Re: [xmca] Visual Thinking?

[Ana Marjanovic-Shane <ana@zmajcenter.org>]

The best way I can try to express how I think that Vygotsky thought of  
pseudo-concepts is to use a pseudoconcept that we all use in everyday  
life -- even though we could use a real concept instead.

Here is the example:
What is tomato? A fruit or a vegetable.
If you use conceptual thinking -- it is a fruit -- based on a  
systematic definition of fruits (as a part of a plant, its ovary full  
of seeds), while "vegetables" are plants themselves.
But would you put a tomato in a Fruit Salad?? I guess, no! Tomatoes  
are vegetables when it comes to our culinary thinking -- which is a  
remnant of copmlexes -- a pseudoconcept at best.
If you classify a tomato into vegetables -- you are using CONCRETE,  
PERCEPTUAL (in this example -taste) and culturally-historically  
inherited classification -- whether strictly conceptually right or  
wrong is immaterial. This is what happens to children (according to  
Vygotsky) : their "word meanings are not developing freely,  
spontaneously, directed by the child her/him-self; but rather they  
develop  through paths directed by the ways that are established in  
the speech of the adults." (This is now my free translation from the  
translation into Serbo-Croatian, which is usually also very similar to  
Russian)

That is I think what Vygotsky meant. The principles of organizing  
meanings lead by the predefined inherited language usage ("of the  
adults"), might be supported by very concrete, perceptual traits of  
objects -- and that is a pseudo-concept. It is rigid and not "free" --  
and the child (and the adult who uses it when s/he classifies tomato  
into vegetables) cannot usually "explain" this meaning in the same way  
as a true concept can be explained.

Hope it helps

Ana

__________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
ana@zmajcenter.org
267-334-2905




On Feb 8, 2009, at 10:22 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

> Can I have a little bit of help from some of the Russophones on the  
> list (Anton, Mike, Achilles)?
>
> At the end of section 9 in Chapter Five, Vygotsky is telling us  
> about the difference between a pseudoconcept and a real concept.  
> Prout, translating this in the Vygotsky Reader, renders it thus:
>
> "This type of complex and this form of visual thinking dominate a  
> child 's real thinking both from the functional and from the genetic  
> point of view."
>
> Seve claims that he writes this:
>
> "Ce type de complexe, cette forme de pense/e intuitive (sic) joue un  
> ro^le pre/dominant dans la pense/e re/elle de l'enfant tant par sa  
> fonction que sous le rapport ge/ne/tique. (This type of complex,  
> this type of intuitive (???) thinking plays a predominant role in  
> the real thinking of the child as much by its function as by its  
> genetic relations.)"
>
> "Intuitive"? That can't be right. Let's try the Italian. Meccaci,  
> who almost always sticks RELIGIOUSLY to Vygotsky's actual paragraph  
> breaks, in this one case breaks his rule and adds a sentence from  
> the previous paragraph to begin the paragraph, and comes up with:
>
> "Egli ha costruito un complesso associativo limitato; e` arrivato  
> allo stesso punto, ma allo stesso tempo ci e` arrivato un'altra via.  
> (The child has constructed a limited associative complex; arriving  
> at the same point at the same pace but by another road) Questo tipo  
> di complesso, questa forma di pensiero concreto ha un ruolo  
> predominante nel pensiero reale del bambino sia sotto l'aspetto  
> funzionale che quello genetico (This type of complex, this form of  
> concrete thinking has a predominant role in the real thinkign of the  
> child in its functional as well as in its genetic aspect)"
>
> "Concrete"? Hmmm...Well, what Vygotsky's REALLY got is this: Форма  
> наглядного мышления.
>
> So that's literally "form visual of thinking". But it seems to me  
> that what is really going on here, what threw Seve (who as van der  
> Veer says is normally quite scrupulous) is that Vygotsky means  
> something like APPERCEPTIVE, practical, actual, factual.
>
> It's easier for me to understand how the pseudoconcept is different  
> from the DIFFUSE complex than how it is different from the true  
> concept. The diffuse complex has a trait at its centre (rather than  
> a concrete object with all its different traits), but that trait  
> varies in an unbounded fasion, as if it were a chain of things  
> rather than an abstract trait: yellow, then yellow-green, then  
> yellow-green-blue, then yellow-green-blue-black.
>
> With the pseudoconcept there are LIMITS and BOUNDARIES to that  
> variation, but these LIMITS are factual, concrete, apperceptive  
> limits rather than general, abstract, conceptual ones. So for  
> example with a pseudoconcept we can actually see the child picking  
> up the yellow triangle and physically comparing it to the green one,  
> or matching the sides of a triangle to those of a trapezoid.
>
> Am I on the right track? Is "visual thinking" really a kind of  
> practical intelligence?
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
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