Re: [Possible SPAM] Re: [Possible SPAM] Re: [xmca] Copernicus, Darwinand Bohr

Michael,
Is what you're referring to anything like my understanding of Vygotsky's
conception of learning leading development and what I call being who we
are/other than who we are (who we're becoming)?

Lois

> From: Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca>
> Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:59:22 -0700
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Possible SPAM] Re: [Possible SPAM] Re: [xmca] Copernicus,
> Darwinand Bohr
>
> Hi Paul,
> it would perhaps be of interest to you to follow the thinking of
> philosophers of difference, which I think take up Marx's agenda that
> also was taken up by Vygotsky and his students, including Klaus
> Holzkamp who suggested that much of psychology is a reification of
> folk beliefs rather than a real science. He, his wife Ute Osterkamp,
> and some others then showed how psychological constructs need to be
> categorically constructed on evolutionary and cultural-historical
> grounds.
>
> I see this as a parallel effort to philosophy of difference, first
> philosophies, that take into account their very own beginnings. Thus,
> as one of Emmanuel Levina's book title suggests, it is a move to go
> "Beyond Essence" and think Being as being grounded, historically, in
> something that is "Otherwise than Being."
>
> Jean-Luc Nancy, another philosopher of difference, grounds being in
> the "with" that precedes being; Thus, we have GROUPS of chimpanzees,
> and chimpanzee experience of WITHness prior to and constituting the
> ground of consciousness.
>
> :-)
>
> Michael
>
> Levinas, Emmanuel (1998). Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence
> (Alphonso Lingis, transl.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
> Nancy, J.-L. (2000). Being singular plural. Stanford, CA: Stanford
> University Press.
>
>
> On 28-Jun-07, at 8:41 AM, Paul Dillon wrote:
>
> Michael,
>
> I'm not at all clear as to why you think the distinction between
> expert and novice essentializes any more than recognizing hot and
> cold essentializes, light and dark. There are continuums:
> temperature, luminosity, and knowledge/skill for which each of these
> terms functions as a place marker. But there are also limits on the
> the continuum, no?
>
> I'm also unclear as to what you are trying to say by invoking
> Ilyenkov. I have been sitting on a post-in-preparation since this
> thread began concerning Ilyenkov's theory of the "ideal" which I
> consider very relevant to what is being attempted in
> "toolsforthought". I hope to post it soon along with a discussion of
> the work of Andrew Chitty and Peter Jones both of whom have done
> work that is much more intelligible on how "intelligence" is present
> in tools, one which doesn't however transform tools into "agents" or
> "actants". Hopefullly I will get it distilled into something
> suitable before this discussion ends.
>
> Paul Dillon
>
> Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:
> Think about culture as being produced and reproduced simultaneously,
> that is, always also transformed, never the same, always in flux.
>
> I am trying to provide resources that people can use to jolt them out
> of their ontologies.... and into the one Vygotsky and his students
> had adopted from Marx.... an ontology of difference as Il'enkov
> shows, not one of the same that dominates the current discussion,
> which ESSENTIALIZES experts and novices.
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> On 28-Jun-07, at 7:36 AM, Paul Dillon wrote:
>
> Michael,
>
> I haven't read your article yet I'm wondering whether you equate
> professor with expert, student with novice? This clearly would make
> your statement about expertise being up for grabs a bit circular, no?
>
> Often a student has insights into a specific problem that the
> professor doesn't, but you are now at the graduate level, right?
> That is already stratospheric in relation to the first year physics
> student being taught a section by the grad student. It is unlikely
> that the freshman could distinguish between the expertise of the
> professor or the grad student in a conversation about physics.
>
> Paul Dillon
>
> Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> Hi,
> thinking from an ontology of difference----the hardest thing for many
> Westerners subject to individualist ideology---means that we are
> different from ourselves, that heterogeneity is at the hard of
> sameness and Self. This also means that expertise is heterogeneous,
> within individuals and across, and even within itself. This, then,
> makes the ontological opposition of THE expert and THE novice highly
> questionable. In a paper that David Middleton and I published not too
> long ago, we show how this turns out to be the case in research
> interviews conducted with respect to graphing by an undergraduate
> physics students with professors in his own department, and who is
> expert and who is novice with respect to a particular issue
> continuously is up for grab.
> Cheers,
> Michael
>
> Roth, W.-M., & Middleton, D. (2006). The making of asymmetries of
> knowing, identity, and accountability in the sequential organization
> of graph interpretation. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 1, 11­
