and speech can never really forget their fateful meeting at age two. As ought to be clear (not least from the work of Jay Lemke) concepts come in a structure which is paradigmatic rather than syntagmatic; they grow on tall trees with deep roots, and do not proliferate temporally like crabgrass. Yet precisely in their thematic relations (overconcepts, examples, specific cases) they are clearly examples of verbal thinking.
>> 
>> In Chapter Five (Sections Seven and Eight) Vygotsky reminds us that generalization is really only ONE of the two intellectual "roots" of the concept and it is in some ways antithetic to the other, namely abstraction. I always think of this as "adding on" versus "taking away": generalization involves expanding the pile of shared features and abstraction involves cutting away the merely important to reveal the absolutely essential (and yes, I think that Vygotsky's concept of concepts is essentially essentialist).
>> 
>> English speakers tend to use GENERALIZATION: we say, for example, "I like apples" rather than "I like the apple". Koreans, in contrast, use ABSTRACTION:  they say "I like the apple". A really rational thinker, say, a Korean three year old, might find an expression like "I like apples" rather puzzling, expecting a rider that excludes rotten, unripe, and sour apples.
>> 
>> Except in a metaphorical sense, we cannot say that a good saxophone solo has lexicogrammar. The sax plays notes, not vowels or consonants, and a musical line is neither a noun phrase nor a verb phrase. But if you imagine that, say, Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins have no intonation, no stress, no phrasing, then you are mired in what we can only call a "natural" state of musicality (see the end of Chapter Four, Section Three), the state in which dogs howl at phonograph records. Good saxophone is "talky" music in much the same way that Mozart is, and it is no accident that jazz has selected a main instrument that sounds or can be made to sound very like a human voice.
>> 
>> Classical music too eventually settled on string instruments to carry the main melodic line rather than brass or woodwinds or percussion). Last night I went to see Poulenc's opera "The Dialogue of the Carmelites", which is surely one of the most undialogic operas ever written. It's wordy but not talky, the music is woody rather than stringy, with two harps that can never quite agree to disagree. In the libretto, everybody says exactly the same thing, and one is hardly surprised when the Carmelites go on singing after their heads are cut off.
>> 
>> But today I am sitting in my office, listening to Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor. Dvorak wrote it after the death of his sister-in-law, with whom he was hopelessly in love. It's a threnody and a love letter with everything removed except thought and motive. Is there sense? Well, there is certainly something sensuous, and it is not animal; it is scarcely even human.
>> 
>> (Rostropovich! How is it possible to be unhappy on a planet shared with such a sensiblity?)
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>> 
>> 
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