Andy and Gene,
While GHM adopted some of Pierce's terminology, particularly the distinction between sign and symbol - which appears to me to be the absolute inverse of that of Losev's - Mead's (and Dewey's) social constructionism gave them meanings quite different from those of Pierce. Pierce was, after all, a "positivist pragmatist" whose research into the laws of thought were made with the intention of clarifying the expression of scientific ideas. His psychology, like that of most representatives of the "Analytical School:" the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, Russell, Carnap and so on, was superficial and secondary. Horkheimer's critique of Russell, Carnap, and Mach in (1968) Critical Theory, "The latest attack on metaphysics," though not explicitly concerned with Pierce's works is as applicable to his works as it is to those of Russell, Carnap and Neurath.
From the purely formal point of view Losev's signs are Pierce's symbols and vice versa. But Losev, like Vygotsky, the later Wittgenstein, and Mead is concerned with the social origin and significance of human activity, hence his deep understanding of the symbol-sign distinction is distinct from that of Pierce. Still, I have a bone to pick with Losev. Gene condenses Losev's distinction between sign and symbol as:
"Losev would argue that for this old soldier a word is a symbol because the soldier saw a deep relationship between the word "knife" (the signifier) and the object knife (the signified) while for educated people a word is a sign because the word is a convention - any word or even sound could have signified the object."
The transformation of the word from fact ("a deep relation" between a word (the signifier) and the object (the signified) is - following both Hegel and Vygotsky - a function of the transformation of factual thought into notional or conceptual thinking. It is only when the speaker learns that the relations between any set of objects (including words) is dependent upon the dialogic relations between producer and reciever, that he regards them as conventional rather than factual. (see here Vygotsky's discussion of the developmental stages of conceptual thought in (1932) Thought and Language). Vygotsky (1932) pointed out that the factual speech is not only the precedent for conceptual speech, but is favored over conceptualized speech even after the art of speaking in concepts is acquired and even by those who regularly work with concepts! Since the distinction between symbol and sign has been so much more profoundly dealt with by Hegel, Marx and Vygotsky among others, I fail to see it as a useful addition to analysis.
I would suggest that Marx and Ilyenkov's distinction between material objects and ideal objects is a far more significant distinction since here the differentiation concerns signifieds that can be envisioned as material things and others that cannot (social relations). Reification, in the Marxist sense, is the assignment of factual properties to material object (signifiers) that represent relations that cannot be strictly regarded as objects. When gold, money, the paycheck that represents exchange values which are themselves aspects of social relations to production are themselves regarded as objects of value - we can argue that we are witness to reification of social relations.
Regards,
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: Eugene Matusov
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 3:42 AM
Subject: RE: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Dear Andy-
Thanks a lot for the very useful link to Peirce essay on sign! How different Peirce from Davydov and Losev from whom I learned about sign. Davydov defined sign through a special "sign action" ("znakovoe deistvie") in which a person successfully uses the signifier instead of the signified ("successfully" for the person's goal). You can find this idea of the sign action in Vygotsky when Vygotsky discussed, for example, what object can be involved into a role play. I think that this activity-based approach is different from Peirce's introspection and representation who seemed to be more concerned with traditional psychology with its uncritical acceptance that likenesses and indication are rooted in the nature of the things rather than in human activity of acting with and upon the things.
Peirce wrote, "§3. There are three kinds of signs. Firstly, there are likenesses, or icons; which serve to convey ideas of the things they represent simply by imitating them. Secondly, there are indications, or indices; which show something about things, on account of their being physically connected with them. Such is a guidepost, which points down the road to be taken, or a relative pronoun, which is placed just after the name of the thing intended to be denoted, or a vocative exclamation, as "Hi! there," which acts upon the nerves of the person addressed and forces his attention. Thirdly, there are symbols, or general signs, which have become associated with their meanings by usage. Such are most words, and phrases, and speeches, and books, and libraries."
For Losev, words are symbols only in mythology and naïve thinking as it is illustrated in Lev Tolstoy's short story about old Russian soldier (in tsarist Russian Empire soldier served for 25 years) who went through many military campaigns and was teaching young soldier about life abroad. The old soldier was telling how weird German people were because they twisted names of things. For example, the soldier took a knife and showed it to the young soldier. "Look at this knife. It's clearly 'knife' but a German says it is 'messer'. Where is messer here?!" Losev would argue that for this old soldier a word is a symbol because the soldier saw a deep relationship between the word "knife" (the signifier) and the object knife (the signified) while for educated people a word is a sign because the word is a convention - any word or even sound could have signified the object. Similarly, many Latin numbers (e.g., I, II, III, IV, V) are symbols while Arab numbers (e.g.,1,2,3,4,5) are signs. Losev argued that education often involves de-symbolization. The Arab number system is more advanced over the Latin number system exactly because frees itself from unnecessary symbolism. (Although, it can be argued that the Arabic numbers with their system base as well as words with their morphology are not simple conventional signs - sign systems - but they are not symbols either in Losev's sense!)
Although Vygotsky did not seem to use Losev's symbol-sign terminology (Losev published his book about symbol in 1920s and theoretically Vygotsky could read it), I think he was aware of the difference when he was insisting on liberation of a child from contextual dependency (with his reference to work of Kohler with apes). In part, it is clear that Vygotsky argued for teaching kids decontextualization (which became very problematic now) but in part I think he was talking about "de-symbolization" (in Losev's terms) or "de-reification" (using Marx's terms).
What do you think?
Eugene
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From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 7:14 PM
To: ematusov@UDel.Edu
Subject: RE: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Surely Mead would draw his terminology for C S Peirce?
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/peirce1.htm What is a Sign?
Andy
At 07:00 PM 25/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Thanks a lot Luiz for the elaboration!
You wrote that according to Mead, a significant symbol is a stimulus which calls on its producer the response intended on the part of the receiver.Coming from Hegelian and Marxist perspective, it is difficult for me to think of symbol as a stimulus. I cant understand it. Any behavior has some kind of influence on organism producing it, right? How is it different from a significant symbol? What this stimulus mediate? Russian philosopher Losev wrote an interesting book about symbols and signs arguing that symbol is a kind of signs in which there is a certain, not arbitrary, relation between the signifier and signified (e.g., American flag is a symbol while British may be not unless it has symbolism that I do not know). Did Mead have in mind such symbol?
Please help,
Eugene
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From: Luiz Carlos Baptista [mailto:lucabaptista@sapo.pt]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 8:28 AM
To: ematusov@UDel.Edu
Subject: Re: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Hi Eugene,
The emphasis on "symbolic" comes from George Herbert Mead's concept of "significant symbol" (in "Mind, Self, and Society"): a significant symbol is a stimulus which calls on its producer the response intended on the part of the receiver. Language is the paramount example. For instance, when I say something to someone else I also hear what I say and - even more important - understand it. And the same goes for my addressee. According to Mead, this commonality of reactions ("taking the role of the other", so to speak) is the basis of the shared character of meaning, an emergent property of interaction. It's from here that Blumer goes to coin the phrase "Symbolic Interactionism".
So far so good. But the Symbolic Interactionist tradition indeed has a problem in dealing with structural-historical constraints. To this, the interactionist may reply that he recognizes the existence of structures, but these do not make sense unless viewed as emergent properties of interaction. Anyway, the "obdurate" character of socio-historical structures seems to be missing in much of the interactionist studies, and it is the main source of conflict between this sociological tradition and the "structural-functionalist" (e.g. Parsons, Merton, etc.).
If you're really into it, there is a very nice article by the sociologist Gary Alan Fine in which he discusses these two approaches. It's here:
http://www.cts.cuni.cz/~konopas/liter/Fine_On%20the%20Macrofoundations%20of%20Microsociology.htm
Rgrds,
Luiz Carlos Baptista
lucabaptista@sapo.pt
lucabaptista@hotmail.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Eugene Matusov
Sent: quarta-feira, 12 de Novembro de 2003 23:44
Subject: RE: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Dear Luiz
Thanks a lot for the reference and the concise definition. These three principles sound very similar to what Ive learned about a dynamic system approach and Gibsons ecological approach. I guess all of these approaches are family of interactionism. What is about the emphasis on symbolic?
So far, I can say that a sociocultural approach includes the three principles but involve much more than socially dynamic and interactive aspects of meaning making. There are historical aspects and structural aspects that seem to be out of interest scope of the symbolic interactionist principles described by Luiz. For example, Jim Wertschs (and mine) favorite example with the QWERTY American keyboard of how history can help us understand meaning of events seems out of the scope of the symbolic interactionism. Similarly structural inequalities evident in school achievements would be difficult to approach by the symbolic interactionism, I think.
I teach a course on cultural diversity for preservice teachers. The class has a practicum component associated with afterschool program in Latin American Community Center. Recently I came to a conclusion that ideally I need to be teaching another multicultural course in the sequence with this one. In my current course my students are focused on relational and dynamic aspects of issues of multiculturalism emerging from their work with Latino children at LACC. Id like to teach them a big picturefocusing on historical and structural issues. Of course, in my current class we touch upon the big picturebut only touch upon& I think my students need more& I think that my first course is within realms of symbolic interactionism while the imagined second course would not.
What do you think?
Eugene
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From: Luiz Carlos Baptista [mailto:lucabaptista@sapo.pt]
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 10:26 AM
Subject: Re: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Hi Eugene,
In his book "Symbolic Interactionism", Herbert Blumer gives this concise definition of the interactionist perspective:
Symbolic interactionism rests in the last analysis on three simple premises. The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them. Such things include everything that the human being may note in his world physical objects, such as trees or chairs; other human beings, such as a mother or a store clerk; categories of human beings, such as friends or enemies; institutions, as a school or a government; guiding ideals, such as individual independence or honesty; activities of others, such as their commands or requests; and such situations as an individual encounters in his daily life. The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with ones fellows. The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.
Maybe this passage could provide the elements for a comparison between "S. I." and "sociocultural approaches".
Rgrds,
Luiz Carlos Baptista
----- Original Message -----
From: Eugene Matusov
To: 'Jayson Seaman'
Sent: terça-feira, 11 de Novembro de 2003 5:24
Subject: RE: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Dear Jayson
Im not very familiar with symbolic interactionism (but Id like to know more about it), however, I try to study sociocultural approaches for some time. Why dont we combine our knowledge and interests?! Why dont you describe symbolic interactionism and Ill try to compare it with sociocultural approaches (hopefully other xmca-ers can help us as well)? If you agree to do that, please focus on what attracts your attention in symbolic interactionism and try to use examples to your descriptions.
What do you think?
Eugene
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From: Jayson Seaman [mailto:cb450k@juno.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 8:24 PM
Subject: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Eugene and all:
I am somewhat new to this list and to the sociocultural approach in general, and I especially appreciate your comment Eugene about the need for multidisciplinary perspectives. It provides an entre into a question I have been pondering for a little while now. I am approaching my dissertation proposal in the upcoming months and will be studying the development of individual and group learning in an outdoor, adventure context--specifically how "adventure" is constructed in small group activity. The field of outdoor adventure education has yet to engage with the sociocultural approach and I am eager to sink my teeth further into the connection, since the fit is quite appropriate, I feel. The field still has something of a "black box" phenomenon going on.
My question for the list is along these multidisciplinary lines--I have been reading studies and theories in a symbolic interactionist tradition, and it strikes me that the sociocultural approach and symbolic interaction are somewhat complementary. I can notice some similarities and differences, but overall I am drawn to both (my aim in my work is to understand what it means to "experientially educate", so I don't pledge allegiance to one particular discipline). Symbolic Interactionism does not seem to give as much credence to object history, for example (although it does come up), but it does provide a way to examine the group construction of meaning in a given context, specifically how one thing leads to the next--made even more potent by including object histories and distal influences. One obvious overlap is the frequent reference made to John Dewey.
Here is the question--can anyone point me in the direction of a straightforward treatment of the similarities or differences between the sociocultural approach (admittedly a broad stroke) and symbolic interactionism? Or, any other works that draw on both? I have yet to come across any studies where people reference scholars from both traditions. Perhaps there's a "good reason" people don't draw from each tradition...? I don't want to run headlong into a dilemma that others have encountered previously.
Any thoughts or past explorations in this area are greatly appreciated. I apologize if I am overlooking obvious references. If you are interested, I can reciprocate by passing along specific references that illustrate similarities, at least in my thinking.
With regards,
Jayson Seaman
Ph.D. Student
University of New Hampshire
On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 19:36:32 -0500 "Eugene Matusov" <ematusov@udel.edu> writes:
Dear Andy and everybody
I think our sociocultural (or whatever it can be called) approach forces us to be "jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none". It represents a difficult dilemma for us: how to be multidisciplinary but avoid being shallow and arrogant. I think the solution of this dilemma is in our collective efforts rather than in individual achievements. That is why I so value the diverse xmca community because we can help each other avoid shallow judgments without losing broad multidisciplinary perspective required by our approach. By the way, because of this (and other) features, our approach is on odds with mainstream institutional demands judging quality of our work based on individualistic authorship&. I feel that behind authorship of articles that I contribute is a broad academic community (or even communities).
Eugene
PS I noticed that when people reply to my messages they reply to me personally and not to XCMA. I do not know why it is but suspect some faulty configuration of my email program (I use Outlook 2003). If anybody knows how I can change it and fix the problem, please, let me know. Meanwhile, please make sure that you reply to all xmca and not just me (unless you want to). Thanks and sorry!
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From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 5:54 PM
Subject: RE: Formal thinking or alienated thinking
Indeed, I am sure I would. As you may have gathered from the posts I sent at the beginning of this strange surge in activity on my part, my interest is CHAT/psychology supports my primary aim in elucidating the study of "ethical politics", that is to say in trying to find an approach to the "big problems" of the world which is translatable into person-to-person collaborative activity. As a result, I am a bit of a "jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none" and have to put up with very imperfect knowledge of the many branches of enquiry I find myself involved in!
Andy
At 05:41 PM 9/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Andy, you may be interested reading Davydovs work, for example:
Davydov, V. V. (1998). What is formal learning activity? Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 36(4), 37-47.
I think you will enjoy his writing because I sense some similarities between him and you.
Eugene
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From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 5:16 PM
Subject: RE: Formal thinking or alienated thinking
I know the name of course. He is one of the famous names of CHAT. I think we may have a short piece by him on the MIA. But I don't know his work,
Andy
At 01:20 PM 9/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Thanks, Andy. You wrote, there has to be a separation between theoretical thinking and practical thinking before you can have formal thinking. Sounds like Vasilii V. Davydov are you familiar with his work?
Eugene
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From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: Formal thinking or alienated thinking
At 10:41 PM 8/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Thanks a lot, Andy, for such deep and detailed reply. Your political example and analysis made me think that formal thinking is based on oppression, alienation, manipulation, and privilege in other words on certain social relations.
Well I think that it wouldn't be far wrong to say that formal thinking arises on the same basis as mathematics, so I would be cautious. Perhaps I overstated my case again. I mean, there has to be a separation between theoretical thinking and practical thinking before you can have formal thinking.
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On the other hand, it may be that people do not think formally in the exact sense of this term at all but rather they think in some other alienated ways that are much broader and richer than "formal thinking" and "formal logic" described by philosophers and mathematicians. Jim Gee in his 1996 book on literacy describes ideological colonization (probably Marx did it before him) when one class uncritically uses ideology of another class.
I think this is another issue altogether. The ruling ideas of any society are going to be the ideas of the ruling class since thinking appropriates the form of life of that society.
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I wonder if focus on alienated thinking is better than on formal thinking to capture the phenomenon of alienated life, so nicely described by Andy, Every question is detached from the form of life in which it arises and treated abstractly. People's knowledge is not a knowledge from their own life, with consequences from their own actions, but a stream of arbitrarily assembled news-bytes and images, fabricated in studios. The formal thinking with all its syllogisms and rigid rules seems to be rarely a part of everyday thinking of people even in Western societies. I doubt you can convince people in Western societies using formal logic very often& On the other hand, as Mike's and Sylvia Scribner's and Luria's research shows Western people are very familiar with the formal logic and strongly believe that it is the Logic&.
Well, I think alienated thinking and formal thinking are two different but inter-related things, both of them with an element of rationality precisely because they reflect certain objectively true relations in society.
Any person who is capable of mentally separating the attributes of an object from the object itself is capable of formal thinking. Anyone who loses sight of the object through seeing only its attributes is trapped in formal thinking.
Andy
What do you think?
Eugene
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From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 1:32 AM
Subject: RE: timescale question
Andy wrote, A whole politics of "getting the numbers" then flows from this which is not only based on a conception of human society as little coloured dots in a Venn Diagram, but actually creates such a type of society. In other words, we live in a society which is actually structured as a formal logical conception.
Eugene wrote: I wonder what you mean by creates such a type of society.Do you mean that through the election practice people start thinking formally? Do you mean that this practice makes people believe that they think formally while actually they do not (i.e., creates a certain false ideology)? Or do you mean that this practice makes people prioritize formal logic as the logic? I agree with you that something related to formal logic "hooks on" the existing practice of the Western election process guided by the formal logic (as if the formal logic is correct). The question for me is what exactly is this "something"?
Very broadly, ways of thinking and ways of living mutually create and sustain one another, don't they. Of course, in this relation, living and acting has a position of primacy over thinking, captured in aphorisms such as "One must eat before one can paint" or "One must have something to talk about before one can talk". But the relation is two-way noetheless.
It is of course not just parliamentary democracy which creates and sustains a culture of formal thinking, it is also the ubiquitous practice of exchanging products of labour under contract rather than actually cooperating with other people. Commercial TV has a lot to answer for as well.
Specifically, what I am saying about the practice of voting for governments in large geographical electorates would be like this. (i) The job or career of deciding how we should live we give to an institution remote from our own lives, so we externalise our selves and put our ethical powers into an alien body which then rules us; (ii) because our vote is just one vote among 100,000 votes of other people with whom we have no relation at all, we are aware that the will created in the form of a powerful state is not our will, but that of an external, alien force (why bother to vote?); (iii) thus when pondering on the meaning of our lives and how we should live we have already externalised out selves from ourselves. This is the first pre-requisite for formal thinking, external relation-to-self. Then, a public political life is conducted on our behalf in which any question can be carried if 50.1% of the population can be persuaded to vote "Yes" (although plebiscite is not the normal way of deciding, the system approximates to plebiscite); this means that a political actor has to redefine a question so as to assemble the 50.1% under "yes" and people are reduced to carriers of external characteristics of being for or against on the various isolated aspects of the issue. This produces what people call "politicians with no vision" and "thinking which only goes as far as the next election". It is the difference between the General and the Universal. For example, when there was a plebiscite in Australia over getting rid of the monarchy and having a republic, the question was so posed that when you added the number of monarchists to those who wanted a popularly elected head of state, they outnumbered those who were willing to accept as a second-best a head of state nominated by parliament (note the fact that people wanted an Individual directly responsible to the people, not a creature of the politicians). The two diametrically opposite camps both voted "no" and we are stuck with a monarchy, which had the support of only a small minority. Thus politicians treat people not as citizens and actors within a community, but as carriers of "opinions" or "attributes". They address themselves not to citizens but to opinions.
TV and other forms of mass media funded by advertising are not only one-way forms of communication, but are also designed to address the 50.1% or to target "audiences". Thus again people are atomised and reduced to passive receivers possessed of preferences and opinions, not as human beings. Every question is detached from the form of life in which it arises and treated abstractly. People's knowledge is not a knowledge from their own life, with consequences from their own actions, but a stream of arbitrarily assembled news-bytes and images, fabricated in studios.
These institutions which promote and sustain formal thinking are not 100% of human life in modernity; real life is complex and multifaceted, and people think mostly formally, but not entirely and not uniformly. But capitalist democracy and formal thinking mutually reinforce and sustain one another.
Andy
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