> 81.
>
>
> On 27-Jun-07, at 7:36 PM, Louise Hawkins wrote:
>
> I also find issue with the distinction between expert and novice, as if
> the expert has something to give and the novice something to receive.
> How many times is it the student who poses a question that raises a
> point that the 'expert' learns from?
>
> Louise
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Michael Glassman
> Sent: Wednesday, 27 June 2007 04:37 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: RE: [Possible SPAM] Re: [Possible SPAM] Re: [xmca] Copernicus,
> Darwinand Bohr
>
>
> Martin
>
> Why this distinction between expert and novice? What does it really buy
> us? And who gets to make the distinction? It seems to me in an
> expert/novice scenario all power lies in the hands of those who get to
> make this distinction on whatever level, and get to define the two
> classes. Take a look at the political class in the United States, we
> define experts as those who have the right cultural capital, wear the
> right type of ties and suits, who speak in somber, modulated voices with
> a weary sigh of resignation, suggesting "of course you cannot see what I
> can see, but trust me."
>
> This is not to say every generation starts from scratch. Every
> generation starts with the tools that they have, but then they figure
> out how to use those tools to solve what invariably must be new
> problems, or they develop new tools out of the old tools. Let's say we
> have a set of spears we use to hunt food. There are great spear
> throwers who use those spears and teach others to use them as well.
> Their "expertise" in spear throwing gives them great power within the
> community. But things change, and the spears that were once used on
> larger animals are not as good for smaller animals. Are the spear
> throwers going to give up their place in the community as "experts?" Or
> are they going to say, well if we just wait, or if we use the spear in a
> different way, or it is the fault of our lazy children who do not train
> in spear throwing the way previous generations did. Meanwhile the food
> supply dwindles for the community. A young person examines the spear
> and says, hmmm, the arrow head pierces the skin but it cannot reach the
> skin with these new animals that we hunt. Perhaps I can create
> something else - a bow and arrow perhaps. But she is not an expert.
> Who, in a hierarchical system of knowledge development would listen and
> adopt the work of this young innovator? This is always the danger of a
> heirarchical system of knowledge development.
>
> In a more lateral system of development information is everything. As a
> species were are problem solvers, but our problem solving is based on
> the easy access and flow of information. I just read the most
> fascinating article by the economist Amriyat (sp?) Sen. In it he talks
> about famine. He makes a really good argument that famine is almost
> never about food. There is always enough food even in some of the major
> famines of the twentieth century. It is about the lack of capability
> for getting to the food. At its core the lack of information as a tool
> in obtaining this basic human function. What else is there other than
> information. When we define information as static and give it value
> separate from the problems we are working on, isn't that when we find
> the most trouble, have the most difficulties in problems solving?
>
> I watch my son play his World of Warcraft game. I wish I knew more
> about it. But I see him adapting and recalibrating constantly,
> developing strategies and processes that see incredible to me. It is a
> virtual world in which there are no "experts." The world and my son and
> the other players co-exist.
>
> I don't know if I've done such a good job trying to explore this.
> Perhaps a problem that needs greater consideration.
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Martin Packer
> Sent: Tue 6/26/2007 2:04 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Possible SPAM] Re: [Possible SPAM] Re: [xmca] Copernicus,
> Darwinand Bohr
>
>
>
> Michael, you would have each generation start on their own, from
> scratch? No
> experts, just novices? That really is a post-apocalyptic vision!
>
> My point was there is more to life (and education) than "functioning"
> and
> "information." The danger with the tool metaphor, and the emphasis on
> artifacts as tools, is that they reduce all of life to the production
> process. That is not just a conceptual mistake, it is a political
> agenda. To
> argue that thinking is not important, only tool use, is not to argue
> against
> formalization, it is to promote a purely instrumental conception of
> human
> action and interaction. It is to promote an extreme version of the
> division
> of labor, in which only a tiny elite get to think about the nature of
> thinking, and everyone else is simply using tools skillfully but
> thoughtlessly.
>
> On 6/26/07 12:40 PM, "Michael Glassman" wrote:
>
>> But if this information is so important, and it exists as part of the
> problem
>> solving tools of humanity, don't we trust humans to discover it
> through their
>> own activities?
>
>
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Received on Fri Jun 29 21:54 PDT 2007