Ana-- You write:
As I understand Thibault: in the theory of scalar hierarchies, each level (L) co
ntains unique processes and forms. The levels are then organized so that the the
y provide a system of mutual constraints - a higher level (L+1) provides constra
ints (boundary conditions) to the focal levele(L); while an immediate lower leve
l (L-1) provides constituents for the focal level L.
OK - logically I have no problem with this.
What I want to know is do we have to suppose that social processes are of a high
er level order to the level of individual higher mental processes?
Likewise, why do we have to suppose that individual mental processing belongs to
a higher level than neurological processing??
Bill's note on scales and levels follows yours, and I would really like to
hear from Jay and others who have dealt with systems/scales/levels more than
I have, but let me try say something useful here.
#1 he wants to get Edelman to move outside the brain and individual development
in a serious way to consider SIMULTANEOUSLY the socio-cultural environment
which is either L+1 or L+2 to what Edelman does. The notion of "higher"
in this case, for me at least, means that it includes cultural mediation
which means an historically accumulated set of constraints/affordances
that are literally beyond the indivdiual scope in time and spatial extent.
The spirit of this effort to get a cultural-historical "top-->down"
element into Edelman seems right to me.
But I think that in Bill's terms, I have been conflating scale and level.
In the early connectionist modelling, the notion of levels was pretty
straightforward and built into the programs. L1=features, L2=lettes, L3=words
and they were working on letter recognition. The found they needed the L3,
top down constraint, to make the models work.
We argued that the models were drastically underspecified for higher levels
which were represented as a trident plunging from the top of the figure as
if, we wrote, thrown by Zeus. In real classrooms with real literacy
acquirers, the specification of those "higher" (more inclusive.... am I
slipping on a scale peel here?) levels were supposed to be sentences,
paragraphs, whole texts which were NOT modelled. There has been some
progress since then, but not all that much.
With respect to the indivdiual/social "levels" I too would be suspicious
of hierachy; can't have one without the other so you could turn the whole
thing upside down and not hurt my feelings.
Mostly, I wanted to get XMCA-o-cats to put out some ideas on how to deal
with phylogeny in our theorizing. In that I seemed to have failed.
I am interested in this because it is foundational to a CHAT approach to
assume the interweaving of different historical domains in ontogeny but
the phylogenetic domain goes under attended, Now evolutionary developmental
psychology, with no concept of culture worthy of the name, so far as I can
tell (counterevidence welcome!), is getting a giant play. They don't have to
do experiments to get legitimacy in psych departments because they are
"biological." I am not anxious to abandon the field to them.
mike
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