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>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <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
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______________________________
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
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