Re: [xmca] Culture & Rationality

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

On 29 June 2012 11:50, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> **
> I wasn't talking about examples so much as archetypes of "scientific
> concepts", and for archetypes he uses exploitation, class struggle,
> exploitation, or the Paris Commune (T&S Ch 5 and 6).
>
> The system of nature does of course provide ample material for talking
> about the difference between taxonomy and true concepts. So for example:
>
> "In its external characteristics, the pseudoconcept is as similar to true
> concept as the whale is to the fish. However, if we turn to the 'origin of
> the species' of intellectual and animate forms, it becomes apparent that
> the pseudoconcept is related to complexive thinking and the whale to the
> mammals [ie true concepts]." [T&S ch 5]
>
> which allows LSV to show how sorting by contingent attributes (rather than
> according to essential relations within a system) corresponds to
> pseudoconcepts and formal logic.
>

I think you'll find its the types used that are pseudoconceptual, rather
than the logic.

Huw




>
> True, he does not confine himself to the concepts of Marxist social
> science. He uses different sets of concepts for different purposes. The
> reasons for falling off your bicycle (somethign within a child's
> experience) at one point; kulaks from prerevolutionary days at another
> point (outside a child's experience), at another. I was just saying that he
> takes scientific conepts as the purest form of true concept and the
> concepts of marxist social science as the purest type of scientific concept.
>
> Andy
>
> Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
>
> And yet, most of LSV's own examples are biological, no?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu <xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 10:54 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Culture & Rationality
>
> Oh, and also, when Vygotsky uses "scientific concepts" as the archetype for a true concept, remember that he *does not* use the concepts of
> *natural* science, as Piaget did, but the concepts of Marxist social theory. So, when we are considering Vygotsky's ideas about "scientific concepts" it is probably useful to *not* have in mind concepts like those of physics which Piaget, not Vygotsky, took as ideal types.
>
> Andy
>
> Andy Blunden wrote:
>
>
>  Stephen Toulmin, in "The Philosophy of Science. An Introduction"
> (1953) I thought definitively proved that the method of reasoning of
> science is not formal logic, or what Toulmin called "syllogistic"
> inference. For example, on p.33: "Certainly none of the substantial
> inferences that one comes across in the phsyical sciences is of a
> syllogistic type. This is because, in the physical sciences, we are
> not seriously interested in enumerating the common properties of sets
> of objects." In other words, the concepts of the physical sciences are
> not pseudoconcepts, therefore we can't use formal logic to makes
> inferences about them. Brandom uses the idea of "formal" and
> "material" inference to make the distinction.
>
> So scientific, and in fact all true, concepts imply going past formal
> logic, which only works with pseudoconcepts.
>
> Andy
>
> Jennifer Vadeboncoeur wrote:
>
>
>  Yes, exactly Martin, this work is consistent. I do think Vygotsky
> privileges dialectical logic over formal logic; by definition, it
> subsumes formal logic and moves beyond it. From my cultural position,
> growing up comfortably with formal logic and having to practice
> thinking dialectically, the above statement doesn't bother me. But I
> would take a different position relative to an Indigenous
> perspective, and be much more circumspect about saying that
> dialectical logic can or should be privileged there. The difference
> in the two positions is one of power. In the first, it seems that a
> marginalized position (Marx's in North America) works to challenge a
> privileged position (formal logic in North America). In the second,
> privileging a dialectical perspective seems like another act of
> colonization.
>
> If we look equally across these three positions, which is problematic
> because the is no single homogenous Indigenous perspective, but let's
> say for this one exercise, then it seems like we are comparing three
> different cultural, historical perspectives on reasoning, right and
> logical, or rational,behavior.
>
> The question remains to the effects of these different ways of
> thinking, but for the people thinking within these systems, what is
> the evidence to show that they cannot think at the adult level of
> their cultural form of rationality? Yikes, now that I've written
> this, I'm not even sure it's the question. Is the issue when we try
> to compare the standards of one cultural group to another?
>
> I'll jump to Peter's post, because I totally appreciate what he has
> written there as well. I appreciate the idea of separating dialogical
> thinking from scientific ... but I also think of Vera John-Steiner's
> cognitive pluralism, and want to reaffirm all the other ways of
> thinking and experiencing the world through image, sound, diagram.
> These are sometimes more obvious to draw on in some Indigenous
> cultures, but the move also shifts the discussion from speech to
> writing, whether we are writing lines, or diagrams, or words.
>
> I was looking back over my sad copy of Luria & Vygotsky (1992), the
> bottom of page 41 through pages 61 are interesting to this topic
> because they show how much Vygotsky struggled with the necessity of
> using the work of others and at the same time trying not to be bound
> by it. He relies on the work of Levy-Bruhl and takes up his language
> "so-called 'primitive peoples'" and then tries to problematize this a
> bit. "Primitive man, in the true sense of the term, does not exist
> anywhere at the present time," but then of course he continues to use
> this language. He argues against any biological type, discusses
> "objectively logical thinking" in relation to nature, and goes on to
> say .... hm, hm, okay, page 59, the focus is on the development of
> writing, and the transition from natural to cultural memory, and
> later the historical development of human memory. The ability of sign
> systems to enable an external form of memory, an external storage of
> memory.
>
> What is different about people with access to the accumulation of
> cultural knowledge of any particular culture and people of that same
> culture who do not have access to this accumulated knowledge? In some
> cultures this may be scientific concepts, as defined by Vygotsky, in
> other cultures it may be ....?
>
> But I keep returning to my post a bit ago, the quote there makes it
> clear that Vygotsky realizes that even after formal schooling, many
> people do not think with scientific concepts, and adults do not think
> with scientific concepts across all domains ... this has been
> supported by contemporary work, from Panofsky, John-Steiner, &
> Blackwell (1990) to Howard Gardner's work with Project Zero.
>
> Vygotsky's goal of thinking in scientific concepts is actually not
> accessible to many people within our own cultures ....
>
> Okay, have I completely gone overboard? :)
>
>
>
>
>
>  Hi Jennifer,
>
> Yes, there has been interesting work recently proposing that
> indigenous cultures are using a distinct kind of reasoning. These guys:
>
> Berkes, F., & Berkes, M. K. (2009). Ecological complexity, fuzzy
> logic, and holism in indigenous knowledge. Futures, 41(1), 6-12.
> doi:10.1016/j.futures.2008.07.003
>
> ...suggest that indigenous peoples have learned to deal with
> complexity, and to manage natural environments rather than master
> them; that what has been dismissed as animism is actually a
> sophisticated non-dualistic ontology; and that a holistic systems
> thinking is being used. I like several aspects of their analysis,
> not least that it explains the "simple number system" - one, two,
> many - that has been found in many indigenous cultures, as due to an
> approach in which people read and interpret signals from the
> environment rather than counting and measuring it.
>
> And I agree with you that judgments of rationality are often violent
> impositions; all the judgments of people as 'primitive' are
> presumably of this kind. Presumably what we need are non-violent
> ways to look at difference.
>
> As for dialectical logic, it take it that LSV believed that this was
> the form of rationality he was employing, and the ontogenesis of
> which he was describing. And that he considered it superior to
> formal logic, not an alternative.
>
> Martin
>
> On Jun 27, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Jennifer Vadeboncoeur wrote:
>
>
>
>   Hi Martin,
>
>  I am thinking about what you wrote,
>
>  "On the contrary, it seems to me that much of LSV's writing can be
> read as pointing to the conclusion that *standards* of rationality
> will vary from one culture another. But I don't think he followed
> his own pointers, and, as I've said above, it is a pretty radical
> conclusion to come to."
>
>  I was first thinking about different standards of rationality as
> noted in the quote below, between formal and dialectical logic.
> Both are tied to "Western" countries, through dialectical thinking
> can also be tied to "Eastern" countries, so maybe the issue is one
> of "industrialized" countries?
>
>  "A child who has mastered the higher forms of thinking, a child
> who has mastered concepts, does not part with the more elementary
> forms of thinking. In quantitative terms, these more elementary
> forms continue to predominate in many domains of experience for a
> long time. As we noted earlier, even adults often fail to think in
> concepts. S When applied to the domain of life experience, even the
> concepts of the adult and adolescent frequently fail to rise higher
> than the level of the pseudoconcept. They may possess all the
> features of the concepts from the perspective of formal logic, but
> from the perspective of dialectical logic they are nothing more
> than general representations, nothing more than complexes."
> (emphasis added, Vygotsky, 1987, p. 160)
>
>
>   >
>
>
>   But the issue in your quote has surfaced several times as well in
> my work with Indigenous students and scholars, and we have ended in
> the place noted in your quote above. Particular examples include
> the complexity and unity of some Indigenous cosmological systems,
> their symbolic representation through the medicine wheel, for
> example, and the narratives, signs, gestures, practices, writings
> that accompany these cosmological systems.
>
>  Can this be considered another cultural form of rationality (seems
> dialectical in a sense as well ...)?
>
>  I know this is different from the question you posed in the follow
> up email, but isn't "demonstrably weaker" a matter of cultural,
> historical, political, economic positioning ... assessed by a
> particular dominant group at a particular time on the basis of
> their own potentially culturally irrelevant assessments?
>
>  Is part of your question also asking for a standard that exists
> outside of culture?
>
>  Just thoughts here ... jen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   Hi Peter,
>
>  I am glad to see you join in the discussion, since I know you've
> done interesting research on inner speech.
>
>  I am certainly willing to grant that patterns of social
> interaction will become patterns of self-regulation and thereby
> parts of patterns of individual thinking. It also makes sense to
> me, and in my opinion LSV clearly states the view, that the higher
> psychological processes are cultural processes. I think he goes so
> far as to say that reasoning is cultural.
>
>
>   >>
>
>
>   But, importantly, that is not the same as saying that reasoning
> *varies* across cultures. We *all* live in culture, and one can
> say that reasoning is cultural and still maintain that reasoning
> is universal. Are we willing to take another step, and suggest
> that in specific cultures the ways that people reason will be
> different, because the specific conventions of each culture are
> involved? That is a big step to take, because the rules of logic,
> to pick what is usually taken to be one component of reasoning,
