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Re: [xmca] Culture & Rationality



Okay, now I'm intrigued, Andy. I've read through one of Peter F.'s 
posts, his post to clarify that he's not just focusing on 
verbal/non-verbal, but as his area of study is private speech, 
that's the angle he takes. I'm paraphrasing, Peter, apologies. And I 
knew this was probably the case when I wrote my post. I'm just 
mindful of how much easier this dialogue could be face to face, or 
even on Skype, the words on email gain so much strength from being 
words, in sentences, with punctuation, and we don't have the benefit 
of context and tone and gesture and all the things we learn from 
hearing and seeing each other. I think email is amazing for some 
things, but what is lost is the "benefit of the doubt" that we would 
likely extend to a conversation partner if we were talking over a 
coffee that results from all the quick references, half finished 
sentences, and gaps filled by others that provide a much bigger 
picture for the views presented than is ever available in a quick, 
short, in comparison, email.
Still catching up, but looking forward to future conversations in 
person on this very set of topics.
Best - jen



Thanks Jen. I will have to abstain from xmca for a while as the intolerance for my views (and those of Vygotsky as it happens) I find very depressing. But I'll get over it I am sure. Your message cheers me up no end.
andy

Jennifer Vadeboncoeur wrote:
Got this, Andy, now even more reason to jump into your book, it's 
on the list!! Thanks - jen
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>
 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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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*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

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*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

--

______________________________

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

--
______________________________

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
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xmca mailing list
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http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca