Re: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication

[Charles Bazerman <bazerman@education.ucsb.edu>]

Andy, I am not sure I see what you are driving at, and thus I do not know how to continue the discussion.  I know you have written and just published a book on concepts, but I have not read it. 
Are you suggesting that there is a more grounded approach to concepts or that concepts dissolve and that we should not chase after them as philosophic phantasms?  

I am trying to deal with concepts not in an abstract philosophic way but in a pragmatist way based on the social circulation of terms and their use in communal practices and then on what evidence we can glean about internal phenomena--and as I say in the essay, my primary activity system and project as a teacher of writing has to do with helping people engage with public circulation of words which people find of value in their endeavors and in their personal understanding of the world which they act within.  To that task I bring the resources of Vygotsky and activity theory.  I do not claim an epistemic position outside those realms of practice.  So what are you trying to persuade me and others of, or what difficulty in my pursuit of my practices within my activity systems do you want me to attend to?

Once I have better bearings of the intersection of our interests, I may be able to say something more useful.

Chuck


----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Monday, November 12, 2012 4:30 pm
Subject: Re: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> Nice to meet you, Chuck. I read your original submission and the 
> revised 
> ms twice, but that is some time ago now. I will re-read it later today 
> 
> so I can be properly prepared for this multilogue. In the meantime let 
> 
> me make just one point, because my point about the drive to make 
> aconcept into a typology has nothing to do with the distinction 
> between 
> dichotomous typologies and typologies that point to a continuous 
> spectrum. The latter is always the refuge of a failed dichotomy.
> 
> 
> Let's suppose you are on a jury. You are hearing a case of murder. You 
> 
> know what murder is, and I am assuming that everyone on this list 
> knows 
> and I won't try to define it. The case however turns out to be 
> challenging, even though the facts are not in dispute. You hear about 
> 
> provocation and blind rage and fear, and about blows whose effect far 
> 
> exceeds intention, and the victim's heart condition. Before you retire 
> 
> to consider your verdict, the judge gives you a list of criteria 
> against 
> which you have to judge the facts.
> 
> My question is this: is the list of criteria which define a typology 
> of 
> homicide according to the various contingent circumatances of the act 
> 
> the *real, scientific* definition of "murder", and the vague 
> ill-defined 
> concept of murder that you arrived with a "spontaneous concept"? Or is 
> 
> it the fact that you had a better concept to start with, and the 
> judge's 
> criteria were the best approximation the law could make to that 
> concept 
> for teh purpose of categorisation?
> 
> Let us go further. You find the defendant guilty of murder and they go 
> 
> to prison, but there is a public outcry and a massive campaign to have 
> 
> her acquitted. The campaign is successful, the defendant appeals and 
> is 
> acquitted after which the government amends the law so that in future 
> 
> judges will give new directions to juries ensuring not-guilty findings 
> 
> in such cases in future.
> 
> My next question is this: which is the "real concept" of murder? Or 
> did 
> it change? Or are there in fact multiple concepts of murder in 
> competition with one another? Was everyone previously mistaken about 
> the 
> definition of murder? What typology of concepts do you use to 
> distinguish them.
> 
> Now I float this hypothetical NOT to prove how complicated is real 
> life, 
> so that we can all shrug our shoulders and say "Goodness! What can you 
> 
> do?" But it is targeted specifically at the concept of concept which 
> reads Vygotsky, like everyone else (almost), as taking the concept of 
> 
> concept to be a typology of contingent attributes with nothing 
> underneath. And of course, Chuck, it is a question for everyone else 
> as 
> much as for you.
> 
> Andy
> https://vimeo.com/groups/129320/videos/35819238
> 
> 
> Charles Bazerman wrote:
> > Mike Forwarded the current string, and I have now rejoined the list. 
> An earlier message I sent about T.S. Eliot's poem got lost, and I may 
> repost it later.  Right now, however, let me respond to these Andy and 
> Larry's thoughtful comments.  I think Andy has got my intentions and 
> situation right.  I was certainly invoking my understanding of 
> Vygotsky's ideas of scientific and spontaneous concepts, and was 
> interpreting scientific to include organized sets of practices where 
> there were stronger degrees of public criticism and social 
> accountability, particularly with respect to coherence among concepts 
> and collected evidence gathered according to communal standards in 
> pursuit of communal projects. And thus I would indeed associate 
> concepts with use and practice within social groupings.  (I am using 
> the term social groupings rather than the more common term community 
> in order to emphasize the varieties among groupings and the 
> differentiation of roles, positions, and objects within 
> > those groupings, although collective objects may bind those groups together.)
> >
> > To some degree any publicly articulated ideas are accountable to 
> communal expectations, practices, and rules of accountability, even if 
> such rules are of the sorts such as "let it pass, because it is not 
> important for immediate action" or "let's accept everyone's ideas, 
> although we may not understand them or agree with them, in the name of 
> goodwill or mutual support." Each of these do provide climates in 
> which we formulate our ideas.  So in this way the spectrum of 
> spontaneous to disciplined/scientific concepts is continuous and does 
> not provide bright lines, except as we historically construct them.  
> However, we have historically created more robust social groupings 
> devoted to particular lines of practice and projects, with more 
> explicit and detailed sets of expectations and criteria of judgment 
> for the consequentiality of proposed ideas--and these groupings have 
> as well been associated with emergent institutions associate with the 
> objects of these groupings.  
> >
> > These might include not only the secular institutions and 
> disciplines of the academy and professions, but also those of the 
> spiritual domain, the performing and graphic arts, commerce games and 
> sports, politics, criminal culture, and other domains that have a 
> robust alignment of practice and communal thinking.  These may not all 
> have occurred to Vygotsky as scientific, as attached as he was to the 
> emergence of "scientific socialism" (though his connection with the 
> arts, especially literature drama and the early film, may have led him 
> to include them in his view of an increasingly scientific social 
> order). Thus I may be drawing the fuzzy line between spontaneous and 
> scientific concepts nearer to the spontaneous end than Vygotsky, who 
> might as well have been drawing a somewhat brighter line.  However, 
> since Vygotsky did not elaborate extended visions of society or 
> history, especially after he articulated his view of concepts, we may 
> not ever know what he thought or even if he 
> > thought very much about this issue.  His earlier writings about the 
> arts, however, did indicate that he did treat them as capable of 
> disciplined evocation of internal states to create shared experiences.
> >
> > This discussion still leaves me with the dilemma that both Andy and 
> Larry point toward, that my own articulation of concepts is within the 
> intellectual project and practices of historically emerged disciplines 
> and projects. Guilty. I do not claim to escape social time or social 
> space, but only speak to them.  It is in fact Yrjo's call for the 
> special issue that drew together my various ruminations about concepts 
>  in other contexts to a new articulation, directed towards the 
> inter/multi-disciplinary world of MCA, situated within the wider 
> social intellectual projects that have drawn on activity theory.  I 
> found this context gave fresh wind to my sails to push my thinking 
> further.   Additionally, it was the review processes and dialog around 
> publication that further helped me articulate my thought for this 
> particular social formation and occasion. Accordingly and obviously, I 
> draw on the conceptual world and intellectual practices that come with 
> the activity theory projects. I
> >  have cast my bets with this particular lot and the fate of my text 
> depends on the usefulness for people engaged with this evolving 
> project or with future projects that might find a useful resource in 
> this set of concepts. 
> >
> > My last paragraph pulls me back to the Eliot poem and the last 
> sentence of my abstract--the need and value of rearticulating one's 
> ideas and accounts to new moments, and how that provides new refining 
> disciplines.  What strikes me most about Eliot's poem, which I 
> commented on in my lost message, is how urgent he feels the need to 
> continually rearticulate himself, despite what others may have said 
> more powerfully or even himself in better times.  Of course, Eliot was 
> caught up in both religious and artic stic disciplines which seemed to 
> call for this constant rearticulation to measure the quality of his 
> soul and his path in the world. To what extent, more generally all of 
> us are driven to rearticulate the self in those disciplines important 
> to the self, is a question I am now thinking about.  Is this a 
> characteristic of participation in particular social worlds or is a 
> consequence of the organization of the human brain and consciousness, 
> in the manner Ramachandran proposes.
> >
> > Chuck
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> > Date: Monday, November 12, 2012 8:11 am
> > Subject: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication
> > To: Chuck Bazerman <bazerman@education.ucsb.edu>
> >
> >   
> >> Chuck-
> >>
> >> There are some comments on your xmca paper. You might want to join
> >> xmca for a bit or I will just forward for your comments.
> >> mike
> >>
> >> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >> From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> >> Date: Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 6:45 AM
> >> Subject: Re: [xmca] A Failure of Communication
> >> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >>
> >>
> >> I appreciated Bazerman's deployment of the conceptr of "genre" and 
> I also
> >> liked his use of "gist".
> >>
> >> To be fair, Larry, Bazerman qualifies the use of "scientific" by following
> >> the term with "(or disciplined or schooled)," and this indicates a 
> much
> >> broader concept of concept, much closer to what I would take to be 
> a "true"
> >> concept in Vygotsky's sense. I wonder if his use of "scientific" to 
> "stand
> >> for" that whole category of concept was a nod to Vyvgotsky? In general
> >> though, I think what Bazerman calls "conceptual words" and "scientific
> >> (disciplined or schooled)" concepts are precisely concepts which 
> arise 
> >> from
> >> problems in a definite system of practice, or dare I say it, a 
> >> project. A
> >> set of practices has to have rules in order to generate contradictions
> >> which are the source of new concepts.
> >>
> >> But I think the problem that Bazerman has in developing this 
> insight flows
> >> from his concept of concept. Yes, the concept of concept is 
> circular. 
> >> When
> >> you make claims about concepts, or say anything about them, you are 
> already
> >> presuming your interlocutor shares your understanding of the subject
> >> matter, i.e. your concept of concept. ...
> >>
> >> So Bazerman wants to categorise concepts and sets off trying to 
> make a
> >> typology, and so we have "spontaneous" and "scientific" concepts 
> ... which
> >> immediately leads to observations like yours about the "fuzzy boundaries"
> >> not to say "shifting boundaries" etc. Because despite it all, it seems,
> >> Bazerman still cannot get away from the concept of concept as a 
> means 
> >> of
> >> categorisation. So the first thing you have to do in talking about 
> concepts
> >> is to set up a typology of concepts.
> >>
> >> There are a lot of nice things about this paper, but so long as you 
> are
> >> stuck on categorisation and typologies you will forever be tied in 
> knots
> >> trying to understand concepts, I think.
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >>
> >> Larry Purss wrote:
> >>
> >>     
> >>> Hi Mike
> >>>
> >>> I will attempt a commentary on Charles Bazerman's article "Writing 
> With
> >>> Concepts: Communal Internalized and Externalized"
> >>>
> >>> I struggled with how to enter into this genre of writing which is 
> exploring
> >>> the concept of concepts.  The topic of the paper I find 
> fascinating 
> >>>       
> >> and the
> >>     
> >>> insight that concepts are embedded within genres allows reflection 
> 
> >>>       
> >> on the
> >>     
> >>> notion of *romantic science*
> >>>
> >>> In particular the genre's propensity to explore concepts as two 
> >>>       
> >> *kinds* -
> >>     
> >>> spontaneous and scientific. Bazerman then offers a qualification 
> >>>       
> >> that these
> >>     
> >>> *kinds* have fuzzy boundaries.
> >>>
> >>> It is this notion of the fuzzy boundaries within this particular 
> >>>       
> >> genre that
> >>     
> >>> I would like to explore further. When we enter into a dialogue on 
> the
> >>> relationship between spontaneous and scientific concepts and  
> >>>       
> >> explore the
> >>     
> >>> functions of each are we moving away from *strict* dialectcs towards
> >>> *interpretive* dialectics*?
> >>> In other words is the relationship BETWEEN spontaneous and scientific
> >>> concepts a *real* or an *interpretive* distinction?
> >>> Do these distinctions exist in the natural world or are they 
> aspects 
> >>>       
> >> of a
> >>     
> >>> particular genre which has developed textually and intertextually 
> through
> >>> effective history?
> >>>
> >>> What I'm playing with is the theme of *romantic science*.
> >>>
> >>> I also want to share an image which this article sparked.
> >>> At the AERA conference in Vancouver, I felt a sense or mood of
> >>> fragmentation within the *project* of AERA.  There were multiple genres
> >>> with the corresponding conceptual *tools* or *artifacts*. The 
> >>>       
> >> throngs were
> >>     
> >>> moving aboutt as if at a trade fair  picking up and putting down the
> >>> various tools, artifacts, and scientific concepts wondering if 
> these 
> >>>       
> >> tools
> >>     
> >>> would be useful for their particular projects. But where was the 
> >>>       
> >> sense or
> >>     
> >>> mood of *shared purpose* within *commonly shared projects*?
> >>>
> >>> Charles Bazerman's article is exploring a fascinating theme of 
> >>>       
> >> genres and
> >>     
> >>> concepts. I hear Andy's voice calling us to put this particular 
> >>>       
> >> genre in a
> >>     
> >>> wider framework engaging with our ancestors. The topic as genre is
> >>> fascinating but it does have a history within an evolving dialogue.
> >>> As Andy is passionate about calling us to remember  the genre exploring
> >>> concepts of concepts has a romantic history.  Exploring scientific 
> and
> >>> spontaneous concepts [with their FUZZY boundaries] is one way into 
> this
> >>> fascinating genre.
> >>>
> >>> Larry
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 11:38 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>       
> >>>> Dear Colleagues--
> >>>>
> >>>> I have been reminded of an issue that has been nagging at me for 
> some
> >>>> time,
> >>>> that we have not had a discussion of any of the articles in the special
> >>>> issue of
> >>>> MCA called "concepts in the wild."  The article selected by a 
> >>>>         
> >> plurality of
> >>     
> >>>> voters
> >>>> was by Chuck Bazerman on concepts in the process of writing. But 
> no 
> >>>>         
> >> one
> >>     
> >>>> has
> >>>> commented on the article. That seems to me a shame. In fact, the 
> entire
> >>>> issue,
> >>>> with its stellar set of authors and papers is worth discussing, 
> and 
> >>>>         
> >> I
> >>     
> >>>> figure there will be more
> >>>> articles on this general theme in the time to come, spanning as 
> it 
> >>>>         
> >> does,
> >>     
> >>>> the story of
> >>>> all those practice in which we acquire and deploy concepts in organizing
> >>>> our social life and experience the world.
> >>>>
> >>>> Below are two items for your consideration: The first is the 
> >>>>         
> >> abstract of
> >>     
> >>>> Chuck's paper. The second
> >>>> is a stanza from a poem by T.S. Elliott which I believe is 
> relevant 
> >>>>         
> >> to
> >>     
> >>>> topic of the paper and
> >>>> in any event, worth considering in its own right. I first 
> >>>>         
> >> encountered it
> >>     
> >>>> in
> >>>> Jack Goody's *Domestication of the Savage Mind, *a book about the
> >>>> relationship between thinking and writing in societies varying in 
> their
> >>>> practices related to the concept of literacy.
> >>>>
> >>>> If the 25 people or more who led us to this article are not in a 
> position
> >>>> to contribute to the discusion,
> >>>> perhaps this invitation will be sufficient for others, including 
> 
> >>>>         
> >> Chuck, to
> >>     
> >>>> do so.
> >>>>
> >>>> And if no one is interested in this discussion, we might re-visit 
> the
> >>>> process by which articles for discussion taken from MCA. Or  not.
> >>>>
> >>>> mike
> >>>> -----------------------
> >>>>
> >>>> T. S. Elliott from “East Coker”
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
> >>>>
> >>>> Twenty years largely wasted, the years of *l'entre deux guerres*
> >>>>
> >>>> Trying to use words, and every attempt
> >>>>
> >>>> Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
> >>>>
> >>>> Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
> >>>>
> >>>> For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
> >>>>
> >>>> One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
> >>>>
> >>>> Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
> >>>>
> >>>> With shabby equipment always deteriorating
> >>>>
> >>>> In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
> >>>>
> >>>> Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
> >>>>
> >>>> By strength and submission, has already been discovered
> >>>>
> >>>> Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
> >>>>
> >>>> To emulate—but there is no competition—
> >>>>
> >>>> There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
> >>>>
> >>>> And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
> >>>>
> >>>> That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
> >>>>
> >>>> For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> The whole poem is here: 
> >>>> ______________________________**____________
> >>>> _____
> >>>> xmca mailing list
> >>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>         
> >>> ______________________________**____________
> >>> _____
> >>> xmca mailing list
> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>       
> >> -- 
> >> ------------------------------**------------------------------**------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ______________________________**____________
> >> _____
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>
> >>     
> > __________________________________________
> > _____
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >   
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> http://ucsd.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
> 
> 
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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