> are usually considered to hold regardless of local conventions.
>
>  One way to take this step, of course, is to say that people in
> cultures reason in different ways but then to add an evaluative
> dimension. Those people in that culture reason differently from
> the way we do, but that is because their reasoning is less
> adequate than ours. They are more childlike, more primitive.
> *This* move has often been made, and I can find many passages in
> LSV's texts where he seems to be saying basically this. That's not
> a move I find interesting or appealing, and it's not what I am
> proposing.
>
>  On the contrary, it seems to me that much of LSV's writing can be
> read as pointing to the conclusion that *standards* of rationality
> will vary from one culture another. But I don't think he followed
> his own pointers, and, as I've said above, it is a pretty radical
> conclusion to come to.
>
>  Martin
>
>  On Jun 27, 2012, at 9:33 AM, Peter Feigenbaum wrote:
>
>
>
>   Martin--
>
>  If you grant that interpersonal speech communication is
> essentially a cultural invention, and that private and inner
> speech--as derivatives of interpersonal speech communication--are
> also cultural inventions, then Vygotsky's assertions about inner
> speech as a tool that adults use voluntarily to conduct and
> direct such crucial psychological activities as analyzing,
> reflecting, conceptualizing, regulating, monitoring, simulating,
> rehearsing (actually, some of these activities were not
> specifically asserted by Vygotsky, but instead have been
> discovered in experiments with private speech) would imply that
> these "higher mental processes" are themselves cultural products.
> Even if the *contents* of inner speech thinking happen to bear no
> discernible cultural imprint, the process of production
> nonetheless does.
>
>  Of course, you may not agree that interpersonal speech
> communication is a cultural invention. But if you do go along
> with the idea that every speech community follows (albeit
> implicitly) their own particular conventions or customs for:
> assigning specific speech sounds to specific meanings (i.e.,
> inventing words); organizing words into sequences (i.e.,
> inventing grammar--Chomsky's claims not withstanding); and
> sequencing utterances in conversation according to rules of
> appropriateness (i.e., inventing rules that regulate "what kinds
> of things to say, in what message forms, to what kinds of people,
> in what kinds of situations", according to the cross-cultural
> work of E. O. Frake), then reasoning based on the use of speech
> must be cultural as well.
>
>
>    >>>
>
>
>    My guess is that you are looking for evidence that cultures
> reason differently. While there may be evidence for such a claim,
> I only want to point out that the tools for reasoning are
> themselves manufactured by human culture.
>
>  Peter
>
>  Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
>  Associate Director of Institutional Research
>  Fordham University
>  Thebaud Hall-202
>  Bronx, NY 10458
>
>  Phone: (718) 817-2243
>  Fax: (718) 817-3203
>  e-mail: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu
>
>
>
>  From:        Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> <packer@duq.edu>
>  To:        "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>  Date:        06/26/2012 05:06 PM
>  Subject:        [xmca] Culture & Rationality
>  Sent by:        xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>
>
>
>  Thank you for the suggestions that people have made about
> evidence that supports the claim that culture is constitutive of
> psychological functions. Keep sending them in, please! Now I want
> to introduce a new, but related, thread. A few days ago I gave
> Peter a hard time because he wrote that "higher mental processes
> are those specific to a culture, and thus those that embody
> cultural concepts so that they guide activity."
>
>
>    >>>
>
>
>    I responded that I don't think that LSV ever wrote this - his
> view seems to me to have been that it is scientific concepts that
> make possible the higher psychological functions (through at time
> he seems to suggest the opposite).
>
>  My questions now are these:
>
>  1. Am I wrong? Did LSV suggest that higher mental processes are
> specific to a culture and based on cultural concepts?
>
>  2. If LSV didn't suggest this, who has? Not counting Peter!  :)
>
>  3. Do we have empirical evidence to support such a suggestion?
> It seems to me to boil down, or add up, to the claim that human
> rationality, human reasoning, varies culturally. (Except who
> knows what rationality is? - it turns out that the Stanford
> Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not have an entry for
> Rationality; apparently they are still making up their minds.)
>
>  that's all, folks
>
>  Martin
>
>  __________________________________________
>  _____
>  xmca mailing list
>  xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>  http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>  __________________________________________
>
>
>   > _____
>
>
>   xmca mailing list
>  xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>  http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>   __________________________________________
>  _____
>  xmca mailing list
>  xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>  http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>   --
>  ______________________________
>
>  Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur, Ph.D.
>  Associate Professor
>  The University of British Columbia
>  Faculty of Education
>  2125 Main Mall
>  Library Block 272B
>  Vancouver BC V6T-1Z4
>  http://leap-educ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/
>
>  phone: 1.604.822.9099
>  fax: 1.604.822.3302
>  __________________________________________
>  _____
>  xmca mailing list
>  xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>  http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>  __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing listxmca@weber.ucsd.eduhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca