Re: [xmca] Consciousness As Noticing and Abstraction

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Hi DavidI
You wrote,

To clear this up, he suggests junking ALL of the above and replacing them
with a FOURTH meaning of "conscious", which is volitional, voluntary,
deliberate noticing of one's own psychological activity, which he calls
"awareness". The example he gives is knot-tying: Then you suggest when the
focus of conciousness alights on HOW I make those  particular actions this
is a particular FORM of consciousness which can be termed *awareness*

This notion of *awareness* as a particular FORM of consciousness that
focuses on HOW action proceeds seems similar to Aristotle's notion of
phronesis [practical activity about how WE should proceed]  Is 8awareness8
the psychological equivalent on the subjective level to the cultural
historical level of phronesis.?

My question is an attempt to LINK Anna Stetsenko's notion of *transformative
activist stance* with the exploration of phronesis in authors such as
Gadamer.  Have you read articles by Bent Flyvsbjerg on *phronetic social
research*?  He is a city planner in Denmark who is exploring the notion of
town planning as an act of phronesis.

Larry






On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:57 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> Mike, Steve:
>
> I meant this bit, which is paragraph 32 of the Second Section of Chapter
> Six. Vygotsky has just complained that Freud and Piaget are using
> "unconscious" or "subconscious" to mean things that are genetically
> completely different: not yet conscious (that is, genetically primary),
> semi-conscious (partially conscious and therefore somewhere in the
> middle) and repressed from consciousness (that is, genetically late
> emerging).
>
> To clear this up, he suggests junking ALL of the above and replacing them
> with a FOURTH meaning of "conscious", which is volitional, voluntary,
> deliberate noticing of one's own psychological activity, which he calls
> "awareness". The example he gives is knot-tying:
>
> "Я завязываю узелок. Я делаю это сознательно. Я не могу, однако,
> рассказать, как именно я это сделал. Мое сознательное действие оказывается
> неосознанным, потому что мое внимание направлено на акт самого завязывания,
> но не на то, как я это делаю. Сознание всегда представляет какой-то кусок
> действительности. Предметом моего сознания является завязывание узелка,
> узелок и то, что с ним происходит, но не те действия, которые я произвожу
> при завязывании, не то, как я это делаю. Но предметом сознания может стать
> именно это — тогда это
>  будет осознание. Осознанием является акт сознания, предметом которого
> является сама же деятельность сознания."
>
> ("I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly
> how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is
> focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is
> always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the
> knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make
> when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just
> that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the
> subject of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness.")
>
> I don't agree that there is any light between Luria and Vygotsky on this
> question, Steve. the part I quote from Tool and Symbol is from a manuscript
> co-authored by both of them. I also don't agree that what I wrote about
> computer addiction and role play is not relevant to this thread; I think
> that one of the great strengths of xmca is that it really does allow us to
> "rise to the concrete". But I do admit that adolescence is more or less
> beyond my expertise (I notice that whenever I start talking about my own
> childhood I have probably trespassed the extremely narrow boundaries of what
> I know about kids).
>
> So here are three things that are more to the point.
>
> a) My former grad, Yongho, who is doing his Ph.D. thesis is looking at some
> data where the kids can manipulate "avatars" made with their own photographs
> and get them to interact with each other. The third graders love it. The
> fourth graders are a little shy. And the fifth graders hate it.
>
> b) At the same time, we've found that when we ask kids to role play,
> the third graders take it very seriously, the fourth graders ham it up, and
> the fifth graders tend to either parody or satirize.
>
> c) Finally, I am looking at some data this morning where the teacher
> is trying to get the kids to distinguish between nuclear two-generation
> families and extended three-generation families by looking at their own
> family trees. She's having a lot of trouble  because the kids keep mixing up
> a "broad" family (many siblings) with a "deep" one (many generations) by
> talking about "large" families. So she introduces the term "nuclear".
>
> One of the kids immediately identifies the term as referring to atomic
> weapons. The teacher is hopeful, since this would mean being able to talk
> about North Korea, about divided families, and maybe even about the
> "nucleus" of an atom and a family.
>
> But it turns out that the child only knows the "nuclear option" in the game
> of Starcraft, which is an option offered to the human-like Terrans; the
> option of simply dropping a bomb on subhuman races and eradicating them. For
> the child, it's not a weapon at all; it's just a trump card in a game.
>
> Now it seems to me that what ALL of these examples have in common is a
> growing ability to ABSTRACT a concept, including a self-concept, from its
> context--and from its consequences. THAT seems to me to be
> characteristic the end of childhood. I am hard put to describe this, as
> Leontiev and Karpov do, as the struggle to be taken seriously by adults.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>  --- On Thu, 5/12/11, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] how did Luria explain practical intellect
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 8:03 AM
>
>
> I am way back on "Vygotsky used the example of a knot."
> Which example, David? Are you referring to tying a knot to remember and
> example of quipu? If so, I cannot understand
> what you say about it.
>
> Could you clarify?
>
> Arent the examples you give of driving a car etc for sort of
> "action-reflexes" what, following Leontiev, Zinchenko, et al, are referred
> to as operations?
>
> I'll start from the top if you could clarify here and get back on the
> trail.
> mike
>
>
> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:56 PM, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
> wrote:
>
> > 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 &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
> >>>
> >>
> > __________________________________________
> > _____
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> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
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