Re: [xmca] Culture & Rationality

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Nice summary and discussion, very helpful to have issues spelled out in
clear ways, Martin and Larry.

Of the many issues that most concern me, the issue of
schooling.instruction. enculturation has been most central. Is it the case,
as Bruner and Greenfield argued in 1966, that without schooling, thinking
does not progress beyond the preoperational level? This is certainly what
Hallpike argued and it appears to
be the kind of implication that one, and many have, derived from Luria's
work.

What place here, for tying a string around one's finger to remember that
tomorrow there is a soccer match at 11:45am PST?

There is stuff about this on the lchc webpage, so I assume there is no need
to point people there if they do not know to what I am referring.

I assume others will focus elsewhere but these issues are making themselves
felt quite broadly, and are, not accidentally perhaps, discussed in Jean
Lave's paper which we might be getting around to.

Differences and deficits seem to be making a comeback wearing new
paraphernalia with a distinctly biological scent, as befits the era.

(not sent from ipod)
mike

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Hi Larry,
>
> Good questions - the first is one of the main motivations for me trying to
> figure out the details of LSV's argument. One starts to wonder, how
> specific is this to cultures in which there is schooling? Would some other
> kind of deliberate instruction be equally effective? What about cultural
> circumstances in which no deliberate instruction by adults take place
> (Peter F. brought this up)?
>
> And then, what counts as a scientific concept? Can different cultures have
> different kinds of scientific concepts, equally adequate to grasping the
> necessities of reality? Could the Chinese - to go back to Nisbett's work
> for a moment - have concepts that are different from those in the West, but
> that are equally scientific? (It's odd, come to think of that, that LSV
> never wrote - to my knowledge - of Oriental culture, given that the Soviet
> Union stretched all the way to the East.)
>
> And then your second question comes to mind. We tend to think of
> scientific inquiry as an unfinished process; perhaps as one that never
> finishes. But if so, in what sense do current scientific concepts grasp
> necessities? And could the process that LSV is describing continue, to
> achieve higher forms of consciousness and higher kinds of knowledge? Or
> does the history of ontogenesis have an endpoint?
>
> But I think to be able to take a shot at answering these questions we need
> to get clearer on the details of the argument. I'm still not clear on how
> the 'intellectualizing' takes place in adolescence. Or how teaching writing
> contributes over and above teaching scientific concepts. And much more!
>
> Martin
>
> On Jun 30, 2012, at 5:59 PM, Larry Purss wrote:
>
> > QUESTION:
> > Is THIS hierarchical movement of developing  scientific concepts as
> > conscious awareness a universal human potential or is this form of
> > conscious awareness  a historically and culturally situated phenomena?
> > QUESTION:
> > If awareness is a reflective phenomena of making what was implicit more
> > explicit and more volitional [and therefore higher] is there a
> > universal human potential to *see through* or *unveil* [NOT reveal] the
> > implicit historical formation of earlier forms of consciousness,
> including
> > scientific consciousness?
>
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