Re: FW: Vygotsky/tool/sign/symbol

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Yes, Don, in next week's seminar with Santiago, the students are
reading the chapter on
"culture in the middle" from cultural psych and the question of the
duality of artifacts and the nature of that duality with respect to
sign/symbol distinctions is certainly relevant. But right now I am
asking questions about the tool-sign-symbol issue especially vis a vis
Vygotsky and his contemporaries.

For example, we know Vygotsky read Werner and I am pretty sure
Cassirer, but probably not Peirce. As Joe points out some make symbol
a subset of sign and some vice versa. Do you have something that maps
our Saussure/Peirce/...? vis a vis these issues. I am guessing that
Arne wrote about this at an earlier time on xlchc/xmca but have only
thought to look there thanks to your note.
mike


On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 14:51:24 -0500, Cunningham, Donald J.
<cunningh@indiana.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Could I tag on to this and ask how "artifact" relates to these three
> terms?
> 
> Don Cunningham
> Indiana University
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2004 12:42 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Vygotsky/tool/sign/symbol
> 
> What, for Vygotsky, was the relationship between tool, sign and symbol?
> 
> This question was raised in a seminar  David Preiss and I are conducting
> between
> Santiago and La Jolla.
> 
> It turns out to be an interesting question because the answer is no
> obvious. LSV's book,
> part of which appears in *Mind in Society" was titled "orudie i znak"
> in Russian, which,
> litterally, should be trranslated as tool and sign. But sometimes is
> translated as tool
> and symbol vis, in mind and society!)..
> 
> The term, symbol, is little in evidence in the Collected works, but it
> appears in phrases
> like "symbolic activity."
> 
> Jaan Valsiner, when asked, said that the route to an answer lies
> through Cassirer.
> Jim Wertsch, when asked, said that the route to an answer lies through
> Husserl and
> Shpet.
> 
> !!
> 
> If one googles "signsymbol" one comes up with various answers to the
> sign symbol relationship. For example:
> 
> Signs-stands for or represent something else.
>            Not arbitrary
> 
> Symbol--
> Artificial or conventional signs (There is no direct relationship with
> their referents.)
> Arbitrary and ambiguous
> 
> The article on Peirce in MCA is clearly relevant to this issue, but I
> wonder if others have
> considered it and might share their insights?
> mike
> 
>