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[xmca] how did Luria explain practical intellect
How did Luria explain practical intellect, automatic behaviors, etc.
and the distinctions David is making?
- Steve
PS I changed the subject line and snipped out other topics.
On May 11, 2011, at 5:52 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
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.
<snip>
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,
<snip>
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 ≪речевого
мышления≫. 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: ≪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≫ (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
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